My friend has had 4 WD hard drives, and all four have died on him.

@Crowdirt
My experience, both personal and in my line of work, telles me the opposite...

I have seen ton's of Maxtors/Quanums/IBMs gone bad, and only ONCE for the last 15
years I have seen a WD *trying* to go bad, but my SMART sensor told
me before it was to late, so I was able to save all my data on it ( 120GB )

The 60GB/5400 drives mentioned in the first post, is a very good drive. I have 2 of them,
and they have been running for allmost 1,5 years now, with hardly
any break's :) Even if they are "only" 5400, the data density on the plates
makes it faster than expected ( access time ), and in test's
they outperformed many 7200 drives when they where first released.

And a nice added feature, is very little noice :)

Cheer's
/BC

all drives will have issues.
sometime have to depend on how they are shipped.
the ppl that are moving the boxes will just throw it around, even though there are proection measures, they dun help much.

so it still depends on luck, you may just get a bad drive even if the reviews are good.