I think it's reasonably obvious that a large portion of this is anecdotal (though not necessarily irrelevant) data. There are, though, a number of noted widespread failures, like the Deathstars and the recent WD Green head-parking issue.

The thing that I've noticed, though, is that no one manufacturer is always the best. I suspect that there's enough cutting-edge engineering going on that it's always a crapshoot when a new model comes out. Part of the problem is that new models seem to be more and more frequent, so that bugs tend not to get worked out over time, and there's not a long enough in-market time for there to be any significant feedback. That is, by the time that the drives die, they're already well into a new model.

At this point, I have absolutely no idea what to get. I've had nasty failures from each of the notable manufacturers, and the couple of new manufacturers scare me. (I can't seem to find references now, but I could swear I saw some boxes not too long ago with brand names I'd never heard of.)

I think the best bet is to run RAID and have, if at all possible, different drives as members, in order to try and prevent coincident failures.