Hard Drive Reliability

Backblaze is out with another report on the reliability of hard drive brands used in their datacenter.  Information of this nature should be considered carefully and not overgeneralized.  However, speed is a factor in choosing storage media for critical files, and another—perhaps even more crucial—is propensity for failure (or not).  With the storage business continuing to consolidate (Western Digital just swallowed up SanDisk), reports like this are valuable, whether one is acquiring one, a dozen, or scores of drives.