This topic seems to come up from time to time on the BBS, and about the only consensus that we ever seem to reach is that drive manufacturers go through good and bad patches.

Agreed. In the past, I've always been an advocate of Western Digital, and for at least the last 8 years or so, I've had great experiences with them. Recently, however, they downgraded a majority of their lineup to 1 year warranties, and I had one of mine start acting funny on me (still works, but makes an airplane landing noise.) Furthermore, other manufacturers seem to have caught up in the price vs. performance ratio. When I put together my RAID5 array on my file server recently, I went away from Western Digital and bought Samsung drives. The performance was marginally lower than Western Digital's flagship drives, but price difference and much lower noise factor were enough to switch me. I still wouldn't rule WD out, but I do think their "best in class" status is in jeopardy.