Goal:

• 16TB mirrored on 2 drives (raid 1)
• Hardware raid?
• Immich, Jellyfin and Nextcloud. (All docker)
• N100, 8+ GB RAM
• 500gb boot drive ssd
• 4 HDD bays, start with using 2

Questions:

• Which os?
  • My though was to use hardware raid, and just set that up for the 2 hdds, then boot off an ssd with Debian (very familiar, and use it for current server which has 30+ docker containers. Basically I like and am good at docker so would like to stick to Debian+docker. But if hardware raid isn’t the best option for HDDs now a days, I’ll learn the better thing)
• Which drives? Renewed or refurb are half the cost, so should I buy extra used ones, and just be ready to swap when the fail?
• Which motherboard?
• Which case?