Ich have tons of 18 TB Exos. One was DOA, another died fast and another one has already bad sectors. No problems with my WD drives (18 TB und 14 TB Gold) yet…
I have in total about 50 drives, 16TB and 18TB EXOS for the most part with some 14TB ironwolf drives as well. Around 25 loaded in the case and the rest in external 4-10 bay ICY Boxes. I guess this was a slightly more expensive setup than a lot of people but so far I have had zero hard drive issues. My 6 NVME drives all have over 1PB written at this stage and still healthy (though one motherboard nvme port died in my “test” machine).
I guess I have been somewhat lucky but if a drive does die then I’ll RMA it (if within warranty) and replot. The NVME’s I won’t replace when they die but will simply up the RAM amount and do a ramdrive (though I have 2 spare to use up first). Electricity usage is also fairly low but haven’t measured it recently.
Just my 2 cents from personal experience for anyone interested.
I have more Exos with 18 TB producing SMART Errors. No problems with the WD Gold Drives so far…