Every brand has had a generation of drives that had their share of problems, aren't the gxp 60's around a decade ago by now? or not far off. Seagate, Maxtor, samsung to a lesser degree have all had issues FAR more recently than Hitachi.
Still got 120gxp's working, IBM ones, i think there were 180gxp's aswell which were great, and there have been about4-5 generations of drives under the Hitachi banner that have been pretty much flawless(I don't remember any problems with any, but every drive has some fail, though don't think i've seen a "my hitachi has died" thread on here for years).
If I want raid(non ssd) I'd still probably go Hitachi because IBM/early hitachi's always had great great performance in raid. Seagate always sucked in raid, maxtor/WD somewhere inbetween.