Actually a brand that I am fairly loyal to is Samsung... Their Spinpoint drives are quiet, cool running and quite reliable - I've never heard anyone with anything bad to say about them. No doubt they have their failures as well, but when you don't hear a lot about them, you tend to think that they're doing their job well.

Personally, I tend to shy away from both Seagate and Maxtor. Mixed results with WD but their raptor/velociraptor drives are pretty good (if small, hot and noisy) :-)