@benjojo Seagate X14(z) drives with 1 head disabled, 8 platters, 16 head. so 875gb per head. Seagate has been quite public about that that the drives in case of a head failure, that they can be low level formattted with 1 head less minus the capacity of that head.

Now unsure if this is seagate relabeling them or some referb shop fixing up old drives this way.

But ye doing in production reformatting to a lower capacity by just nuking one head is a thing now.

@benjojo The seagate CORVAULT does this on the fly and with EC it supports with no issue differnt sized drives in the arrays. But guess that CEPH etc also will handle this fine with no issue. I *think* how to trigger this is also documented now finally for the 30T mosaiek 3(+) drives.

@evey @benjojo How does those things perform over time? Do they hold up?

@johannwagner_ @benjojo Fine, until an other head breaks. But like at least seagate clames (and other vendors too). That a head breaking is what happens the most common, given they fly so close to the platters and other fine complicated parts. So just bad luck if one breaks but at some scale its not worth it anymore to swap them out.
And like we at work already are at 1-3 broken drives a week. At a bigger scale you end up with people full time swapping drives. So i totally get why people use it

@evey @benjojo We are not running storage at those scales, a failing drive is a rare occasion on our end.

@benjojo Bargain hardware are selling those listed as 'refurb' with 'Under 10 Hours Use' which seems very odd.

@benjojo acab drive