Assessing the Potential for Data Loss

[ICPete]

First, I apologize if I'm beating a dead horse here!
This may shed some light on this question.
I found two documents that refer to the same drive series, including ST12000VN0008.

First is the datasheet, which can be found here:
Ironwolf datasheet

Ironwolf datasheet from 2022 for ST12000VN0008, on page 2:

Show : Datasheet

Next is the manual, which can be found here:
Ironwolf manual

Ironwolf product manual from 8/2021 for ST12000VN0008, on page 8 (page 9 of the PDF):

Show : Manual

In spite of how surprising it is that such a technical oversight could be spread throughout their datasheets, I think this comparison of the same specification for the same drive model, stated differently in two different documents, supports my theory that someone at Seagate started using 10Exx to mean 10^xx, probably a long time ago, and that notation has been thoughtlessly copied for years. This theory is bolstered by the fact that WD, a company with arguably similar technology, specifies 1 error in 10^15 bits read for the same enterprise-level SATA drives.

I tried to find a way to contact a real human at Seagate, but they don't appear to provide any way to do that on their website.

 

[Davvo]

I tried to find a way to contact a real human at Seagate, but they don't appear to provide any way to do that on their website.

They have a livechat service. Let us know what they tell you if you are able to contact them.

Contact Us | Seagate US

 

[Apollo]

They have a livechat service. Let us know what they tell you if you are able to contact them.

Contact Us | Seagate US

I got some issues with the somewhat recent SeaChest Windows utilities exe file not working on Windows. I had to use a version of Seachest from 2 years or so ago, downloaded from Archive.org.
Same issue with chat availability on my system (no chat present) however, doing a Google search lead to a chat session to Seagate linked to my phone Google account outside of the Seagate website.
I got to interact with human like correspondent (could be AI, though).

 

[Davvo]

I got some issues with the somewhat recent SeaChest Windows utilities exe file not working on Windows. I had to use a version of Seachest from 2 years or so ago, downloaded from Archive.org.
Same issue with chat availability on my system (no chat present) however, doing a Google search lead to a chat session to Seagate linked to my phone Google account outside of the Seagate website.
I got to interact with human like correspondent (could be AI, though).

Once you understand how to make it work it does so pretty well: I had to contact them because of a warranty issue, it was a smooth process.

 

[ICPete]

Thanks Apollo; going to their site on my phone, rather than my computer, did the trick. I got through to a live chat agent named Christian.
Here is a screenshot of the chat dialog:

Of course, one live chat agent's opinion is not exactly authoritative!
But you also notice he lumps Seagate and WD drives together in terms of the read error rate for consumer grade NAS drives.
But then he also equates 10^14 bits to approximately 1 TB, whereas in fact it's closer to 12 TB...

As I mentioned, I would be surprised if their enterprise drives didn't have similar specs as far as the unrecoverable read error rate.
For my purposes, I'm going to use 10^15 power for my calculations when Seagate's datasheet states 10E15. I just don't think 10^16 is feasible for that (though I realize SSDs do reach rates like 10^17 for example).

 

[Davvo]

Well, that's a bummer.

 

[Davvo]

Davvo updated Assessing the Potential for Data Loss with a new update entry:

Added proper interpretation of Seagate's ECC notation to previous update.

[...] a whole order of magnitude smaller! It has however been stated that the value has to be read as 1e-14.​

Read the rest of this update entry...