one of my seagate drives just failed.. luckily it was in a RAID1 Mirror set on NAS4Free so i did not lose any data 
this drive was in use for 647 days before failure. thats less than 2 years.
seagate... its the cheapest.. but only by a few dollars.. i think its not worth using this brand again even to save 10$-30$ in price

the drive itself says 05/2012 as date of manufacturing
Barracuda 7200.12 1TB

i bought a WD Black last night.. 5 year warranty.. 99.99$
it was a tough decison as there is a 2TB seagate for less money.. 79.99$
but i decided... having a 2tb drive that dies in 1.7 years is less valuable to me
then having a 1TB that actually lasts the 5 years and is covered by warranty if it doesnt!!!

hitachi/samsung/toshiba might be better to try.. depending on what type of warranty they offer... seagate will always have some type of sale and very competitive price... dont be fooled!!! or .. if u are ok with the drive only working for 2 years then go for the low price ... but beware!!

this report is about desktop/stationary drives not portable drives