> Dell, Google, and Amazon can never write reports like this because the vendor relationship is important. Because these guys have no relationship and are buying consumer disks, the world finally gets brand level reliability reports. Kudos to Backblaze.

Dell maybe, but Google and Amazon consider what goes on in their data centers to be part of their secret sauce. It doesn't have to do with vendor relationships, it has to do with a competitive edge. Google and Amazon will drop a vendor without a second thought if it's even slightly more advantageous.

Death Stars were never applied to the drives as Hitachi Drives, but when they were still branded as IBM drives. Namely the 75GXP model era.

I think that was one IBM model way before Hitachi acquired that division from Big Blue; they've otherwise been pretty good.

If I remember correctly they didn't name names, but Google did publish a very useful paper on their experiences with disks. The two big takeaways were that in only half the disks the self testing signaled a future failure, and manufactures seemed to have solved heat problems.

I had four of the three Death Stars I bought fail (yes one of the replacements failed too). 133% failure rate is quite an achievement. They were great drives when they worked.