WD and Maxtor both have had well-known problems where the firmware will corrupt the on-disk "GLIST", the defect list, and the drive will no longer function. Some Russian company sells a device that repairs such drives, but it costs ~$3K IIRC.
Not claiming any brand is better than the other, but I have had a disproportionate number of failures in both Maxtor and WD over the years. Also, this was the first time a Maxtor drive had failed "clicky" on me, a trait usually reserved for WD - I had always preferred Maxtor of the two since usually the failure was not as catastrophic. Oh well. I've been buying Seagate ATA drives for a while now and that will probably continue.