Well, I can always see these puppies for auction each day.

But is there a good reason why they're Samsung-branded?

Isn't it so that these drives have been "100% Seagate inside" ones for quite some time now?
I mean, since ST had bought out Samsung's storage division long ago, all of Samsung's (doubtlessly) skilled specialists would now get their salary from Seagate Corp.
Or, asking the other way 'round, when buying a genuine Seagate drive instead of a Samsung-branded 'ST1000LMxx' one, is there a difference in product quality in comparison to the "genuine" ones? (whatever "genuine" is to be defined here, that is, heh)

Well, I think there must be a reason why they're still juggling with 2 (or even more) brands, whilst they could easily sell them to the end-user (or firm) under one and the same brand only.

The Samsung labelled drives are still Samsung. I guess they're still producing and selling them for marketing reasons. They're having two pieces of the market pie.

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In any M&A it is a common strategy to play off the customers perception of one brand is better than the other.

Example:
On leaving school, I worked at an abalone canning factory for a short while. they had 2 products: young abalone and the older larger ones. there was one canning process, but I think 4 or 5 different labels. the labels had different looks, different wording and were sold at different prices. Interesting that the ones 2nd to top in pricing was the best seller. NO advertising was done to try and fool the customers into thinking that any one was better than the other.. but it seems human emotions play more of a part than technical knowledge about a product(as the same canning and factory info was the same on all cans) the more products you have, the more slices of each pie you get. If they labelled everything Seagate, then it is now a choice between Seagate and WD for example . I bet single digits of the population even know Seagate and Samsungs business status.

Thanks, that was about the gist of my question: how independent is Samsung still after it was bought out by ST?
Because whenever B gets bought out by A, it is usually the case that the employees get the same "badge"", so that (at least internally) they will merge into one and the same company sooner or later, and perhaps even start "thinking Seagate" from some point.

Nice example
There is also a portion of the population who would choose to buy a Samsung hard drive because they're happy with their Samsung smartphone/TV/whatever.
Back in the old days, I had a friend who chose to buy a Mitsubishi floppy disk drive, because he was very happy with his Lancer...

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I'm afraid I can't answer that. The fact that Seagate-branded Samsung drives are 100% Samsung drives, means that there is possibly some sort of independence. But I'm just guessing here.

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Too funny. So if I was a musician, I would prefer Yamaha [e-]pianos/keyboards to other brands because I'm a happy Yamaha motorcyclist. Haha. Great logic.