Never had a problem with Maxtor drives, to be honest, the two in my machine have been in there for 2-3 years (120GB) and 12-18 months (250GB), without dropping a beat. Before that, I had the above 120GB and an 80GB IBM/Deathstar that lasted a good few years.

However, I've had nothing but trouble with Western Digital, and am never ever touching them again (I had a 200GB drive that, in 4 different computers, registered as any variation of size, including 2GB, 8GB, 20GB, 40GB, 80GB, 120GB, 128GB (although this one may have been due to LBA not being enabled in Windows), and 160GB - never did it show as 200GB in any of the machines - the shop took it back and replaced it with the 120GB I'm still using now).

But, hard-drive reliability (or lack of) tends to be a personal experience......some people have drives that last for years, compared to someone else having one of the same make/size that lasts a few months and blows up (speaking of which, I had an old Quantum Fireball that did exactly that - with such force that it dented the hard-drive caddy below where one of the chips exploded ).