Re: hardware recommendation

Chris Hill wrote:
> For spinning metal, I'll second the mention of WD Red. They are claimed
> to be "NAS grade." I've been using them for years with no issues.

Caution that since 2019 WDC was caught shipping SMR in WD Red series
drives.  They were criticized strongly by Backblaze.  WDC responded.

    https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/

Summary: WD Red used to mean RAID suitable drives.  But, oops, sorry
we slipped in some cheaper drives into that mix.  That was marketing
not engineering.  Our bad.  We are sorry.  We are coming clean now.
Here are the product line details.  You can know which drive you are
buying now using the tables we provide here.  (Obviously I am
interpreting and paraphrasing.  See the references for the actual
details.)

SMR is a problem for RAID systems.  The WD Red SMR drives are not
suitable for purpse when used in an active RAID.  They are designed
for systems with a lot of idle time so that they can backfill to SMR.
If a system is active and does not provide that idle time then there
can be problems.

    https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Timeout_Mismatch

If buying WDC one should be certain they are getting the drive type
that they want to be getting.  Buyer beware.

Bob