We are probably lucky that some of the questionable manufacturers have died a natural death or been bought up by other companies. IBM is going to become IBM/Hitachi which may well cure some of the IBM problems. It's too bad to see IBM do this as it was IBM that invented the hard drive not far from where I live here in San Jose, CA. Now, the old Winchester 30/30 ...that WAS A REAL DRIVE!
If you think drives are getting less reliable you may be right but you apparently dont' remember buying 10 or 20 MB hard drives for $400 or $500 or more and how clunky they were.
In general I think drives are MUCH better than they were in the "olden days" and have become a commodity item and are pretty interchangeable. Some are noisier than others, some are faster than others and you need to take that into account. I've only had to RMA 2 hard drives that I owned in the days since the earliest HDs. Both were painless processes and fortunately didn't involve data loss. I did have some problems with a high end drive on a server at work but eventually got that drive replaced as well.
Even the most expensive and well made automobiles require service and break down from time to time. You can't have reasonable cost and NO failures at all. I think we're lucky with HDs these days.