I used to think WD was a reliable brand but I had 2 of them fail last year. They were the Caviar line and they were 3.5" desktop drives and that might make a difference but I'm steering clear of them for now.
For my laptop I replaced the stock 5400 rpm 250G drives with 320G 7200 rpm drives to increase performance a bit. They claimed to have very little impact on battery performance but since my machine is a battery hog anyway I can't tell.
No problems or noise from them yet.
I think they were Hitachi Travelstar drives. Of course those were SATA drives. You may need a PATA drive.
