There are two manufacturers left (plus Toshiba, I guess, they seem to have had a resurgence) and they’ve both made more than their fair share of dodgy HDDs. Treat HDDs as a commodity and never trust them.
Definitely don’t waste your energy trying to determine which manufacturer is better.
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Never buy SMR.
I always buy new NAS drives. Whichever is cheapest when I need one.
And not to contradict @stux, I happen to buy used Helium drives from a reseller that I have had good experiences with. Goharddrive.com will warranty their drives for up to five years.
I have had to return drives and the process was easier than with a OEM which will warranty a new drive only up to 3 years, depending on what drive tier you went for. Plus, it’s really difficult / expensive to get genuine NOS Helium HGST He10 drives now.
I just bought a batch at -$80 / drive, qualified all of them, and have them sitting ready to start replacing the 45+khour drive in the NAS. They all still seem to be very happy though. No issues with SMART, etc.
Pretty much what i read online when i first started looking for drives. But that brought about caution on WD drives, as they quietly changed some CMR drives to SMR, so you had to look at the fine print to determine what to are getting (if it even said). That included the red drives as well.
Might look into that if i ever need drives in the future.