Or... get one of each! 🙂
Seriously, you're gonna have tons of different opinions, so I'll give ya mine:
Maxtor: Had two quite new (less than 6 mos old) seperates drive burn up recently, but I suspect the problem in my case is with my PS and standby. My other two maxtors (80GB and 160GB, both IDE and 7200rpm, but the 160 has the 8mb cache) are pretty good. THe newer ones seem to be faster. In Atto, the 80GB one gets ~45MB/sec, and the 160GB gets ~65MB/sec. With the exception of my two burnt drives (which I don't think had any fault on their own), Maxtor has been good to me.
WD: I have/had a 2.5GB (yes, you read right), 60GB, two 120GB, and two 36BG Raptors. The ancient 2.5GB still works, although hellaciously slow 🙂. The 60GB model in the wife's PC works fine. The two 120GB models (both 7200 rpm, 8mb cache, installed seperately) died within a short time of installation, not sure why. The Raptors dies on me recently, but I think that was related the the PS/standby issue I had with the Maxtor. I'm not too keen on WD because of the mysterious way the 2 120GB drives died (but no other drive was effected), but since the Raptors have a 5 yr warranty, I figured what the heck.
Seagate: I have a 200GB, 7200rpm, 8MB cache and so far works well and quiet. Hard to tell about reliability since it's too new, but performance is right around 60MG/sec in Atto.
IBM: I have a 60GB and it died after about a year, but that was a problem model according to a lot of places online. IBM replaced it about a year or so ago and it still works fine in the kids' system. Have not benched it but seems mediocre.
Quantum: This 30GB drive came with my Gateway system back in 1998ish. It is kinda noisy but still works.
Well I guess that wraps up my experiences and opinions!