Note making of a good 3.5" drive doesn't mean they're a good 2.5" drive maker at the same time. Has oft been times in the past the best 3.5" drive buy is definitely not the best 2.5" drive buy. Also note HGST & Western Digital are the same company now, so the badge is no longer a sign of what you're going to get inside the casing.
And as a case in point, last month a customer called me up at 6pm for a hard drive failure, he'd only just picked up his MacBook with the brand new HGST 1TB at 3pm that afternoon.
As always the advice is "keep backups!" and that does't mean having a drive called "backup" with everything saved on it, but multiple copies, preferably in multiple locations too.