I never did own a Plextor drive. Like most, I was influenced by pricing.
In my experience optical drives seem to be the one component prone to failure. I've had three dead Lite-ons, one broken Pioneer DVDRW and a failed Asus CDRW in the last six years.
In the optical drive dept Philips & Samsung have never failed for me, have a couple of Samsungs five years old and a Philips DVDRW about 15 months old.
My first from Plextor was a 12/10/32A which still is in service in the secondary system, its been six years now. I used Plextors exclusively in the office. My latest one is the Plextor DL External DVD Drive Model 755 which I got just two months ago. Plextor has never failed me.