Larger hard drives, when they are first released, do have a tendency to fail more often. Generally because everything has to be closer together. A 300GB hard drive will DEFINITELY be more fragile than a 60GB hard drive as the platters (spinning magnetic bits) are much closer together and much more finely balanced. The pickup heads in hard drives never actually touch the discs (like vinyl turntable heads do), but they 'float' less than a hairs thickness away from the platters. The more platters, the more heads, the closer everything is, the more fragile it is.
If its STILL, all hard drives will have a longer life span than if they're shaken about.
In terms of brands, for teh most paart theres not a major difference. Theres only 4 or 5 different manufacturers. All teh vendors source from the same places and put their own software and builds together.
Buy midrange, the size you want, and always take a backup copy. Buy TWO drives if you need, an internal and an external, and keep the external one static and dont kick it about.
No guarantees, but its less likely to fail that way.
