Well for reliability WD takes the crown. Their drives are cheap and rock solid. Seagate is right behind them.
For noise Seagate takes the crown. Drives are faster and generally just as if not higher quality the WD, however Seagate uses Fluid Bearing which make them A LOT quieter. I would but Samsung right behind them.
Maxtors are known to fail, thats really all you can say about them. They are your average HDD manf, not really good in any aspect but decent all around; again they are known to be unreliable.
Samsung supposedly very quiet, almost as quiet as the Seagates, not quite as fast or reliable as the Seagates. The same goes for Hitachi. However IIRC Hitachi focus's more on Laptop HDD than desktop.
Having said this top three:
1. Seagate
2. Western Digital
3. Samsung
-Kevin