I have been using recertified, or used enterprise class drives which have a crystal disk info good health report. These have waaaayyy higher MTBFs than consumer grade, as in 10x more, so a drive with 40.000 hr. on it, may have 10x *theoretical *the life left. do remeber that the M in MTBF means mean, it doesn’t mean guaranteed time between failure. Enterprise drives tend to be noisier.

I’ve found a listing for a bunsh of these for 57€. Looking into them, I saw that there is a non mini, sff, that is waaaaay better for a homelab. Still small, but impressively expandable, 4 dimm slots, 4 pcie slots (low profile i7 ), one of them x16, internal space for 2 3.5 drives plus an ODD tray, where you can mount a 2.5 hdd or ssd, a bajillion usb…