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I don't have any patience with or confidence in drives that start to slow down, start making noises, or start showing I/O errors. I try to prevent that by replacing them before they start to show signs of age and, much worse, possible failure. I've gone to too much trouble to maintain my files, not all of which is my media server, although that's a large part of it, without losing it due to carelessness.

For example, a 2TB drive that was my dad's, one he bought in 2010, started showing problems reading files. I disconnected that thing immediately, ordered a new 8TB drive, reconnected the 2TB, and copied everything to the new drive. Two files didn't copy, and I easily replaced them, so there was no loss.

All drives fail eventually, and some sooner than others. I'd be interested in hearing your experience and learning from it. I'd also be interested in your reasons for having or not having a RAID array.