Again, cherry picking by only using mid sized HDDs against low capacity SSDs.
12tb is mid size now? shame that this hobby got expensive so quick with larger drives costing way more than the usual midpoint
The trick is to get the lightly used 12TB drives from the people who just upgraded to 20TB drives.
But even if you buy new it’s not really expensive per se, the issue is more when expenses happen all at once. If you expect that $350 18TB drive in the post to last about 5 years, that’s $350/5/12 = $6/month, which really isn’t that bad (rough estimate assuming the value will drop to 0, and ignoring opportunity cost; also energy is free)
The trick is to get the lightly used 12TB drives from the people who just upgraded to 20TB drives.
Good luck finding those in Europe. Second hand stuff is being sold here at almost new prices (or above new!). Been so many times that it was not worth buying second hand because the price difference was barely 5 a 10% vs New + 2 year warranty + 2week return.