Wow!!!
It's nice to be pleasantly surprised sometimes, and I'm glad you found some useful info in this thread.
At first when I started using this forum a few days ago I thought it was full of spammers trying to increase their post count to qualify for signature campaigns.
Your impression is actually correct; this forum is full of shitposters who write nonsense for bounties/campaigns, but they don't usually migrate over to the hardware wallet section of the forum (because I assume most of them have zero to say about them). Certain sections are infested with spam like you wouldn't believe, but the technical sections are refreshingly light on the nonsense.
How reliable are HWs in terms of holding funds for long term (maybe 5-6 years into the future)? Like HDDs/thumb drives failing to start or get corrupted, do HWs have any similar issues???
HW's are supposed to be for long-term storage, and I haven't heard any horror stories yet about unrecoverable coins due to a device malfunctioning. If you have the recovery seed phrase, you're good.
Just FYI, I own a Ledger Nano S and Nano X, and they're both excellent products.
I tried the Keepkey, but I would never recommend it to anyone. And the only other brand I ever hear anything positive about is Trezor. Trezor and Ledger have been around for a relatively long time and have established good reputations, which is extremely important IMO. Good luck with your hunt for a hardware wallet.