Cloud storage provider Backblaze released its drive reliability numbers for the last quarter of 2016, illustrating that two hard drive manufacturers just might produce the most reliable drives on the market. So, who are the lucky hardware manufacturers?
That honor goes to a few server pods using Toshiba and HGST hard disks. Specifically, Toshiba-brand and HGST-brand industrial sized 4TB and 8TB hard disks which Backblaze uses in custom-built pods — essentially massive stacks of hard disks used to store your cloud data.
According to Ars Technica, each pod is comprised of 45 to 60 identical hard disks and the pods which used the Toshiba and HGST hard disks (three pods running 4TB Toshiba hard disks, and one 45-disk pod running 8TB HGST drives), managed to make it through an entire year of heavy usage without a single drive spindle failing.
Altogether, the Toshiba drives managed 1.2 million hours of aggregate usage in 2016, all without a single drive spindle failure. That failure rate eclipses even Toshiba’s most optimistic manufacturer estimates, which suggest that you should see at least one failure per million hours of aggregate usage.
Backblaze’s findings for 2016 show an overall failure rate — including all of their hard disks — just under 1.95 percent, which is the lowest the cloud storage provider has ever seen. So what does that mean for you? Well, there are two takeaways here.
One, hard disks — despite the supremacy of solid-state drives — are getting more and more reliable as manufacturers gear their highest-storage options toward the needs of cloud service providers like Backblaze. Secondly, cloud storage providers are becoming more reliable as their hardware and storage methodologies improve.
Not to mention hard disks are getting massive. Backblaze employs a number of hard disk pods which employ 8TB hard disks from Seagate and HGST, the storage space equivalent of a jumbo-jet hangar.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.