[effie]

Regarding "bigboy stuff", it is really a simple argument, let me repeat in simpler words. Extreme data reliability beyond RAID6 is important for some specific deployments where loss of data is unacceptable, say for a unique experiment at CERN or a long supercomputer job that can't be repeated. But such strategy is also needlessly costly for other, less critical RAID users. The latter group of operators is many times bigger and this is often not reflected in these "RAID5/RAID6 is obsolete" discussions.

I agree with you that in time, the high-end tech becomes the standard tech. But that takes some time. There is quite a non-magical space of small providers who do not care for super reliable storage or super fast rebuilds and this will be the case for a long time. Yes the faster the rebuild the better, and "it is a concern" is fine. One week or month rebuild can be lived with. There is nothing magical about one day, one week or one month. They are all very short compared to typical drive lifespan.

At the same time, yes I believe 100TB drives, if they come, will be used in those extremely reliable big deployments, simply because of better TCO and expansion of data. Even if rebuild times will be longer than today, I believe it can be made to work reliably.