Not OP, but this comes up regularly.

A lot of people have very strong opinions of brands based on a woefully inadequate sample size. Typically this comes from a higher than expected failure rate, possibly even much higher than expected. It could've been a bad model, a bad batch at manufacturing, improper handling from the retailer, or even an improper running environment. But even the greediest data hoarders only have a few dozen drives, often in just a couple of environments and use-cases.

Very few of these results are actually meaningful trends. For every person that swears by WD and will never touch a Seagate, there's someone else that swears by Seagate and will never touch another WD. HGST and Toshiba seem to have a very slight edge on reliability, but it's very small. And there are still people that refuse to touch them because of the "Death Star" drives many years ago.

It's also very difficult to predict which models will have high failure rates. By the time it becomes clear one is a lemon, they're already EoL.

I avoid buying WD new because of their (IMHO completely illegal) stance on warranty, but I'm comfortable buying their stuff used.

Don't worry too much about brand. Instead go for specs and needs. Follow a good backup strategy and you'll be fine