[j45]

Managing harddrives, especially in redundant setups can be helped in one small way if you're sure to:

1) select the make and model of drive you want

2) buy the same model of drives from multiple vendors which have different serial and build numbers.. even if you're buying two drives, buy each from separate locations or vendors.

3) mix up the drives to make sure they don't die. place stickers of purchase date and invoice number on each drive to keep them straight.

This all.. because when one drive goes due to a defect or hitting a similar MTBF, other ones with a close by serial number or build number can tend to die around the same time for similar reasons.

From owning hard drives over 8 or 9 generations of replacing or upgrading since the 90's on all types of servers, desktops and laptops: The day you buy a new piece of equipment is the day you buy it's death. Manage the death proactively as it gets more and more tiring to deal with it each time.