Eric Jacoboni writes:

>wd1a: uncorrectable data error reading fsbn 997655 of 997648-997663 
>(wd1 bn 997718; cn 989 tn 12 sn 50)
[...]
>low-level formatter. I think i better have to save up some Euros to
>buy another disk (but no more Seagate...).

Well.. many disk vendors have 3 years warranty on their drives,
and most fail during that timespan, if they fail at all in reasonable
time[1] so you might check at Seagate's webpages if your disk still
has warranty (dunno how to do that at Seagate, I only have checked
so far for IBM and WD).

I don't think that any of the major brands is better or worse than
the other, IBM was said to be quite good with SCSI disks 2 years
ago but I also have failed drives from then (still with warranty)
and lately they've gotten some bad press with some of their IDE
drives... I now buy Western Digital for IDE (I mean, they kinda
designed the interface or sth, the driver is called "wd" after all
:) but I don't have the illusion that it is more failsafe than
others... make sure you buy from a manufacturer with good warranty
terms.

  --mkb

[1] limited to my experience, of course.