Do they have some sort of speed degradation forced by the firmware? I read on Reddit that some of they may have a firmware that slows them down so they will never be as fast as an internal HDD. Did you notice something similar?

I see some WD Elements external HDDs and they seem to be cheaper than internal HDDs. I don’t know if they’re worth it, though. For example, a 5TB one is about $130.

Authentik supports more authentication types and I think it’s more stable so you can use it in larger production servers. VoidAuth seems to be a lightweight alternative that only provides OIDC.