I’ve had SSDs go bad. So if it’s something you really care about I’d approach it the same as hard disks.

I would second this. A normal tower with a high quality psu and 5 drives is what I use for cheap storage. Obviously more failure prone than true enterprise hardware but a hell of a lot cheaper.

I’ll have to try out some ereader apps. I had this thought a few weeks ago but didn’t find any free apps in the little bit of looking I did. I’ll take a look at those you suggested.