Hitachi is a consistent top scorer in HD reliability rankings. Seagate is a relatively poor performer, and Western Digital is in the middle. There are other makers of HDs of course but I can't recall where they fall in the rankings and I can't be arsed to look it up.
To keep things in perspective the differences between top and bottom is only a few percent so it's not like all Seagate drives are ticking time bombs. There are millions of that brand out there working just fine; I have several that have served me well for years.
But if I was putting a server farm together and looking to acquire 100s of drives I would prefer to get Hitachi.
There're no other HDD makers anymore. It's Seagate - Western Digital (+ Hitachi aka HGST but they still run an own factory) - Toshiba (who afaik was licensed the technology by WD to avoid government intervention due to monopoly concerns)
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