Testing two 18 TB white label SATA hard drives from datablocks.dev

OT

> Half of tech YouTube has been sponsored by companies like...

It just struck me that the product reviews are a part of the social realm that is barely explored.

Imagine a video website like TikTok or YouTube etc where all videos are organized under products. Priority to those who purchased the product and a category ranked by how many similar products you've purchased.

The thing sort of exists currently in some hard to find corner of TEMU etc but there are no channels or playlists.

I admire the courage to store data on refurbished Seagate hard drives. I prefer SSD storage with some backups using cloud cold storage, because I’m not the one replacing the failing hard drives.

And I prefer to have a healthy bank account balance.

Storing 18TB (let alone with raid) on SSDs is something only those earning Silicon Valley tech wages can afford.

I would also prefer having a large number of high capacity SSDs so I could replace my spinning hard drives.

But even the cheapest high capacity SSD deals are still a lot more expensive than hard drive array.

I’ll continue replacing failing hard drives for a few more years. For me that has meant zero replacements over a decade, though I planned for a 5% annual failure rate and have a spare drive in the case ready to go. I could replace a failed drive from the array in the time takes to shut down, swap a cable to the spare drive, and boot up again.

SSDs also need to be examined for power loss protection. The results with consumer drives are mixed and it’s hard to find good info about how common drives behave. Getting enterprise grade drives with guaranteed PLP from large on-onboard capacitors is ideal, but those are expensive. Spinning hard drives have the benefit of using their rotational inertia to power the drive long enough to finish outstanding writes.

The reason you don’t see videos arranged by product is because everyone knows not to trust unknown creators telling you how great a product is.

Viewers want to see opinions from specific people they’ve come to trust, not the first video that comes up for a product.