I have two particularly notorious Seagate periods:

    Seagate bought Conner when Conner had released several models w/ 
    leaky seals. Bad sectors started at the outer edge of the 
    platters and grew inward. We had a lot of these drives
    out there and Seagate refused to honor Conner's drive
    warranties. 

    The 7200.10 series had super high failure rates. I wound up 
    replacing every one in my care, within 2 years. The 7200.11
    drives weren't much better.

I think the last Seagate lines I truly trusted were the ST series of MFM and RLL drives.