"Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2021"
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2021/

"As of September 30, 2021, Backblaze had 194,749 drives spread across
four data centers on two continents. Of that number, there were 3,537
boot drives and 191,212 data drives. The boot drives consisted of 1,557
hard drives and 1,980 SSDs. This report will review the quarterly and
lifetime failure rates for our data drives, as well as compare failure
rates for our SSD and HDD boot drives. Along the way, we’ll share our
observations and insights of the data presented and, as always, we look
forward to your comments below."

That is a lot of drives. And their 50,000 new hard drives are 14 TB and
16 TB. The channels must be getting full of drives.

Lynn

On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 13:31:22 -0500, Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com>
wrote:

>"Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2021"
> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2021/
>
>"As of September 30, 2021, Backblaze had 194,749 drives spread across
>four data centers on two continents. Of that number, there were 3,537
>boot drives and 191,212 data drives. The boot drives consisted of 1,557
>hard drives and 1,980 SSDs. This report will review the quarterly and
>lifetime failure rates for our data drives, as well as compare failure
>rates for our SSD and HDD boot drives. Along the way, we’ll share our
>observations and insights of the data presented and, as always, we look
>forward to your comments below."
>
>That is a lot of drives. And their 50,000 new hard drives are 14 TB and
>16 TB. The channels must be getting full of drives.

From that article:

Outliers
There are two drives in the quarterly results which require additional
information beyond the raw numbers presented. Let’s start with the
Seagate 12TB drive (model: ST12000NM0007). Back in January of 2020, we
noted that these drives were not working optimally in our environment
and higher failure rates were predicted. Together with Seagate, we
decided to remove these drives from service over the coming months.
Covid-19 delayed the project some and the results are the predicted
higher failure rates. We expect all of the remaining drives to be
removed during Q4.

Hmm, I've had a pair of Seagate 12TB (model: ST12000NM0007) installed
for about 18 months now. I monitor all of my drives with Hard Disk
Sentinel. Just in the past 3 days the reported health of one of those
12TB drives went from 100% to 59% to 51%. The clock seems to be ticking
on that drive and I could lose it sooner rather than later..

On 2021-11-02 at 11:31:22 MDT, "Lynn McGuire" <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:

> That is a lot of drives. And their 50,000 new hard drives are 14 TB and
> 16 TB. The channels must be getting full of drives.

And all that angular momentum is affecting the rotation of the earth! Does
Greta Thunberg know?

On 11/24/2021 10:09 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Nov 2021 13:31:22 -0500, Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> "Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2021"
>> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2021/
>>
>> "As of September 30, 2021, Backblaze had 194,749 drives spread across
>> four data centers on two continents. Of that number, there were 3,537
>> boot drives and 191,212 data drives. The boot drives consisted of 1,557
>> hard drives and 1,980 SSDs. This report will review the quarterly and
>> lifetime failure rates for our data drives, as well as compare failure
>> rates for our SSD and HDD boot drives. Along the way, we’ll share our
>> observations and insights of the data presented and, as always, we look
>> forward to your comments below."
>>
>> That is a lot of drives. And their 50,000 new hard drives are 14 TB and
>> 16 TB. The channels must be getting full of drives.
>
> From that article:
>
> Outliers
> There are two drives in the quarterly results which require additional
> information beyond the raw numbers presented. Let’s start with the
> Seagate 12TB drive (model: ST12000NM0007). Back in January of 2020, we
> noted that these drives were not working optimally in our environment
> and higher failure rates were predicted. Together with Seagate, we
> decided to remove these drives from service over the coming months.
> Covid-19 delayed the project some and the results are the predicted
> higher failure rates. We expect all of the remaining drives to be
> removed during Q4.
>
>
> Hmm, I've had a pair of Seagate 12TB (model: ST12000NM0007) installed
> for about 18 months now. I monitor all of my drives with Hard Disk
> Sentinel. Just in the past 3 days the reported health of one of those
> 12TB drives went from 100% to 59% to 51%. The clock seems to be ticking
> on that drive and I could lose it sooner rather than later..

Sounds like it is hammer time !

Lynn

On 11/29/2021 4:04 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:

>> Hmm, I've had a pair of Seagate 12TB (model: ST12000NM0007) installed
>> for about 18 months now. I monitor all of my drives with Hard Disk
>> Sentinel. Just in the past 3 days the reported health of one of those
>> 12TB drives went from 100% to 59% to 51%. The clock seems to be ticking
>> on that drive and I could lose it sooner rather than later..
>
> Sounds like it is hammer time !
>
> Lynn

I found a reference to a previous Seagate incident like that one.

The heads stay in one place when the disk is idle. The air pressure
under the flying head, passing over the track again and again,
pushes the lube off the track and degrades lube properties, until
there is "wear". Does this mean Seagate has taken some backward
step on lube ? Dunno. They stop using truly "liquid" lubes, maybe
30 years ago. Because they could see "ripples" in them :-) Modern
lubes are like a polymer car finish (tough as nails, generally).

For the 6TB Seagate failing that way, the instructions are to
"install firmware update to drive *before* it fails". The purpose of
that, is the drive pushes the head around on its own (and since code
like this has been around forever, they should have done this in the
first place). There have been other drives that do the slow chacha,
to prevent burning the media.

So as long as the track hasn't burned up all the spares, if there
is a firmware update, you might get to keep using the drive. But the
track with the lube failure, maybe the whole thing will end up
spared out at some point.

If it generates physical debris, the drive is less likely to "last".

Once you can't read the firmware load off the platter, you are cooked.
Apparently, on this kind of lube failure, the heads (being as small as
they are), get splattered with debris.

Summary: Check for FW update... before it is too late.

Paul

On Tue, 30 Nov 2021 03:44:40 -0500, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

>On 11/29/2021 4:04 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>
>>> Hmm, I've had a pair of Seagate 12TB (model: ST12000NM0007) installed
>>> for about 18 months now. I monitor all of my drives with Hard Disk
>>> Sentinel. Just in the past 3 days the reported health of one of those
>>> 12TB drives went from 100% to 59% to 51%. The clock seems to be ticking
>>> on that drive and I could lose it sooner rather than later..
>>
>> Sounds like it is hammer time !
>>
>> Lynn
>
>I found a reference to a previous Seagate incident like that one.
>
>The heads stay in one place when the disk is idle. The air pressure
>under the flying head, passing over the track again and again,
>pushes the lube off the track and degrades lube properties, until
>there is "wear". Does this mean Seagate has taken some backward
>step on lube ? Dunno. They stop using truly "liquid" lubes, maybe
>30 years ago. Because they could see "ripples" in them :-) Modern
>lubes are like a polymer car finish (tough as nails, generally).
>
>For the 6TB Seagate failing that way, the instructions are to
>"install firmware update to drive *before* it fails". The purpose of
>that, is the drive pushes the head around on its own (and since code
>like this has been around forever, they should have done this in the
>first place). There have been other drives that do the slow chacha,
>to prevent burning the media.
>
>So as long as the track hasn't burned up all the spares, if there
>is a firmware update, you might get to keep using the drive. But the
>track with the lube failure, maybe the whole thing will end up
>spared out at some point.
>
>If it generates physical debris, the drive is less likely to "last".
>
>Once you can't read the firmware load off the platter, you are cooked.
>Apparently, on this kind of lube failure, the heads (being as small as
>they are), get splattered with debris.
>
>Summary: Check for FW update... before it is too late.

As of today it's been replaced by a pair of WD 14TB drives, so I'll get
to it in good time.