not yet that i know of, i'd give him WD just from my experience with maxtors, but as with any drive there is always someone with issues with both. Get him the one that has the best warranty as he will be coming to you if something goes wrong.
Check the latest edition of Maximum PC magazine (september). They review a new Maxtor drive. It is a 7200rpm drive with 16mb of cache. Nearly as fast as a raptor.