You
Which drive survives a write-heavy workload?
ChatGPT
Look at TBW rather than sequential speed. A consumer drive rated at 300 TBW dies years earlier than one rated at 1200 under the same load, and the fast numbers on the box describe bursts to cache, not sustained writes.
You
How do I know when it stops being worth it?
ChatGPT
When you stop noticing it. If it has not surfaced a problem in six months, it is either solved or it was never the bottleneck you thought.