[huhtenberg]

> That is simply not true.

It indeed is not. Had to reread the theory and I stand corrected, RS-style ECC can't detect errors in excess of the redundancy count.

> How is that not real bitrot?

It is and I can see how it can happen.

> How does it matter, beyond ruling out everything above the disk level, what the precise causes are?

It would've mattered if a drive could detect on-disk bitrot reliably, which was what the stats I worked with (also in exabytes, funnily enough) and the IEEE papers I read led me to believe.

For what it's worth, you won. Hats off.

[notacoward]

Thank you for an interesting (despite being contentious) conversation.