I bought the drives used on Ebay, and the prices weren't that different for the 8TB vs 16TB when I bought them. Like on the order of ~$15 higher, so I figured I'd just eat that cost and future proof it even more.

Fair enough, though you could’ve bought half as many if you didn’t mind the hit to the speed no?

I am omitting some context. The original incarnation of this had 24 2TB drives and I wanted to upgrade that. I already had the three enclosures, and I incrementally upgraded the disks over the course of a year.

Haha it’s all good I didn’t mean to interrogate you, enjoy your overkill storage, life is short