Re: "it is a really dumb idea to take the cheapest desktop hard drives you can find"
It's in their interests to sell you "server grade" drives at twice the price. So of course they would say that.
What they will never tell you is that it is very much in your interest to buy half your drives from one of their competitors. This is true even if it's provable that the competitor's drive is half as reliable
That's because a drive from a different manufacturer is far less likely to contain one of the same batch of defective components. Two drives with near-identical serial numbers will likely contain the same faulty components and therefore are likely to fail at or near the same time. Mirroring won't save you if this happens.
Give me a manufacturer X desktop drive and a manufacturer Y desktop drive any day, over any two identical Server grade drives with near-consecutive serial numbers.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
