[Mercury Bullet]

Never lost a hard drive.

I only buy raptor/velociraptor 10,000rpm drives though, they cost a lot more and are heavy, hot and loud. So while they may be reliable they have their drawbacks.

Instead of packaged external drives I use usb-3 docks and can swap drives in and out whenever I like. That way I also get to choose which drives I buy.
usb-3 is plenty fast enough to run desktop apps off them.

I also backup all my photos to Blu-ray and redo them every two years.