The only 'issue' they had was a glitchy performance bug that would occasionally pop up under few rare circumstances. Seagate has issued a firmware update for it.
Reliability wise those Seagate 1.5TB has had no problem and is comparable to the rest of trouble-free HDDs (besides the inevitably of HDD failure).
Reliability is NOT related to brand. It's the particular product in question.
------------------------------GTL Ref Tweaking Guide - PM for detail
Brand is for the weak-minded, only product matters.
Resilient to marketing.
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