I feel your pain.  I was having serious issues with my Storm and feel I have seen it all.  I had white screens, random (and frequent) reboots, data connection freezes.  I even had an accelerometer break on me so the screen was frozen in an upside down portrait position.  Verizon "graciously" acknowledged that I was having hardware issues with the phone and has replaced my Storm 3 times in the past 8 months with no charge.  I was also about fed up but can say the last one I got has worked great (knock on wood).

How are you trying to do your updates?  Are you trying to do a wireless update from the phone?  Or are you using the Desktop Manager software to do the update?  I was told by a Verizon tech to only use the Desktop Manager to do the updates.  He said the phone doesn't have enough internal memory to support an OTA update if you have other apps installed (or a significant amount of contacts, emails, or other data).  The only way I have ever been able to do an OTA update was to wipe the handheld of all data and 3rd party apps.  I haven't had problems doing updates via Desktop Manager.

You also have to be wary of which 3rd party apps you install.  Unless they fixed it recently, Google Voice app has a serious memory leak that caused my battery to drain in 3 - 4 hours.  Once uninstalled I can go 36 hours before needing a recharge.  There are a few others I have installed at one time or another including Weatherbug that have caused issues, but not nearly as severe.  You can also try checking settings on any apps that sync data behind the scenes and adjust the frequency of the updates so they update less frequently.  I have done that with a few apps and it seemed to help.