First of all, although IBM had a terrible reliability record several years back, the Deskstar line of drives have improved dramatically in reliability (and speed) since the partial sale to Hitachi several years ago.
My last two main drives have been Hitachi branded, and despite the fact that I run them hard I haven't had any problems yet. Maxtor, despite their speed and price, I don't trust at all, and I haven't tried a WD drive in several years since between Seagate and Hitachi I've never seen a price or performance benefit (though back when they were the first maker at 8MB cache, it was a different story).
Still, the best source of objective and statistically significant reliability information is over at StorageReview.com; their drive reliability database allows you to see comparitive failure rates based on thousands of real-world reports (you do have to register to see, but it's free).
It will tell you, for example, that although older IBM drives were notably unreliable, Hitachi's most recent models have been above average.
When you look at WD's drives they're not entirely consistent, but although their pre-2002 models (the 1200 series) were generally pretty good (I have one, and it's worked reliably) and the Raptors are above average, their latest drives (the 2000 and 2500 series) have fared very poorly compared to other drives.
It's not guaranteed accurate, and sometimes people just have bad luck, but it's a lot more useful information than a handful of anecdotal reports.
