Their own client... You do recall a certain secure email provider that folded up shop rather than compromise their software to spy on users right? I wouldn't trust software being provided like this after seeing that.
I actually use this with DropBox. It synchs in the background so the size hasn't been a concern but it was software that I trust and could control!
Well, there's the answer then for Unitron. I'm not surprised at all that they do this and I may have even seen a few myself but since they shortened the warranty I don't think I've had any that fell under it to go back. I did once have one that I was sure was new enough but their system kept kicking out as being an invalid serial and it drove me crazy! I know they pull shenanigans and it sux but much like ISP who else are you going to goto but the very few HDD vendors these days? I'm just BackBlaze is providing info and wish others would as well...
If you were Seagate would you admit that you were even shipping refurb drives?
A question if I may - what are the experiences of BackBlaze when it comes to so called "bit rot"? You guys have enough drives in operation that this is a potential issue and I'm curious as to experience and countermeasures if any. With the rise of ZFS and BTRFS etc. this has been something that has caught my eye but I'm not yet sure it's something I'm inclined to worry about so i'm curious as to unbiased experiences. i know there has been an article or two in the past about how BackBlaze works but I don't recall these kinds of low level details being in it. Can you share?
Ah now THIS is helpful and I wish I'd seen it sooner. If it's only taking 15 minutes of time to swap a drive then THAT skews things a good bit! The report seemed to make it sound like swapping a drive was a bigger deal and that some pods required some handholding in order to become functional. What about drives that "pop out" - no big deal?
Yes, in the article by BackBlaze actually. They find that warranty replacement drives drop like flies and they believe it's because the drives are refurbished.
"The Seagate Barracuda Green 1.5TB drive, though, has not been doing well. We got them from Seagate as warranty replacements for the older drives, and these new drives are dropping like flies. Their average age shows 0.8 years, but since these are warranty replacements, we believe that they are refurbished drives that were returned by other customers and erased, so they already had some usage when we got them."
Pretend they get a 50% discount on that $130 drive. Now pretend it fails and that it's replacement sucks too. It takes hours to rebuild the array, it takes time to replace the drive, and in some cases certain drives simply "pop out" of the array and require some hand feeding to return to service. Still think that whopping $50 or so was worth it? I'm thinking not so much...
Instead of focusing like a laser on brand you should perhaps be looking at models. While Seagate dominated for drive most likely to die apparently the 4TB drives are bucking the trend and thus far have been found worthy of purchase. Personally I found this to be pretty interesting and valuable information and far from an advertisement since they did pretty much nothing to push their service and simply provided interesting statistics - for free no less!
I'd start with ConsumerReports. Not everyone likes them but if you want that kind of data for say TVs and automobiles they claim to have it....
If you buy local from say a big box store you get the pleasure of a drive that's been drop kicked by punks stocking shelves and by twits shopping the store. I just received 5 drives from NewEgg shipped "bare". They came in sleeves of some sort of custom bubble packaging that held the drive snug and had a bubbled flap that capped off the open end. This in turn was placed inside of a cardboard box that tightly held the bubbled thingy and was then placed inside of a larger box and surrounded by their normal cardboard.
I can't say that this is them hearing everyone bitching or not but it was way better than the old bubble wrap, gum tape, and a prayer shipping they used to use about half the time - the other half they shipped in some very nice OEM type packagaing. Seemed a crap shoot but non eo fmy stuff shipped DOA and most of it is on it's 3rd year working...
A tip for you - stick the drive in a plastic baggie and then stick the bag into a glass of ice water with the open end for cables above water. Do this after first freezing the drive and you will be able to keep the drive colder longer and get more data before it warms up and start to have read failures. you could probably also stick it between a couple of frozen cold packs but condensation might be a concern
You might want to read their report as they point out that swapping drives is COSTLY. Their experience is that it's better to pay a little more and not have to screw with the drive. Their report also documents which drives "pop out" of their RAID arrays and require costly attention. When a RAID array goes "bad" it can take time to recover, that's a cost that is almost certainly going to be more than what that troublesome drive saved them in the short run. These drives don't cost much more than $100 apiece and I'm betting their employees aren't being paid minimum wage so that hypothetical $50 savings isn't much especially if data is lost....
Might want to check on that especially if you buy bare drives. I believe the warranty may be as short as a year and certainly not more than three. The days of five year warranties for drives appear to be long gone! thankfully at the pace my data grows and the drive capacities grow my drives seldom stay in use more than two years!
Tech tip - when you install a drive use a Sharpie to write down the date. I've been pretty surprised at how long some of my drives have turned out to be in use when I've decided to swap them as a result of doing this! This also helps you figure out if you have a snowball's chance in hell of making a warranty claim
Not only that but I prefer to keep my data in MY control and not shoot it up someplace where someone might decide they want to peek at it! Apparently encryption these days offered by vendors is something that can be counted on to be compromised if someone decides to serve them papers. I'll keep my stuff mine thanks...
Air pollution is really making us pay through the nose.
