old_knurd

It's way more likely to ruin the files by accidental deletion, destructive commands, software errors, massive hardware failure like your power supply failing and destroying all your drives at the same time or your house burning down.

Yes. This is important and shouldn't be overlooked.

I am confused as to what Western Digital's long-term goals are.

Their long term goal is to stay in business to make money for their C-suite, their board of directors, and their stockholders.

E.g. 47 years ago, long before consumer HDDs, long before SSDs, Western Digital had a product that "revolutionized" storage. It was a chip that let you read and write "floppy disks".

A floppy disk was an 8" diameter flexible, removable, rotating magnetic storage media that stored about 240 Kilobytes of data.

I don't think WD will still be around 47 years from now, but you never know.