Ditto on this...Had really bad experiences with Hitachi and Western Digital. Swore by Maxtor for a while in the early-90's, and then a got several in a row that died within 2 years. Never used a samsung, but I've been sticking with seagate for about 15 years now, and they are incredibly reliable.
testament to reliability: with only a little care and maintenance, I have now gone a whopping 12(!!!!) years with out losing a single byte of important data. The only problem for me actually is size...in 12 years without information loss, you really do accumulate a massive amount of data. Even with regularly cleaning out unneeded data and archiving stuff I don't need instant access to, I've managed to fill 2/3rds of my 1TB storage drive already.
