Backblaze Q3 Drive Stats

Backblaze, the online backup service I use, buys many spinning disk hard drives. And by a lot, I mean over 230,000 drives. They also keep data on which drives last and which fail. That’s pretty important when you are buying on their scale.

The good news for the rest of us is that they routinely share that data. Here’s the most recent data on their drives. A few things that stood out to me:

Drive Size Increases

4TB used to be the standard drive size. Now they are buying 16TB drives. These days you can put a lot of storage on a spinning disk.

Older Drives Still Fail

Even though manufacturers are better than ever at making reliable spinning disk drives, older ones still fail at an accelerating rate over time. If you use a spinning disk in your backup routine, you need to replace them occasionally. This is obvious, but seeing the data helps send that point home.

I had some four-year-old drives last year (the last two spinning drives in my fleet). I rotate the two drives locally and offsite as a last-line-of-defense backup. They hadn’t started failing, yet I knew they didn’t have much gas left in the tank, so I replaced them. The good news is that because spinning drives are getting so cheap, the cost to replace them is only going down, and spinning drives are just fine for these backup/archive-type jobs for most people.

Check out the Backblaze statistics if you’d like to get a better idea of who’s making the best spinning drives today.

FOD Interview with William Gallagher (MacSparky Labs)

In this Friends of Dave (FOD) interview, screenwriter and Mac nerd Willliam Gallagher joins me to talk about Stage Manager, Apple Mail, and Task Managers. William also shares some of his secrets on how he makes time to write… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Tier 2 (Backstage) and Tier 3 (Early Access) Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?

Mac Power Users 665: Covered in Paper Cuts

On this Mac Power Users feedback episode, Stephen and I revisit backup tools, talk about keyboard shortcuts, and discuss a bunch of listener emails.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

  • SaneBox: Stop drowning in email!
  • Electric: Unbury yourself from IT tasks. Get a free pair of Beats Solo3 Wireless Headphones when you schedule a meeting.
  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.

Automators 114: macOS Ventura: The Automated AppDate

macOS Ventura has arrived! Rose and I use this episode of Automators to break down all the new automating possibilities with the latest Mac operating system.

This episode of Automators is sponsored by:

  • TextExpander: Your shortcut to efficient, consistent communication. Get 20% off.
  • Electric: Unbury yourself from IT tasks. Get a free pair of Beats Solo3 Wireless Headphones when you schedule a meeting.
  • Hover: Make a name for yourself. Get 10% off any domain name.

Save as PDF… (Revisited)

Apple made some more changes with macOS Ventura that broke my “Save as PDF…” workflow.

Here’s a video explaining what changed and how to fix it. If you’ve never tried this trick, you should. It really speeds up the process of making PDFs on your Mac.