Backblaze is back with its hard drive findings for 2016, and Ars’ analysis points out the impressive performance of certain Toshiba and HGST disks, which made it through a year without failure. One Seagate model also managed that honor, although it remains to be seen just how reliable it really is, as it was introduced only fairly recently. Backblaze is actually keeping additional tabs on it because it is an enterprise drive; the results are expected to show whether hard drives meant for professional settings are worth the additional cost.

The standout finding: three 45-disk pods using 4TB Toshiba disks, and one 45-disk pod using 8TB HGST disks, went a full year without a single spindle failing. These are, respectively, more than 145 and 45 years of aggregate usage without a fault. The Toshiba result makes for a nice comparison against the drive’s spec sheet. Toshiba rates that model as having a 1-million-hour mean time to failure (MTTF). Mean time to failure (or mean time between failures, MTBF—the two measures are functionally identical for disks, with vendors using both) is an aggregate property: given a large number of disks, Toshiba says that you can expect to see one disk failure for every million hours of aggregated usage. Over 2016, those disks accumulated 1.2 million hours of usage without failing, healthily surpassing their specification.

Discussion

Source: [H]ardOCP – 8TB, HGST Disks Show Top Reliability, Racking Up 45 Years Without Failure

Is this another report of a revolutionary battery technology that we will never hear about again? I hope not, since this is the kind of breakthrough we may need to prevent incidents like the Samsung explosions. A professor has managed to create a battery that doesn’t house any electrolyte liquid, which essentially means that it won’t heat and blow up. Furthermore, his batteries use actual lithium metal, providing twice as much charge. Thanks to Kyle for this story.



What Zimmerman has done is pretty amazing: He’s created a battery that eliminates the liquid. In its place: A special plastic film, solid and not flammable. Yet it allows the free flow of the ions, just as the electrolyte does. Zimmerman’s plastic doesn’t catch fire even if you try to light it with a grill lighter. Zimmerman even encouraged me to cut the live battery. Into shreds. Down to nothing. No fire, no heat, no trip to the emergency room. And the LED light panel it was driving stayed turned on. This is, in other words, a completely safe battery. But wait, it gets better. We call them lithium ion batteries because they do not, in fact, use actual lithium metal. That’s too bad, because lithium metal batteries can store at least twice as much power! The only reason we don’t use lithium-metal batteries is that they’re even more dangerous than lithium ion. But if there’s no flammable liquid, there’s no risk of fire. So Zimmerman’s batteries do use actual lithium metal, and therefore hold twice as much charge.

Discussion

Source: [H]ardOCP – Professor Invents Non-Exploding Battery That Holds 2X As Much Power