Hmm, so what about these modern high density hard drives which store track parameters for their servos in on-board flash (aka OptiNAND)? Do we get "spinning rust" which might loose the information where exactly it stored the data?

https://blog.westerndigital.com/optinand-explained/

I wonder too. I don't trust SSDs/ flash for my archives, hence I'm stuck on max. 18TB drives atm.

shouldn't really be a problem, since the capacity required for this use is so low.

the real issue here is QLC in which the flash cell's margins are being squeezed enthusiastically...