BackBlaze blog update - Hard Drive Stats – FAQ

[lingyi]

Blackblaze has updated their Blog with a FAQ about their hard drive January 2015 hard drive report

Below are some excerpts from the page that I found particularly interesting. Bold Italic text is my emphasis.

The full FAQ is here: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-faq/ and I highly recommend reading the full report and comments.


"Q: Your drives are running 24/7/365 – is that detrimental to their longevity?

A: In our datacenter Storage Pods are “up” unless they need to be taken down for maintenance or there is a power outage. This happens infrequently as noted in our Smart Stats post when we talked about “Power Cycles”. This begs the age-old question: is it better for your hard drive to turn off your computer when you’re not using it or keep it running? Our vote is to keep them running."


"Q: You use a variety of storage pods, doesn’t vibration matter?

A: While we do use different storage pods, the hard drives that we use are spread out throughout most of them. Typically our hard drives don’t experience a high level of vibration, but it is more than one might typically find inside a single hard-drive enclosure such as an external hard drive. Of course, some external hard drives are carried around in backpacks, dropped on floors, and such."

"Q: Do your hard drive stats really matter for a consumer trying to make a purchase?

A: That depends. If you view our data center as a “worst-case” scenario for hard drives, then yes, you can surmise that any hard drive that a consumer would buy, would perform at a slightly better rate than our hard drives. You could also conclude that the drives that “survive” in our data center are really good. If you don’t view it as a stress-test, then no, the data is merely an interesting results summary from a company with a lot of spinning hard drives.

Edit - Comment: While I agree this is a stress-test, it has no relevance to how I use my drives and therefore to me is "merely an interesting results summary from a company with a lot of spinning hard drives."

"Q: Why do you hate Seagate?

A: We love Seagate! This is a common misconception about our hard drive stats posts. Both of our hard drive stat posts indicated a slightly elevated failure rate from their compatriots, however, the price of the Seagate drives cannot be beat, and they work great in our environment. This goes back to the price to density to failure-rate ratio that Backblaze likes to use, and in it, Seagate often comes out on top!!"