Farming Hard Drives (2012)

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

floriangosse

43 points

20 comments

backblaze.comTechstory

calmpositive

Debate

20/100

Data StorageHardware ReliabilityCloud Backup

Key topics

Data Storage

Hardware Reliability

Cloud Backup

Backblaze's blog post on 'Farming Hard Drives' discusses their large-scale storage infrastructure and drive failure rates, sparking discussion on drive reliability and data storage strategies.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Moderate engagement

First comment

14h

Peak period

144-156h

Avg / period

Comment distribution20 data points

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Based on 20 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Oct 16, 2025 at 1:50 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Oct 16, 2025 at 3:41 PM EDT
14h after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
10 comments in 144-156h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Oct 23, 2025 at 3:29 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (20 comments)

Showing 20 comments

gadders

3 months ago

1 reply

Great hardware knowledge. Appalling backup software.

I got told by their support that I had to change my password for their service. Opened the website, went to my account and tried to change my password. Didn't work.

Got told by their customer support that you have to use the "lost password" method.

How hard is it to right a password reset method that works?

gradschool

3 months ago

2 replies

Former backblaze customer here, the trick is that you can't copy and paste your password as one might do with a password manager. You have to type it manually so that the web page can interactively tell you how strong the password is getting as you type it.

Backblaze lost me as a customer due to the new password and 2FA requirements, which would lock me out if I were to lose my devices, the exact scenario I'm trying to mitigate. Not affiliated, I'm now trying my luck with pixeldrain, mega, and koofr (having quit proton lately as well since it broke rclone compatibility a few weeks ago).

gadders

3 months ago

1 reply

Crashplan used to work well, but they decided they didn't want retail customers (and now apparently do again).

hobs

3 months ago

I saw they attempted to pivot into corporate spyware and it hasn't done as well as they thought.

qingcharles

3 months ago

I've not had a single lick of trouble with Mega. I try to use it for all my work as it is very reliable and their online file browser is top class.

Koofr is one of the ones offering lifetime plans right? I'm always getting spammed with their offers. Wonder how they compare to pCloud?

philipwhiuk

3 months ago

3 replies

Going around to lots of stores burning fuel depriving regular consumers of inventory forcing them onto your cloud solution.

It's classic SV screw-regular-folk-as-long-as-its-not-banned.

fwipsy

3 months ago

1 reply

Devil's advocate: Individual users probably aren't filling a 3tb hard drive most of the time. (This may not apply to HN users, but I imagine most people buy a hard drive larger than they need and never fill it up.) So arguably, Backblaze used the drives more efficiently, because each drive benefited many users and its entire capacity would be used.

gwbas1c

3 months ago

That's not appropriate. People buy those drives to do whatever the ^#$^#$ they want to do with them. Backblaze's service may or may not be an effective replacement for what people wanted the drives for.

Unearned5161

3 months ago

doesn't Backblaze largely do backups? as in their customer's already have the files on their own large drives and they need to back those files up, as in maybe you're reading too much into this?

mastax

3 months ago

I don't think it is immoral to purchase products from retail stores.

MarkusWandel

3 months ago

1 reply

What fraction of external hard disks is still "shuckable" these days? I know the WD Passports aren't. The USB connector is directly on the drive's PCB, no SATA bridge.

zampano

3 months ago

2 replies

I think a lot of the larger form-factor/larger capacity models are still shuckable, though sometimes you still have to put kapton tape on one of the pins to allow it to work with a normal machine.

rzzzt

3 months ago

1 reply

Pin 3 on the power connector used to be constant 3.3V, but its purpose changed to keeping the drive in a low-power shutdown state for enabling e.g. staggered spinup: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/hdd-sata-power-disable-fea...

ssl-3

3 months ago

Yep.

And when that's a problem, it's fine to just cut and insulate 3.3v wire that feeds the power supply's SATA connectors.

After this modification, the machine thus becomes compatible with all SATA hard drives, whether old or new or shucked or whatever.

(Not much (if anything) in SATA land ever used 3.3v, and it's completely likely that nothing ever will. AFAICT, that voltage was deprecated with the release of revision 3.3 of the SATA specifications, from nearly a decade ago in February of '16.)

toast0

3 months ago

> sometimes you still have to put kapton tape on one of the pins to allow it to work with a normal machine.

It's easier to cut the 3.3v wire from the power supply. If you have color coded wires, it'll be the orange wire; if not, it'll be the same color as every other wire.

To a first approximation, nothing ever uses 3.3v from sata power, so it made sense to remove it from the spec. Reusing the pins so that 3.3v inhibits functionality was kind of crazy though.

sfblah

3 months ago

3 replies

I just checked and it looks like this company has never turned a profit. I don't really know why anyone would even use their product, since it's so easy just to use the various cloud systems out there instead of storing any meaningful data locally. Will they turn a profit before this business model totally is outmoded?

DaSHacka

3 months ago

Lol, good bait

ethmarks

3 months ago

The reason they're farming hard drives is so they can add them to their cloud storage network. You realize that cloud storage isn't actually in clouds, right? Hard drives are always local somewhere, and in Backblaze's case that 'somewhere' is a data center.

MatthiasPortzel

3 months ago

Backblaze is a cloud storage company

atYevP

3 months ago

Good times...

/stares wistfully off into the distance

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ID: 45601855Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 1:08:48 PM

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