and yet we apparently have dark fiber all over the place. Aren't we squeezing ever more capacity out of existing fiber? Is bandwidth somehow getting more expensive? That would be odd now wouldn't it?

Capacity != latency. you could have a 1Gb SAT link and still be driven near mad by the high latency :-(

Yes, this is exactly why so many TV shows are now broadcast in 5.1 surround sound - for the cheapo' radios that the 99% have /s

What bitrate are those "1080p" videos at? Oh, I thought so.

Imagine having that 1Gb connection. Imagine that you can't use it all but that you can do anything you want with it. do you think maybe you might sit down and ponder, that you might try to imagine better ways to use it? Cloud backup service is obvious and done. Video is done and being done. Keep going. Just sit and use your imagination and I suspect that you will eventually think of something new that cannot be done now with existing normal bandwidth. Maybe it's something silly, maybe it's something crazy, maybe it turns out to be something life changing.

THAT is why we need to have bandwidth well over and above what we have now. We need to have enough that people sit down and think up new ways to use, innovate, maybe find a way to save a life or help another. We've done this with CPU and GPU for a long time, disk space too. My first HDD was 40MEG and nearly the size of a shoebox. Suppose way back then someone had spoken as you have and decided that we would never need more and was listened to. We need to bring fuel for dreams and imagination - right now we're WELL behind the curve for that...

I don't know too many geeks with just one device though. Between streaming services (ick), games, VPNs to friend's homes to share media and do backups, and all sorts of other things I think I'd really really enjoy Gig internet. I also think I probably wouldn't be saturating that and I'm okay with that. I think I'd be looking for ways to host interesting things, perhaps interactive things. I can certainly see where having THAT much bandwidth would drive all sorts of new innovation and applications as people tried harder and harder to find uses for it. I think we could really use that!

Metal tracer is conductive - no? While the equipment it may be attached to is low voltage there's no telling what's likely to happen later. Nails driven through it - and a high voltage conductor. Rubbing against high power cables. Stuck in conduit that rubs it and then somehow gets energized. Weird. Shit. Happens. People do stupid stuff, go lookup some of the redneck repair sites to see what i mean. Some of the shit is dangerous and downright scary. One of my faves that actually worked was a guy who built a contraption for his BBQ grill that he used to heat his POOL. Seriously. You can't fix stupid and while that might not exactly be the worlds biggest example I would put forth that people do some weird shit and it's better to be prepared than get electrocuted or have your house burn down because of it if possible...

Years ago while awaiting a position on a contract with my employer I was using a workstation and decided to download some large files from Lotus. I started several file downloads at once and though nothing of it until I noticed that my mouse was acting jittery and weird. When I investigated I found out why - the download was hitting the computer so damned hard that HDD light was solid and the computer was choking on the download. I quickly stopped one of them and then marveled as the first continued to download at speeds I had NEVER seen before. Honestly I was stunned that Lotus had that kind of capacity and really surprised that my employer was letting ME suck up so much of it. I never asked what our pipe looked like but it was a pretty big employer and we were situated in an area where getting fat pipes was possible but wow I'd never seen that before or since. Sadly I don't recall the numbers and if I did I'd probably be depressed to find I do as well at home now or something even if I can't manage to stress any of my computers :-)

This is done for short periods of time to recover data from HDD that exhibit read issues when they warm up to operating temp. Sometimes, a very big sometimes, these drives can be read from if you freeze them first. However the drive quickly warms up to operating temp and you begin to get errors that require another freeze cycle. To slow this warm up time I've dunked them in ice water with the electronics protected by a baggie and I think an ice pack sandwich might also work. Don't drop it so far into the water that it gets into the baggie, condensation hasn't ever been an issue for me the few times I've been forced to do this and this really just prolongs the time needed before another trip to the freezer.

Condensation isn't really a big concern and neither is the longevity of the drive since at this point it's already screwed and you just want as much data off of it as possible FAST.

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."