4 ms·

> neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered It looks like such a bug isn't necessarily SSD specific if it completely bricks the drive. And while 32.768 ho

> neither the SSD nor the data can be recovered It looks like such a bug isn't necessarily SSD specific if it completely bricks the drive. And while 32.768 hours may seem like a long time for a drive, it's under 4 years of continuous operation. Not unheard of if used in a NAS.

junglecat 7y ago
I'm guessing it's not a particularly productive way to store timestamps.
zozbot234 7y ago
> It looks like such a bug isn't necessarily SSD specific if it completely bricks the drive. Maybe. OTOH, plenty of people have been running spinning rust drives with way more than 4 years of power-on operation - if this bricking bug was common there, I'm pretty sure we would've noticed. SSD's are a newer tech and it's more common to replace them anyway as specs improve.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  I would think the typical HPE customer (e.g. us) buys servers and uses them for between 3-5 years, before buying new servers. The old (out of warranty) servers might be discarded, or might be reused as test hardware.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    Non tech Fortune 500 IT shops regularly see their refresh budget cut in favor of new projects. Seeing some amount of 5,7,10+ year old hardware still in service isn't unusual.
- close04 7y ago
  Oh I'm not implying it's a common bug. I was just saying that there's nothing in the description that makes it look SSD exclusive. To completely brick the drive sounds more like a controller failure. So such a bug could just as easily kill an HDD controller. SSDs have insanely complex firmware when compared to HDDs so letting this kind of bug slip through is an easier mistake to make in their case.
- makomk 7y ago
  There was actually a similar drive-bricking bug in the SMART implementation of some of Seagate's hard drives about a decade ago. Not quite as deterministic as this one, but essentially uptime-dependant. After denying it for a while, they finally fessed up once a member of the public figured out that affected drives could be unbricked by connecting over the serial debug interface and wiping the SMART log. They ended up offering firmware updates and free unbricking of affected drives at their cost including shipping to their facility. (I don't think the unbricking process was terribly easy either - the publicly-known version required booting the drive with the heads disconnected from the controller to stop it from reading the data, or it'd get stuck in an infinite loop and not respond on serial.)
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    I have one of these drives. Apparently a model that the known procedure doesn't work on. I'll never buy a shitty Seagate product again.
lonelappde 7y ago
It's the drive firmware. Drive firmware bricks the disk because the disk is soldered into the drive. It doesn't need to be continuous. Total operation is the metric.
- close04 7y ago
  I read OP's comment as "if this bug happened to a non-enterprise (regular) user and their drive". A regular user has a lower chance of hitting 4 years of non-continuous operation before discarding the drive due to obsolescence. On a 50% duty cycle (12h/day every day) it would take 6.5 years. That's close to how long many people would hang on to their drives. But even a regular user might have a NAS and that accelerates the process.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Outside of the deep-pocket money-doesn't-matter sized enterprises, 4 years can be less than half the expected lifetime for IT kit.

junglecat 7y ago

I'm guessing it's not a particularly productive way to store timestamps.

zozbot234 7y ago

> It looks like such a bug isn't necessarily SSD specific if it completely bricks the drive. Maybe. OTOH, plenty of people have been running spinning rust drives with way more than 4 years of power-on operation - if this bricking bug was common there, I'm pretty sure we would've noticed. SSD's are a newer tech and it's more common to replace them anyway as specs improve.

Symbiote 7y ago
I would think the typical HPE customer (e.g. us) buys servers and uses them for between 3-5 years, before buying new servers. The old (out of warranty) servers might be discarded, or might be reused as test hardware.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Non tech Fortune 500 IT shops regularly see their refresh budget cut in favor of new projects. Seeing some amount of 5,7,10+ year old hardware still in service isn't unusual.
close04 7y ago
Oh I'm not implying it's a common bug. I was just saying that there's nothing in the description that makes it look SSD exclusive. To completely brick the drive sounds more like a controller failure. So such a bug could just as easily kill an HDD controller. SSDs have insanely complex firmware when compared to HDDs so letting this kind of bug slip through is an easier mistake to make in their case.
makomk 7y ago
There was actually a similar drive-bricking bug in the SMART implementation of some of Seagate's hard drives about a decade ago. Not quite as deterministic as this one, but essentially uptime-dependant. After denying it for a while, they finally fessed up once a member of the public figured out that affected drives could be unbricked by connecting over the serial debug interface and wiping the SMART log. They ended up offering firmware updates and free unbricking of affected drives at their cost including shipping to their facility. (I don't think the unbricking process was terribly easy either - the publicly-known version required booting the drive with the heads disconnected from the controller to stop it from reading the data, or it'd get stuck in an infinite loop and not respond on serial.)
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  I have one of these drives. Apparently a model that the known procedure doesn't work on. I'll never buy a shitty Seagate product again.

lonelappde 7y ago

It's the drive firmware. Drive firmware bricks the disk because the disk is soldered into the drive. It doesn't need to be continuous. Total operation is the metric.

close04 7y ago
I read OP's comment as "if this bug happened to a non-enterprise (regular) user and their drive". A regular user has a lower chance of hitting 4 years of non-continuous operation before discarding the drive due to obsolescence. On a 50% duty cycle (12h/day every day) it would take 6.5 years. That's close to how long many people would hang on to their drives. But even a regular user might have a NAS and that accelerates the process.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

Outside of the deep-pocket money-doesn't-matter sized enterprises, 4 years can be less than half the expected lifetime for IT kit.