Yeah. I have a RAIDz2 on super old version of FreeNAS. 8x4TB.

I’ve been needing to upgrade for about a year now. I’ve been waiting for the prices to go lower…. News about WD forced my hand for 8x18TB. Not $$ I was looking to spend, but fomo that my upgrade could now be much further away pushed me to just do it. :(

Doesn’t losing a vdev cause the entire pool to be lost? I guess to your point with sufficient redundancy for new vdev 1 drive redundancy whether 3 disks or 5 is essentially the same risk. If a vdev is added without redundancy that would increase risk of losing the entire pool.