This post always flies by when I don't have time to write, but I would not get too caught up in "brand" over "form/fit/function" when choosing drives.
The reality of things is that a lot of the components in drives are common (i.e., from vendors; such as media, gimbal arms, flex-on-suspensions, etc.), so a lot of the "brand" boils down to the heads. I have yet to have a HDD fail on me, and actually have a ST3000DM001 as the data drive in the Win7 machine I just replaced (in service from 7/2011-2/2018, but the entire machine is still fully functional). I was always waiting for that particular drive to be my first kill, but I never killed it.
As much will go into
how a drive is used as to what brand it is; although, in general, mobile drives are designed to higher heat and shock specs than desktop drives. Heads can see
intense heat with constant writes (regardless of brand - the spec "used" to be over 250C!), so massive write operations will put any HDD to its most critical test. Operations like copying an entire drive when only 4 data files have changed on it are only going to decrease the useful life of the heads on the target drive (why using something like xcopy to backup data files is not only quicker, but less stress to the drive (heads)).
Quick edit - There is a Wikipedia article on the
ST3000DM001, and one comment in that (line above the Class Action section) stands out... "the ST3000DM001 was the only drive without a rotational vibration sensor that counteracts excessive vibration in heavy-usage cases." This makes sense with my experience as well, since the "how" for me never fell into a "heavy-usage case" with the exception of the monthly C: drive images that I did to it. Also (probably more important point), my drive was build prior to the Thailand flood, and it could easily be that the ones affected were "rushed to market" to exploit the drive shortage after the flood occurred.