With regard to WD vs. Seagate, I have over the last 10 or so years been privy to a singular phenomenon between a friend and myself. Now I am a WD man, have been for ages, while my friend swears by Seagate. And we both have good reasons for being the way we are.
Every single Seagate drive I have bought, since 2005, has gone bad within six months of purchase. It's not a batch issue either; the last one was in 2010, and it started showing sector errors within 3 months. Yet I've never lost a WD drive; the only reason they get replaced is because I need a bigger drive and only have so many drive bays on my system. - so I have close to a dozen still-working WD drives in my spares box.
For my friend, the opposite is true. Every time he's bought a WD drive, he's had to replace it within the year. For him, that last one was last year. Yet he's never had to replace a Seagate drive, except, as with myself, when he's needed more storage space.
It's not a "you must have gotten one from a bad batch" issue, because the phenomenon has been manifesting for nearly a decade for both of us, involving drives from multiple sources and vendors, both internal and external, over many years. Maybe it's just an extremely improbable coincidence. Maybe there's some self-perpetuating psychic drive-busting phenomenon at work. Possibly it's even confirmation bias (have I ever mistaken a Seagate for a WD or vice versa?)
All I know is, I'm damn sure that every Seagate I've bought has gone bad while every WD has lasted its term, while for my friend the opposite is true. We both relate our experiences whenever it comes up, as a demonstration of the folly of brand loyalty and living proof of YMMV!