> Since you have many years of data, do you explicitly factor the observed the failure rate patterns of particular brands into cost models when buying drives?

> Since you have many years of data, do you explicitly factor the observed the failure rate patterns of particular brands into cost models when buying drives? Sometimes. We do take it in to account but if a hard drive that costs less but fails more comes around and the failure rate in our environment is within some "tolerance" we'll get that drive, even if we might see some more failure. So we do use the data to inform our purchasing department of the "future costs" of drives, but a good deal's a good deal :)