Depends on the root setting. And depends on your goal. What is the purpose of the proxy? I doubt that it is easy to bypass, but you still could run a Proxy or VPN as user, this would not bypass the proxy but any filtering/blocking would not be possible. Etc
This is called anecdotal evidence and does not serve any purpose.
Get the best price/performance/capacity/warrenty drive from any of the 3 major brands and you are good.
Look up the backblaze drive analysis to get an idea.