Sample size of 1, but my 3.5" 528 MB Fujitsu drive looks to be very well built and has no operational issues or obvious signs of deterioration. It DOES have a Cirrus Logic chipset, funny enough.
I've often read that various drive makers have periods where they've more focused on quality, eras where they've been more driven to cut costs and produced cheap-looking drives, and times where a line is notoriously unreliable to the point of public grumbling and even scandal. But aside from Kalok, JTS, and probably some obscure drive makers of the 1980s, I think most companies did sell many reasonably engineered and reliable drives and shouldn't be wholly avoided because of their Deathstar-style fiascos.