I've been using ironwolf/exos drives for years without any issues. The 3TB fiasco runs deep and people need to just let it go.

The only time I've had drives from either company fail was when I knocked my drive cage off the desk while it was running; they've all been very reliable otherwise. Seagate drives are usually less expensive, though.

In active service I currently have 5 WD CMR drives, 1 WD SMR drive, 5 Seagate CMR drives, and 2 Seagate SMR drives. I also have 1 WD drive in storage. All WD drives are "Red" (the CMR ones now being called "Red Plus"), the CMR Seagate drives are "IronWolf", and the SMR Seagate drives are "Barracuda". My oldest WD drive is from 2018 and my oldest Seagate drive is from 2020.

Yeah, my experience with Seagate has sucked.

A few years back i got a failed drive replaced under warranty... died like 6 months shy of its 3 year warranty date. They said they'd replace it and sent me a refurbished drive. It died shortly after it was plugged in, before I'd even started copying files to it. I could literally hear something rolling around in the drive. They replaced it again and the new drive failed similarly... plugged in for a while and then windows started reporting it was not accessible. 3rd drive worked, and still works, but I sure as shit don't trust it and haven't bought Seagate since.

Each manufacturer has their bad batches tbh. I've got 12 WD 3TB's that have been running without a single failure for years, but of the six 4TB WD's that I bought later five have died already. I've been replacing those with 8TB ironwolfs, which have so far been behaving well.