My sympathies. When my original Maxtor 250GB drive died at just over a year old (my fault because I didn't know any better and kept it powered on 24/7 instead of turning it off when not in use), I shopped around and it seemed like there were pretty much equal numbers of reported problems with virtually everything I looked at.

I ended up with another Maxtor, 300GB this time, and it's been great. I just turn it off except when I'm actually reading from it or writing to it, so it doesn't overheat and doesn't burn out the drive.