Prana Ferox
Addicted to Fun and Learning
As a rule, don't make yourself an administrator of technology you depend on but don't understand.
That being said, RAID 1 (i.e. drive mirroring) is fine for home use. Drives are cheap and RAID1 is cheap insurance. If you want backup for the other errors / malice you can set up snapshots but that's getting more advanced. Generally the issue there (especially with stuff like ransomware) is exposing the box to the open internet too much without knowing what that means and what must be done to protect it.
Don't use SMR drives at home, SMR should have never been sold for non-commercial use, it's way too quirky for the layperson. You can see here some of the issue with SMR and some models to avoid, but roughly it seems like if you want to use WD Red, stick to Red Plus / Red Pro, not the base line. I run 6 HGST drives in RAIDZ2 and the array has made it through two drive failures and two online upgrades, but HGST is no more.
That being said, RAID 1 (i.e. drive mirroring) is fine for home use. Drives are cheap and RAID1 is cheap insurance. If you want backup for the other errors / malice you can set up snapshots but that's getting more advanced. Generally the issue there (especially with stuff like ransomware) is exposing the box to the open internet too much without knowing what that means and what must be done to protect it.
Don't use SMR drives at home, SMR should have never been sold for non-commercial use, it's way too quirky for the layperson. You can see here some of the issue with SMR and some models to avoid, but roughly it seems like if you want to use WD Red, stick to Red Plus / Red Pro, not the base line. I run 6 HGST drives in RAIDZ2 and the array has made it through two drive failures and two online upgrades, but HGST is no more.