Yev here! It's an interesting question. We use the pods in a larger "Vault" configuration, so the way we use them is a bit different (basically a set of 20 pods

Yev here! It's an interesting question. We use the pods in a larger "Vault" configuration, so the way we use them is a bit different (basically a set of 20 pods are connected -> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage-architecture/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage-architect...). But, if you're buying a single pod, you could configure the software however you want, though you'd likely need the first hard drive to go on to the backplane that gets read first. We use different software so ours expects there to be 60 drives, but there's nothing stopping you from configuring Debian or whatnot to read a specific drive first. We ARE tracking SSD costs but thus far it's not quite at the point where the Cost per GB is in our favor. We'd love to play with them once it gets close, it would neat to build an SSD pod and see how it stacks up!