Yeah i think pricing is key and it looks like the different cloud storage providers all optimize for different types of storage (hot / cold). backblaze seems to be cheaper when storage is high and data transfer is relatively low (calculated via http://coststorage.com)

How is the benefit negligible? You are running consumer drives that are not designed to be run at a 100% load 100% of the time. The drives are not meant to be spun up constantly; in fact, many of them have mechanisms designed for them to spin down between use and lower power consumption. It's like complaining about a drag racer not being able to haul a ton of bricks without breaking the transmission on a regular basis.

Has anyone done a teardown of two drives and compared the materials? Many enterprise and OEM drives really just seem to be the same hardware as consumer drives, only with different firmware (the "power-saving" spindown) and more rigorous QC.

>How is the benefit negligible?

I believe when you're buying as much drives as they do and produce the kind of reports they do they measure and compare before reaching that conclusion.

The decision can't be made in isolation. They need to ensure that the extra cost of the drives makes up for the increased reliability - that's not necessarily the case.

> The drives are not meant to be spun up constantly;

I think having the drives spin constantly is the best for lifespan, because there are less spinups and thus components wear less.

There should be no wear at all once it's running, read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_bearing

So barring any manufacturing defects that I'm soure would be abundantly clear early on, it's down to logic or electrical failures.