3 ms·

It is always amazing to me how cheap, small and reliable storage has become.

by i5heu 6y ago

ramraj07 6y ago
Au contraire I feel like drive reliability has gone _down_... Especially for consumers - the big difference between Blackblaze and regular users is that they have their disks spinning continuously, and the reliability numbers seem to only apply in that scenario. If you switch off and store a drive my experience is that after a year it's very high probability it won't switch on again. This is a big problem in academic labs where grad students generate terabytes of data and professors and departments are too stingy to provide managed storage services in that scale so it all sits in degrading drives in some drawer in the lab.
- mmsimanga 6y ago
  This. I bought a hard drive docking station and the idea was to go through all my 6 hard drives from the past 10 years which I haven't used. Only the laptop drives worked.
  - guenthert 6y ago
    Is the docking station supplied with enough current? 3.5" drives tend to take considerably more power (and use 12V for their motor) particularly when spinning up. I'd give those drives another try in a different docking station or connect them directly to a PC, RAID or NAS device.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  My experience of data storage among academics has been disturbing. Masses and masses of work is stored on USB sticks and laptops. Hundreds of hours of work, maybe even thousands of hours and no backups. I’ve hit it multiple times and it blows my mind each time. Yes, buying a basic backup solution is going to set you back a few hundred dollars minimum (or not, if you go for BB or similar) but it seems like a basic minimum. I don’t know how you change the culture but it’s bad among those I have worked along side. I haven’t bought large drives in years and recently started doing so. I have been really impressed with how good they are and how well they perform in an always-on NAS. I’m so impressed with the Synology I got and can’t speak highly enough of it. I just wish I’d bought one with more bays.
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  My experience has been the opposite. Every HDD drive I have works. The new ones are fine, even if I let them sit for months, as are the old ones after years.

It is always amazing to me how cheap, small and reliable storage has become.

by i5heu 6y ago

It is always amazing to me how cheap, small and reliable storage has become.

Au contraire I feel like drive reliability has gone _down_... Especially for consumers - the big difference between Blackblaze and regular users is that they have their disks spinning continuously, and the reliability numbers seem to only apply in that scenario. If you switch off and store a drive my experience is that after a year it's very high probability it won't switch on again. This is a big problem in academic labs where grad students generate terabytes of data and professors and departments are too stingy to provide managed storage services in that scale so it all sits in degrading drives in some drawer in the lab.

mmsimanga 6y ago
This. I bought a hard drive docking station and the idea was to go through all my 6 hard drives from the past 10 years which I haven't used. Only the laptop drives worked.
- guenthert 6y ago
  Is the docking station supplied with enough current? 3.5" drives tend to take considerably more power (and use 12V for their motor) particularly when spinning up. I'd give those drives another try in a different docking station or connect them directly to a PC, RAID or NAS device.
lostlogin 6y ago
My experience of data storage among academics has been disturbing. Masses and masses of work is stored on USB sticks and laptops. Hundreds of hours of work, maybe even thousands of hours and no backups. I’ve hit it multiple times and it blows my mind each time. Yes, buying a basic backup solution is going to set you back a few hundred dollars minimum (or not, if you go for BB or similar) but it seems like a basic minimum. I don’t know how you change the culture but it’s bad among those I have worked along side. I haven’t bought large drives in years and recently started doing so. I have been really impressed with how good they are and how well they perform in an always-on NAS. I’m so impressed with the Synology I got and can’t speak highly enough of it. I just wish I’d bought one with more bays.
omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
My experience has been the opposite. Every HDD drive I have works. The new ones are fine, even if I let them sit for months, as are the old ones after years.