Ben Hunt
Forum GOD!
Most reliable harddrives are HGST/Hitachi UltraStars. They're designed for servers, so they're a little bit louder than your usual HD. Consumer-grade version is Deskstar.
But don't ever trust a single drive. Or even two drives for that matter. For anything really important, have a local backup (and backups have to be on a different drive, or it's not a backup) and at least one remote backup (Spideroak, Dropbox &c.).
If you're worried about a particular drive, checking the drive's S.M.A.R.T. data is the best bet. I've never done it under Windows, but this guide looks reasonable: http://www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/
But don't ever trust a single drive. Or even two drives for that matter. For anything really important, have a local backup (and backups have to be on a different drive, or it's not a backup) and at least one remote backup (Spideroak, Dropbox &c.).
If you're worried about a particular drive, checking the drive's S.M.A.R.T. data is the best bet. I've never done it under Windows, but this guide looks reasonable: http://www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/