External drives have become frustrating WD vs. LaCie vs Oxford chipset

This thread is very interesting if you have external storage drives and are having problems.  Really you want to get external drives with the Oxford chipset like OWC sells.  I wrote a separate post about my positive experiences with them here. If you avoid LaCie, WD, Iomega, Imation, Samsung, Drobo you should be fine.  I have read stories about major problems with all of these brands.  Seagate, Toshiba, Hitachi seem to have the most reliable hard drives and enclosures at the present time.