this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2026
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How bad of an idea is it to use computing HDDs in a DIY NAS? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 1 day ago by theorangeninja@sopuli.xyz to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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The title says basically everything but let me elaborate.

Given the recent news about the sold out of harddrives for the current year and possibly also the next years (tomshardware article) I try to buy the HDDs I want to use for the next few years earlier than expected.

I am on a really tight budget so I really don't want to overspend. I have an old tower PC laying around which I would like to turn into a DIY NAS probably with TrueNAS Scale.

I don't expect high loads, it will only be 1-2 users with medium writing and reading.

In this article from howtogeek the author talks about the differences and I get it, but a lot of the people commenting seem to be in a similar position as I am. Not really a lot of read-write load, only a few users, and many argue computing HDDs are fine for this use case.

Possibilites I came up with until now:

  1. Buy two pricey Seagate Ironwolf or WD Red HDDs and put them in RAID1
  2. Buy three cheaper Seagate Barracuda or WD Blue and put two in RAID1 and keep one as a backup if (or should I say when?) one of the used drives fails.

I am thankful for every comment or experience you might have with this topic!

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[–] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'd go for the second option. Just make sure they are not from the same production run with similar history (operating hours) as it would increase the chance of both failing at the same time.

You can also check eBay for enterprise HDDs with 90+ remaining SMART values. They are far cheaper than new and usually fine.

[–] theorangeninja@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What do you mean by production run? How could I check that before having them in my hands? And operating hours only applies for used drives no?

I will do some more research on ebay but it is hard to find offers with SMART values and operating hours. The downside of enterprise harddrives is mostly that they are louder right?

[–] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

The downside is they are more expensive, the louder part is for big servers I think, but not HDDs

And yes, I was talking about used ones, sometimes they've got the SMART values listed, sometimes I ask

[–] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 1 points 23 hours ago

And with production run I mean produced at the same charge or the like. As those have a higher chance of failure. If you buy two new from the same shop, odds are that they came in the same shipment etc.