I have to give Wester Digital a lot of credit for how they responded when I told them my old 500GB external hard drive (which I am pretty sure was out of warrenty) died. Within 24hrs of me telling them its serial number and where I lived a new 750GB hard drive showed up in the mail.

While I may no longer exlusively buy Western Digital drives, I am open to giving them another chance, and just putting more money into redundency on my end so if a drive does fail I do not loose everything.

Bottom line, I've had some bad luck with Western Digital drive, and some great luck with Western Digital customer service.