> That is simply not true. It indeed is not. Had to reread the theory and I stand corrected, RS-style ECC can't detect errors in excess of the redundancy count

> That is simply not true. It indeed is not. Had to reread the theory and I stand corrected, RS-style ECC can't detect errors in excess of the redundancy count. > How is that not real bitrot? It is and I can see how it can happen. > How does it matter, beyond ruling out everything above the disk level, what the precise causes are? It would've mattered if a drive could detect on-disk bitrot reliably, which was what the stats I worked with (also in exabytes, funnily enough) and the IEEE papers I read led me to believe. For what it's worth, you won. Hats off.