I only got that one drive (and that one usb drive) and the other drive is online. I would have to shut down my system, in order to test it. I can only do that in a few days.

When plugging into the system - Does the dmesg output display anything else useful, any warnings or anything?

Nope, just what I posted, IIRC.

I am now trying the freezer trick and tomorrow I will have an update :) Btw, such a nice read xD I really enjoyed it.

I hope I will notice in reasonable time and go get a new one for the next backup :)

I don’t know if the use-case you describes fit into my problem. I only have one server and its a physical server. I’m also not really able to extend the number of servers, as I don’t really have the budget.

You can also use container within NixOS and AFAICT even declare the containers which should be running. Also NixOS is sad to be stable, or am I missing something?