The last drive I attached (via USB i/f) to my stb died after a few months and I learned that not all drives cope very well with 24/7 operation! I gather that "surveillance" drives are the best in this respect and also that SMR recording might be a desirable feature - along with low-current operation generally. Unfortunately there is not much available in the 2.5 inch form factor needed for my VU+Duo4K-SE internal carriage.

The ST5000LM000 Seagate BarraCuda drive family seems to comply although the spec does not give MTBF figures nor is it explicitly surveillance rated. So my question is should I go for this drive or get a smaller drive like the WD AV-25 drives which are smaller and are made for the purpose. It would seem pointless to go for a larger drive if it will be likely to fail in a year or so!

Since my original drive failed I have been using a Synology NAS drive, but this has proved unreliable giving the occasional Drive R/O Disk Full messages from which the system (Vix?) recovers poorly leaving only 1 minute recorded but continuing to indicate recording unless I explicitly delete the timer. I also have lots of problems trying to record or use Timeshift. As I am using WiFi for the NAS I suspect the timeouts are just too short, so it's back to HDDs. Moreover the NAS seems to be accessed by the VU+ unit almost 24/7 even on standby... Does this apply to hdds I wonder? Wasteful if so...

Sorry about the lengthy question, but having spent hours searching the net and this Forum finding very little regarding hdd choices and related problems, I thought I would provide a bigger picture which might spark some useful responses. TIA...