I could tell stories about my Maxtor drives. But on the subject of external ones, I once foolishly shelled out a lot of money for my first external. It was a Maxtor that had USB and Firewire. I had a mobo with firewire and had nothing to plug into it so I paid an extra $100 for the firewire.
The firewire worked perfectly from the start and I'm rather glad I got it. But the Maxtor didn't have a fan. Not only that, but it was almost hermetically sealed with some kind of rubber gasket (maybe silicone) that was used to support the drive. Great shock isolation, but also great thermal insulation.
For a quick backup, it was okay, but when I ran it for an hour, it got hot enough to fry eggs, and corruupted all the data.
The point is, you can't trust even a hard drive manufacturer to build an external drive (or even an internal) that makes sense.
The hard drive business is a cutthroat business, profit margins are thin, and there is enormous competition for our business. We consumers are the winners, but I think there will be a lot less manufacturers in the future. To stay in business, every manufacturer has to come out with a better one, and quickly, lest their competitors do, and put them out of business. And they have to be lucky in their decisions. Apparently Maxtor made some unlucky guesses and are hurting. I've read that Seagate is making plans to attempt a purchase of Maxtor.