You don’t know disk about storage failures | The Register

Over a period of 44 months, the group analyzed storage logs of about 39,000 commercially deployed storage systems. They estimate the systems in total were composed of about 1,800,000 disks hosted in about 155,000 storage shelf enclosures. The researchers examined near-line (backup) disks, low-end, mid-range, and high-end hardware.

While the findings do show disk failures contribute to 20-55 per cent of storage subsystem failures, other components such as physical interconnects (broken wires, shelf enclosure power outages, HBA failures, etc) and protocol stacks (software bugs and compatibility issues) also account for a significant percentage of problems.

So, if you got up with the chickens and couldn’t get your TFG fix earlier, that’s why. Something broke.

44 months to determine that something broke, most of the time. Well, when you can buy 1 terabyte for $500, and it used to cost $50,000 (hell, $5MM not so long ago), you’re going to get that. Me, I blame the Euro ROHS garbage for forcing everyone away from lead solder. That’s already a problem, and it’s only going to get worse as we get more connected. But that’s so geeky it makes even my eyelids droop.

NB: Man, I don’t know what’s going on with this idiot box. I thought it was fixed when I left for Corpus Christi this morning. Not like anyone noticed…not one single email telling me “hey, your stupid site’s down!” Therefore, extrapolating even further, my initial sense of relief at seeing the entire web server wiped clean was the correct one. Always go with your gut.