I’ve been buying seagate ironwolf only drives for my NAS but I’ve been wondering if it’s really worth it given that it’s a small server sitting in a corner and these drives are getting more and more expensive. What are your thoughts? Do you only go with NAS drives or anything really does the trick assuming I have a good backup strategy?
Avoid SMR drives. Limit the use of refurbished drives, no more than 1 less of your fault tolerance, but try to keep it to just 1. You can guess the life remaining based on the hours reported from SMART.