I've owned two Maxtors. They both died very quickly. And I don't even do any heavy computing like professional graphics rendering or anything. Maybe thats why you always see Maxtor drives at BestBuy and the like with all those mail-in rebates. I will never buy another Maxtor.
I've had very good luck with Fujitsu HDD's I still have a 540 MB Fujitsu from '93 that runs just as strong as it ever did. And at first, that computer ran 24/7 for 2 years straight (averaging probably no more than one reboot a month). I've never had one fail so far....(knock on silicon).
My Western Digital experience has been so-so. Just recently, I've seen two WD's fail, but one of them was pretty old and had a shade-tree tech playing with it that may have damaged it while trying to upgrade his computer.
Specific wording of the error message would help.
If you appreciate timely shipping and excellent customer service, you can check out
www.newegg.com, though they only carry SCSI Fujitsu HDD's. IBM has a pretty good reputation in the HDD market and I've seen a lot of positive reviews of Seagate HDD's recently, but have no personal experience with them.
Pricewatch may be a little cumbersome to get used to, but it will give you a fair look at whats available online to get a good idea of the going rate for a given product.