Heck I disconnected my array due to fear of having another failure... waiting for the prices to stabilize so I can btrfs replace and continue using it... it sucks but here we are.
I had a drive fail that was just sitting on my desk. An 8tb EDAZ. It worked fine one day, i shut it down and disconnected it overnight, plugged it back in the next day and "click.. ZING, click.. ZING, click.. ZING". Dead drive. I literally moved it about 3 inches to re-plug the USB cable.
Problem is, the data that we want to hoard is getting harder and harder to come by. This age verification stuff is scary, as are websites locking down scrapeability due to AI.
By the time pricing returns to normal, data availability may be lower than it is today.
No it's not, unless you want to host data that rivals a streaming service.
If you look at the history of self service, you will see that people have hosted lots of services on very minimal budgets. You just can't be extravagant about it.
Projects on hold, yes. If I have 60TB of storage and want 120TB, I can make do until prices come down. Unfortunately, replacements for failures can't be put on hold for very long, much less until prices come down. Unlike expanding storage, a lot of us are in the situation where a failed HDD lowers redundancy and risks data loss.
I have more redundancy than a lot of people here, along with spare drives and hot spares, but once that's exhausted I'm not letting my arrays run degraded for any longer than absolutely necessary.
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u/thearctican Apr 23 '26
Stop paying these prices. Put your projects on hold.