lol @ "they should sell hard disks with 10^15 reliability instead of 10^14!" This is the funniest outrage I've seen in a while, just because the suggested fix

lol @ "they should sell hard disks with 10^15 reliability instead of 10^14!" This is the funniest outrage I've seen in a while, just because the suggested fix is so specific and (relatively) low for the huge amount discussed. It's like saying, "It's an outrage that this drink holds only 37 ounces! For this kind of money I expect it to hold at least 38 ounces. I would pay for that." - My 4 downvoters are clearly a lot worse at math at I am. Let me spell it out for you: "Reliability of 100000000000000 is unacceptable! I need exactly 1000000000000000 of reliability (a factor 10 difference only)." If you don't see how that is funny, the problem is with you, not me. That's a hilariously specific, and small, change. "Man, having a 30% chance of a bit flipping if I read 4 TB is unacceptable. I should have to read like...40 TB for a 30% chance of a bit flip!" It's particularly funny because in the face of this being unacceptable, I would expect a solution, like error correction, that adds 5-10 orders of magnitude (many bit flips have to all happen in the same sector, by coincidence, at the already low 10^14 rate), for it to make it past the error correction layer. The other thing is that given that we're talking about ERROR RATES, I cannot possibly believe that they have it down to such a specific number as 100000000000000. It would have to be a range. You should target more than 1 order of magnitude to get something more reliable (like ECC RAM versus regular RAM). [1] Just like the error margin on 37 ounces must be like 37-40 ounces anyway. [1] first reference I found: http://lambda-diode.com/opinion/ecc-memory-2 http://lambda-diode.com/opinion/ecc-memory-2 "I computed that if you have 4 GiB of memory, you have 96% chance of getting a bit flip in three days because of cosmic rays. SECDED ECC would reduce that to a negligible one chance in six billion." That is, for example, a change of 1 per 34359738368 bits (rounding 96% to 100%) to 1 per 206158430208000000000 bits (multiplying by 6 billion). 34359738368 bits is 10^10. 206158430208000000000 is 10^20. That's the kind of change (give or take) that I was expecting parent to suggest - not one order of magnitude!