Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze. > AKA toss a few pods of WD's/etc in there even if they are slightly more expensive/whatever. If you see "low numbers" of one

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze. > AKA toss a few pods of WD's/etc in there even if they are slightly more expensive/whatever. If you see "low numbers" of one particular drive model in the stats, that is usually us trying out that drive model because at some point in the future the price might drop making it worth purchasing it in bulk worth it, or the price is ALREADY worth it but we're being careful in the rollout to make sure that drive model performs in our particular application - nobody else's application, just for us. > make an effort to go beyond just reporting their experiences We are VERY careful to report what we are seeing in our datacenter for our particular application, and no more. This isn't a scientific study, we aren't Consumer Reports, we're just publishing data we would collect whether or not we released it. We have a core business we super happy focusing on, somebody else is WELCOME to sell drive testing and drive predictions and we won't compete with them or get in their way. Heck, we would totally subscribe to that service!