I've long (very, very long) been a storage snob. Originally via the IBM UltraStar drives, and continued with the Intel SSDs. Even with good backups, a drive failure is often a pain in the ass. Slightly less so with RAID.
IBM really locked me in on the Ultrastar back in the mid '90s. Sure, it has proven itself to be a great product. But some of the first ones I bought, one of the drives arrived failed. I called the vendor I bought it from and they said they wouldn't replace it, I'd have to get a refurb from IBM. So I called IBM, when I told them I had just bought it they said I needed to call the place I bought it from because otherwise I'd get a refurb. I explained I had already called them. "Oh, who did you buy it from?" I told them. "Can you hold on a minute?" ... "Hi, I've got [NAME] on the line from [VENDOR] and they'll be happy to send you a replacement."
IBM really locked me in on the Ultrastar back in the mid '90s. Sure, it has proven itself to be a great product. But some of the first ones I bought, one of the drives arrived failed. I called the vendor I bought it from and they said they wouldn't replace it, I'd have to get a refurb from IBM. So I called IBM, when I told them I had just bought it they said I needed to call the place I bought it from because otherwise I'd get a refurb. I explained I had already called them. "Oh, who did you buy it from?" I told them. "Can you hold on a minute?" ... "Hi, I've got [NAME] on the line from [VENDOR] and they'll be happy to send you a replacement."