Re: Anyone still buying WD?
Yes.
WD Red (CMR editions like Plus and Pro) are amazing. I have more than 10 in my house - 4 in an active NAS, 4 in a backup NAS (mostly the older 3Tb ones rolled down from the active NAS) and randoms that are too small for my usage (e.g. 1Tb) but I keep for if I ever need a hard drive.
WD Gold just keep going - I have a box of them that are 10+ years old still spinning after years of server storage cluster usage.
WD Black NVMe's are incredible (I have two in my only home device - a gaming laptop - and just upgraded one of them and sold the previous still with 99% life after 4 years of very heavy usage - almost 24/7, high-end gaming, VR, video-editing, programming, etc. etc. etc.).
I will always go to WD first, but I will research what I'm buying (e.g. I don't want WD Red SMR devices).
My Steam Deck is waiting for an upgrade (I bought the 64Gb model) and I've waited for the 2230-sized WD Black drives to come down in price. Maybe for Christmas.
Every manufacturer on the planet has problem models (Seagate have a particularly bad reputation with me, for example, after EVERY ONE of their drives across an entire site failed catastrophically and without SMART warning within 4 years, including high-end server drives).
But WD... I have managed thousands of WD Blues way past their expected lifetime and they were absolutely fine. Hundreds of WD Reds. Dozens of Golds. Dozens of Purples. And a handful of Blacks and NVMe's.
And the numbers (which I have run) spoke for themselves. WD would always be my first choice.