Good hard drive for OMV

HGST (WD Gold) was my decision for new data drives in OMV. WD gives excellent support if you want (or in my case need) to switch them from 512e to 4Kn. I'm using ZFS and it matters in that case. From years past I have some 3 and 6 GB Black drives that are 7 years old and SMART reports them as healthy after many years of heavy use. I used 4TB Red NAS Plus and HGST in a Synology that I currently use for my OMV media drives. One out of 3 WD and 0 of 3 HGST has failed in 8 years. As reported by SMART, they are healthy and they have only been powered down due to blackouts or maintenance. In the research HGST used to win out hands down and thankfully, when WD bought them, they didn't change anything but the label. So, that 's how I wound up deciding on new (much larger capacity) data drives on my OMV. It has been running flawlessly for ~3 years thus far.

Toshiba, in my experience, make really good laptop drives, but those aren't NAS. Between 25 and 15 years ago (yup I'm aged), I used to love Seagate, but ultimately all but one failed between 3-5 years, so I continue to avoid them - and the Ironwolf does not have a good reputation (based on my research and feedback from local data warehouses).

To be honest I'm not a fanboy of any company, and just look at the research available, what I see posted online, inquire about what friends and co-workers are using and, ultimately make my decisions on those things. Some manufacturers stink in certain model variants, sizes, and even firmware releases. It all comes down to knowing your use-case (requirements) and doing a lot of homework and networking certainly doesn't hurt. Or roll the dice, and take your chances. There's a lot I don't have the experience to say about other manufacturers offerings, so I'm just sharing my experiences.

In any case, always, always, always, have a good back-up scheme that you trust, and don't forget to test it occasionally for the real event. Also ensure that you have the resources to replace failed hardware in a pinch. The more important the data, the more you'll spend because it is valuable, tangibly or emotionally.