Fyi, i -did- dissasemble the drive, remove the magnets from the head assembly, and scratched tf out of both sides of the platters. :)
Also, re the price, with the discount i paid the same for the drive i ordered that i paid for the same size/model last BF, although this one had twice the cache. :) :)
There are scripts to do this type thing on Unraid, possibly adaptable to other platforms/scenarios. Search for “unraid userscript move watched to array”.
There are even ones that will move an entire season or show over to your “fast” drive whenever you start watching a show.
I don’t have anything so complex in use currently; i just have it set to keep new stuff on the fast drives for 60 days, then shuffle it off to hdds.
As far as why ssd over hdd? Prob more of a power issue than a speed issue. Depending on how your storage is setup, it can save a bit if juice not having to spin up an array of hdds.
WD has a recycling deal where you can get 15% off your total purchase, once per quarter, by sending in any drive, working or not, to their recycling partner. I just did this with an old Maxtor 60gb 3.5” PATA drive. The shipping is free and it gets processed really quickly (e.g. it was actually delivered today and i already received -and-used- the discount code.
Note that theyre pretty clear/strict about no stacking of codes/discounts.
Airsonic (fork of Subsonic) has worked well for me for a few years. Used Subsonic for many years prior. I mainly use play:Sub on IOS for playback, local/offline caching, etc.