en.cppreference.com/w/c/numeric/random/RAND_MAX.html has an example of code that would be broken if rand() returned a value greater than the RAND_MAX in effect when the calling code was compiled.

printf("Random value on [0,1]: %f\n", (double)rand() / RAND_MAX);

yeah

sommerfeld yea, I'm not really. I have to admit, I did a small reality check.

Yesterday was HDC 3's 5th in-production anniversary. Since it's year 5/6 I'm contemplating HDC 4's specs. I've some disk questions.

Does anyone here use 20TB drives? NFW can I afford double-digit TB SSD, and I have mirrored 14TB today

(also I'll be buying 3 to be triple-mirrored or at least attach/resilver/split-1 for offsite).

Yes I read backblaze too....

ahh. so that's why my friend was asking me about AMD :)

last time he asked was prior to bhyve being a thing so the whole 'kvm doesn't work w/ AMD' was a concern

Unless Intel pulls something interesting out of their rear-ends in the next 6-9 mos, HDC 4 will also be AMD.

We don't have any experience with the HDDs, we're all SSD here.

(EPYC or Ryzen is still up in the air... I think there are low-power EPYC parts now...)

I know rmustacc. :)

Yeah, HDC is a case where SP6 could make sense.

SP6... socket type?

But also the Epyc branded Ryzen line is also there.

Yeah, it's the smaller form factor Epyc line.

Less cores, less DRAM channels, lower power.

But when you get closer to it, we can talk about what's on the market and what makes sense based on your power / density / etc. needs.

My current 3700X (Zen2) hit a sweet-spot between core-count (8/16), core-speed (3.6GhZ but we know frequency is misleading), and power (65W TDP).

I personally need to evaluate the balances currently there and recalculate accordingly. And I appreciate the offer.

(There's also making sure P&Z get their degrees during this injury-time academic year, etc. etc.)

I'm here about large disks, though. Looks like either Toshiba or WDC's-ex-HGST for me if I go 20 or higher, but strangely Seagate has a decent 16 model, so says backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q2-2025

There is low power am5 epyc

Ended up going ryzen though, not running illumos on it unfortunately

Pwr/perf wise it’s great though

No thoughts on large HDDs ?

I upgraded my pool to 20T Exos

From serverpartdeals.com

There are went for recertified and pretty happy with then

Want to reply my 2 intel nodes too but no good offerings ans need ppt so sticking with my old hw for now

ST24000NM002H is what backblaze has (24TB) with a 2% failure rate.

I got the 20T one

i wonder how sophisticated their stuff is in terms of failure...

we're pretty bad about dealing with bad blocks (though I don't think Linux is any better)

danmcd, I've been running a pool of 6 ATA ST20000NM007D-3D SN0 for a while now, no complaints.

5 in raidz3-0 with one spare.

hmm... Now I have this nagging feeling that I did send one drive in for RMA. Need to check email to see if I have a record.

Looks like I bought the hot spare in November of last year. Not finding records of an RMA.

One of my WDC/HGSTs was a BIG PROBLEM DRIVE but once I got it RMAed things got much nicer.

I don't think I would ever buy another WD drive

They secretly swapped real hard disks for bullshit SMR disks without changing _even the model number_

In the Red NAS drive tier, which people buy specifically to avoid bullshit like that

and their 'fix' when they got caught was grudging at best.

They lied about it for ages, and then never really acknowledged wrongdoing

sadly, the alternative - seagate - has been doing stupid as well. I don't think there's a 'clean' vendor in this space anymore.

though I still buy from Seagate as my main vendor.

Seagate certainly make a lot of products that I don't think I want to buy, but I'm not sure they've been quite as flagrantly dishonest

I only buy the WDC that used to be HGST (whom they bought).

they're all bad :)

i've lost track of the number of firmware bugs I've found with a certain SSD manufacturer's TCG implementation

heh

so you can't create a small fat12 filesystem with mkfs despite what the man page suggests

TIL fat12 is a thing

well if you want to make a small image

jclulow yeah WD RED used to be OK, now they are utter garbage, you can get a WD RED Pro that is less bad but still not good.