Comment on What's the difference between a $50 HDD and a $200 HDD?
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
For a media server speed matters little (5400rpm is plenty), if you’ve only got one drive, warranty is king. Thing is you shouldn’t only have one drive, drives will fail, and warranty doesn’t get your data back, so you plan for it. At the very least, you should look at getting an offline backup as soon as possible, now you don’t care if your drive fails and can get the cheapest ones. Ideally, you also set up a RAID5 (or Unraid, or mergerfs+SnapRAID) on your server, now you just get a replacement drive and rebuild. Remember RAID is not a backup, it doesn’t protect against accidental deletions for example, so you still want the offline backup.
Also, don’t sleep on manufacturer recertified drives, as long as you have a backup they’re significantly more cost-effective.