Well I"ve had too many bad experiences. I was sole IT for a small company for 5 years and down time was not a condition that was acceptable. So when the latest and greatest came out I was 6 months to a years behind it. Getting drives one or even three generatiosn back as NOS was not a problem. That was easy is that by 6 months to a year you were hearing what was problematic or unusually good. Also by then I could get a better price and our needs never grew as fast as they new tech could produce so space was always in excess. Notable really bad drives. St251 40mb runs hot, dies early. Wren 3.5" half height. Had 6 given to me working all died within a year save one. Various Prodrives, up and down QA. various Segate IDE, up and down QA. If it was good after a year it would likely last well past the time it was too small. WD during the time of the 300-500mb drives, good drive design, bad QC. Those that failed were early life those that didn't corak early still work. Segate 3.2gb IDE first version, really bad 80% failure in 90 days. Whole lot returned for -A version. Maxtor 9gb scsi, failure rate 50% per year, sample 16 drives in use and warrenty replacements for not less than 4 every 6 months. After two years ALL 16 replaced with seagate 37GB no failures at 1.5 years. Noteably good drives: St225 I have a bunch and they are workhorse. Quantum D540 31mb I have 14 of them all with 5+ YEARS runtime all still running. Maxtor 2190 (mfm 153mb aka RD54). Fujitsu 500mb IDE Toshiba 500mb 2.5" IDE, unbreakable. Various Segate 3.2GB 32011A was good, non A was bad. WD 4.3GB IDE a time tested winner. cheap too. Seagate 2600020A 60GB IDE, put 20 in service and All still running at 2years in business desktop use. DEC RZ55 680mb 5" full height scsi. Ihave 14 of them in use that were pulls and still work fine after years of use. Seagate 1gb SCSI Segate Baracudas 1gb -> 4.3 noisy but reliable. Plenty of others as well. Allison