Honestly, I have no idea what brand is better than the other as these days, it doesn't even seem be of a difference anymore
Generally though, if you're looking for real good transfer speeds on a hard drive, look for a higher capacity model. Lots of the 3 terabyte drives have transfer speeds around 130-150MBs/sec I believe. Or a drive that has a good amount of data density, meaning if the drive capacity is 2 gigs and only has one platter, that's a pretty good density of data, which results in faster read speeds.
I'd say for reliability, performance, and/or low noise, I would probably consider a Western Digital Red drive. It seems these days, there might be things with hard drives and their usage that differ than before. For example, I had a Seagate Barracuda drive that I bought two or so years that died on me a month ago where I used it literally 24/7 for probably 26 months total with a month total of downtime here and there. Desktop hard drives, like that hard drive, are more built for a use in a 40 hour work week for that scenario. In my case, I used that drive so much it pretty much aged about 4 years in a desktop usage scenario. I'm figuring that is the best explanation here as the drive is literally dead, it's not file system corruption, it is more like it can't spin for more than 12 seconds before turning off. It wasn't under duress or heat or dust or electrical issues, it was just fine and cool. Maybe it could be because the some newer technologies and/or larger capacities could problems in the long run. I've been reading that lower capacity hard drives seem to last longer than their larger capacity counterparts because of less strain on the spindle due to less hard drive platters.
I'm personally looking at the Red drives as they're approved and tested for RAID/NAS scenarios where they are used 24/7. Or something of enterprise quality.
Looking back in my time with hard drives the past decade, there seems to be issues with newer drives after around 2007 or 2008 where they seem to have started to die more than usual. I had a 120 gig Seagate drive back in the year 2002 that lasted me a good nine years before FINALLY starting to screw up, and that drive was used pretty hard too. I also had a Western Digital Raptor drive that lasted eight or so years before passing away and used as much as the Seagate drive. Wow, that was loud hard drive....