Other than the IBM, "Deathstar" debacle, which was essentially a case of a flawed design, if the design, and the execution of the design are good, price point really shouldn't matter with respect to quality or longevity. There may be a difference in performance, but not basic quality. I've had drives from everybody (it would seem) and everybody's drives, with one exception, have had at least one failure, regardless of manufacturer.
Case in point: When IDE drives first started moving toward the 7,200 RPM spindle speed, they were pretty expensive. I needed a drive with some good sustained throughput figures, and it needed to be quiet, as it was to be the heart of my main audio machine. The 7,200's were out of my league price-wise at the time and were still pretty noisy, too.
I found some Samsung drives, believe it or not, which, at the time had the highest areal density (bits per square inch of platter space) of any drive on the market, a very good sustained transfer rate, and were several dB quieter than anything else out there at the time (they still are). They were also about $20 cheaper for a 20 gig drive (big for it's day) than the competing models from WD and IBM. I eventually bought three of them. They're all in machines right now, all running 24/7 for a long, long time with out a burp, hiccup or anything.
In the meantime, I've been through 1 IBM Deathstar, a WD Caviar that spends most of its time on the road between here and the wD factory getting RMA'd
, a Seagate Barracuda ATA, and several other micallaneous drives.
Go figure, the cheapest of my more or less "modern" drives are the ones that have been the most solid performers and have been the most dependable over time.
