Do a full writing check from beginning to end beforehand.

But I don’t like my 8TB WD80EFAX ones. They run quite hot @8.8W. and IMO way more noisy than the other models I have of WD Red plus drives.

If the full check comes back clean, I would only use them for offline and external copies of data as they probably have a lot of running hours in real life. I hope you didn’t pay too much.

Most WD reds are CMR are perfectly fine. Look op the individual partnumber to be absolutely sure, as there are some that are indeed SMR.

I used a shitload of WD 4TBs. The WD40EFRX since 2016 in 24/7 usage. They were my go to’s before the 12TB (WD120EFBX) and 14TB (WD140EFGX)

@4.5W, 28dB and CMR, they are cool, quite, fast and durable little disks. They run what seem to be forever.

But do your due diligence beforehand as there is a wide spread in specs even within the same series within WD.

20TB of movies, most 1080p x265, about 300 of the ones I deem real “cinema movies” or 4K HDR

30GB of Series, most 1080p x265. The very best series also 4K

10TB of personal documents and pictures

5TB of software and games

1TB of porn

5TB of copies, copies of copies, to sort, backups and stuff 🤣

I do not want to be the bringer of bad news… but nope, not a chance you in the world you’ll fix a hard drive with a platter or head problem. Maybe the PCB, but that usually involves a donor board and soldering some chips back and forth. So… why destroy another drive?

https://youtu.be/u3lPghtUucs

It’s a video of how they actually recover drives. And even at that level it is only a temporary fix.

Nothing beats those old Sharkoon cases with the 9x 5.25" bays in front imo. 90€ or so back in those days. Add some hotswaps to it. Maybe look online for some old builds that use it?

Around 4TB

I take a lot of pictures and tend to keep all the RAW files that are not absolute garbage or test shots. @40-50MB per piece, It goes pretty quick.

Onedrive for my documents but that is only up to 1 TB, and more for convenience as i have them available everywhere on all devices.

Pictures in the locker at work. = 8TB drive

HDDs in my shed for Movies and Series

Once my shed is rebuild (bricks and mortar), even the Pictures will go there.

The point of offsite is: How far do you want to go? If mayor wildfires, floodings, hurricanes and tornadoes aren’t a thing. Or if you build houses that are not made of toothpicks where you live. 25m away, in a separate building is more than sufficient imo.

md5checker 3.3

Easy, transparante, does what you expect.

I use Md5checker for my mediafiles and backups. One file per major folder (2-20TB range)

the Silverstone ones heave a pretty good build quality. Yhe other ones are a hit or a miss.

E.g. FS303-12G