[citation][nom]syrious1[/nom]I agree with the Segate comment, and go ahead and add Hitatchi to that list as well. [/citation]
I can't say you're wrong, but we should be very careful about drawing any firm conclusions in discussions about brand loyalty/reliability. Usually, the people who attest that this-or-that brand is crap are only drawing on their own personal experience. The return rates for Seagate drives overall isn't all that bad:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/881-6/components-returns-rates-7.html
Anyway, if we were to take your statement at face value, the problem becomes that there only about three major players in the market: Seagate recently took over Samsung's HDD division, so any Samsung drive you buy is likely to be a rebranded Seagate. Then there's Hitachi, which is worse than Seagate if you go by the numbers linked above. Then there's Western Digital, which has always been my brand of choice (incidentally), but they've had their share of problematic models too.
The bottom line, as always in these discussions, is that you have a small chance of receiving a dud from any company, good or bad.