Miphee wrote on 2021-06-13, 10:00:
That's a risk I have to take, I won't buy new drives that are going to sit on a shelf until they're needed. I know that would be ideal but not financially.
This way I can make 2 backups and it's still cheaper than a single new drive.
I would get some of both, especially if you are going to be using them in an online storage scenario. When they start failing, as all drives eventually do, you may end up needing more spares than you expect in a short period of time . My experience for that, is that, outliers excluded, given multiple drives of a same make/model with the same usage pattern and age, when one fails, others will usually not be far behind it .
Additionally, considering the fact that these drives are more likely to fail, having more than two copies of the data at all times would probably be prudent or, at the very least, I would consider running an online RAID1 or similar setup and having and offline non-RAID cold backup that gets updated on a schedule . I do that even with new drives .
Additionally, monitoring SMART variable variations closely, can give a hint as to potential upcoming failures . Of course, sudden unexpected failures do happen, but at least some issue can be predicted, to an extent .
That said, you may well have a setup that already takes this (and more) into account, but I thought it worth a mention, just in case .
On a side note, I currently have 2 Seagate ST4000DM000 units in a RAID1 setup that are going on 6 years or so of continuous online use and am wondering if I should replace them proactively at some point or just wait for a failure to replace both (I do have spares ready and an offline backup).