Drives really are perishable goods. I've had 6 (six!) drives failed or failing in the last two months. (Some of those were up to five years old, and admittedly one of them was with me in Australia for 12 months, bouncing around on rutted dirt roads). I will never trust a single drive for more than short term storage.
If you look at what Google has published re its own experience of drive reliability, there aren't really good and bad brands, but rather good and bad production batches.
That said, a slower running drive like the WD Green (5400RPM) and Seagate LP (5900RPM) might have a better chance of surviving longer. Unless the manufacturer skimped on the bearings of course.
I now have two WG Green drives (1 + 1.5TB) they run cool and are fast despite slower rotation - transfer rate peaks at 90MB/sec. Power draw is lower.
My recommmendations:
- Avoid buying more than one drive from the same batch and put in raid or mirrored storage. Same batch means they are more likely to fail at approx the same time. Instead, get the drives from different sources, or one at a time.
- Don't get higher performance drives than you need. WD Green is fine for NAS even with gigabit network.
- Never trust a drive with more than a few days' work.
- Desktop drives are NOT like laptop drives, they are much more sensitive to G forces while running. NEVER move a desktop drive that is running.
If you really want high quality drives - and are willing to pay - then look at Seagate ES series. They are 50% more expensive than mainstream drives but seem rock solid. A friend of mine has been running ES for several years in a server room, hundreds of drives not a single failure. The higher price is probably worth it even cost-wise, given that cheaper drives are more likely to fail.
Also - if you want to test and maintain drivers, there's a software called Spinrite that is great for checking and maintaining drives. Just be aware that drive surface checking is a lengthy process - a full surface reconditioning of a 1 TB drive can take 50-100 hours.