I'm gonna be honest here myself, people give HGST drives too much shit for what they are. Yes, they are loud, questionable on their R/W, have no practical warranty and not as "reliable" as new drives.

Yet... They're still just as good, great even. I popped a USED Ultrastar in my comp 2 years ago (with like ~1000 hours of use already), and while mine might not be in constant operation like other people's comparatively speaking, it still does the trick even today. Still shows green in CDI, no files missing or anything.

In my opinion, as long as SMART data is monitored, what's exactly the big harm in investing in these, if at least to retain a low budget setup?