Enlarge / From magnets we came, to magnets we return. (credit: Garner Products)

There is the mental image that most people have of electronics recycling, and then there is the reality, which is shredding.

Less than 20 percent of e-waste even makes it to recycling. That which does is, if not acquired through IT asset disposition (ITAD) or spotted by a worker who sees some value, heads into the shredder for raw metals extraction. If you've ever toured an electronics recycling facility, you can see for yourself how much of your stuff eventually gets chewed into little bits , whether due to design, to unprofitable reuse markets, or sheer volume concerns.

Traditional hard drives have some valuable things inside them—case, cover, circuit boards, drive assemblies, actuators, and rare-earth magnets—but only if they avoid the gnashing teeth. That's where the DiskMantler comes in. Garner Products, a data elimination firm, has a machine that it claims can process 500 hard drives (the HDD kind) per day in a way that leaves a drive separated into those useful components. And the DiskMantler does this by shaking the thing to death (video).

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Backblaze's quarterly updates on annualized failure rates (AFRs) for its arsenal of hard disk drives (HDDs) have provided unique insight into long-term storage use for over 10 years. Today, the backup and cloud storage company released Q2 2023 data, which explores an intriguing increase in AFRs.

Today's blog post details data for 240,940 HDDs that Backblaze uses for data storage around the world. There are 31 different models, and Backblaze's Andy Klein, who authored the blog, estimated in an email to Ars Technica that 15 percent of the HDDs in the dataset, including some of the 4, 6, and 8TB drives, are consumer-grade. The dataset doesn't include boot drives, drives in commission for testing purposes, or drive models for which Backblaze didn't have at least 60 units.

HDD models need at least 50,000 drive days in order for Backblaze to consider them statistically relevant. (credit: Backblaze )

One of the biggest revelations from examining the drives from April 1, 2023, through June 30, 2023, was an increase in AFR from Q1 2023 (1.54 percent) to Q2 2023 ( 2.28 percent ). Backblaze's Q1 dataset examined 237,278 HDDs across 30 models.

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The practice's revelation is the last straw for some users. Western Digital already had a steep climb to win back NAS customers' trust after shipping NAS drives with SMR (shingled magnetic recording) instead of CMR (conventional magnetic recording). Now, some are saying they won't use or recommend the company's hard drives anymore.

“Warning,” your NAS drive’s been on for 3 years

As users have reported online, including on Synology-focused and Synology's own forums , as well as on Reddit and YouTube, Western Digital drives using Western Device Digital Analytics ( WDDA ) are getting a "warning" stamp in Synology DSM once their power-on hours count hits the three-year mark. WDDA is similar to SMART monitoring and rival offerings, like Seagate's IronWolf , and is supposed to provide analytics and actionable items.

The recommended action says: "The drive has accumulated a large number of power on hours [throughout] the entire life of the drive. Please consider to replace the drive soon." There seem to be no discernible problems with the hard drives otherwise.

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We recently covered a study by Secure Data Recovery, an HDD, SSD, and RAID data recovery company, of 2,007 defective hard disk drives it received. It found the average time before failure among those drives to be 2 years and 10 months. That seemed like a short life span, but considering the limited sample size and analysis in Secure Data Recovery's report, there was room for skepticism. Today, Backblaze, a backup and cloud storage company with a reputation for detailed HDD and SSD failure analysis, followed up Secure Data Recovery's report with its own research using a much larger data set. Among the 176,155 failed HDDs Backblaze examined, the average age at which the drives failed was 2 years and 6 months.

2 years, 6 months

Backblaze arrived at this age by examining all of its failed drives and their respective power-on hours. The company recorded each drive's failure date, model, serial number, capacity, failure, and SMART raw value. The 17,155 drives examined include 72 different models and does not include failed boot drives, drives that had no SMART raw attribute data, or drives with out-of-bounds data.

If Backblaze only looked at drives that it didn't use in its data centers anymore, there would be 3,379 drives across 35 models, and the average age of failure would be a bit longer at 2 years and 7 months.

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An analysis of 2,007 damaged or defective hard disk drives (HDDs) has led a data recovery firm to conclude that "in general, old drives seem more durable and resilient than new drives."

The statement comes from a Los Angeles-headquartered HDD, SSD, and RAID data recovery firm aptly named Secure Data Recovery that has been in business since 2007 and claims to have resolved more than 100,000 cases. It studied the HDDs it received in 2022. "Most" of those drives were 40GB to 10TB, according to a blog post by Secure Data Recovery spotted by Blocks & Files on Thursday.

Secure Data Recovery's March 8 post broke down the HDDs it received by engineer-verified "power-on hours," or the total amount of time the drive was functional, starting from when its owner began using it and ending when the device arrived at Secure Data Recovery.

Enlarge / Western Digital's My Book Duo has two 3.5-inch HDDs inside. (credit: Western Digital)

Western Digital today announced bigger-capacity versions of its My Book and dual-drive My Book Duo external hard disk drives (HDDs). The new 22TB and 44TB offerings represent some of the roomiest consumer offerings the company has ever offered.

Targeting people needing large-scale options and prioritizing price per GB over speed, the new external storage devices consist of one (in the case of the 22TB My Book) or two (My Book Duo) 3.5-inch drives. Western Digital's announcement today said the 22TB My Book is its "highest capacity consumer drive ever," but, as noted by Tom's Hardware , the company started selling 22TB network-attached storage (NAS) drives ($400 MSRP as of writing) in July. But with the My Book line offering the components neatly packed into an enclosure and ready to live on top of a desk as backup storage, the series has broader appeal.

The My Book measures 5.48×1.93×6.72 inches and now goes up to 22TB. (credit: Western Digital)

The My Book Duo, which Western Digital had already been selling in 16TB to 36TB capacities, also adds ports to your setup. It has a USB-C port supporting up to 5Gbps for connecting to systems and also gives you two USB-A ports.

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SSDs have usurped hard disk drives (HDDs) when it comes to performance, but whether building a NAS or having high-capacity needs on a budget, plenty of people still rely on spinning platters. Older drives that have seen a lot of use, however, may not be as reliable as before. Data Backblaze shared this week highlights how a hard drive's average failure rate (AFR) can increase with age.

Since 2013, Backblaze, a backup and cloud-storage company, has been publishing an annual report analyzing the AFRs of hard drives in its data center. The 2022 report shared on Tuesday examines 230,921 hard drives across 29 models from HGST, Seagate, Toshiba, and WDC, with capacities ranging from 4–16TB. All models included at least 60 drives that were not previously used for testing.

Keep in mind that the sample group only consists of drives that Backblaze had on hand, and they are of varying ages, with some used for more days than others. However, Backblaze's report does give us a unique look into the results of long-term hard drive use.

Enlarge / Tech decommissioning businesses have been transformed from what some describe as a collection of "man with a van" outfits into a regulated industry. (credit: Lorne Campbell, Guzelian, and SWEEEP Kuusakoski)

Mick Payne remembers the moment the madness of the way we dispose of our data was brought home to him.

The chief operating officer of Techbuyer, an IT asset disposal company in Harrogate, was standing in a large windowless room of a data center in London surrounded by thousands of used hard drives owned by a credit card company. Knowing he could wipe the drives and sell them on, he offered a six-figure sum for all the devices.

The answer was no. Instead, a lorry would be driven up to the site, and the data-storing devices would be dropped inside by authorized security personnel. Then industrial machines would shred them into tiny fragments.

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Morgan Stanley on Tuesday agreed to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a $35 million penalty for data security lapses that included unencrypted hard drives from decommissioned data centers being resold on auction sites without first being wiped.

The SEC action said that the improper disposal of thousands of hard drives starting in 2016 was part of an “extensive failure” over a five-year period to safeguard customers’ data as required by federal regulations. The agency said that the failures also included the improper disposal of hard drives and backup tapes when decommissioning servers in local branches. In all, the SEC said data for 15 million customers was exposed.

"Astonishing failures"

“MSSB’s failures in this case are astonishing,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC’s enforcement division, using the initials for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, the full name of the firm. “Customers entrust their personal information to financial professionals with the understanding and expectation that it will be protected, and MSSB fell woefully short in doing so.”