Drive Regeneration in Action: Enhancing Fault Tolerance in Datacenters

Datacenter reliability and storage availability are critical to ensuring uninterrupted access to data in today’s fast-paced digital landscape. Today, HDD defects (such as media defects) are managed as part of fault tolerance. Storage Element Depopulation, also known as Drive Regeneration, is an innovative HDD technology that expands fault tolerance by allowing drives with larger defects (such as a degraded recording head) to remain operational rather than being decommissioned. This talk will explore the types of Drive Regeneration, detailing its mechanisms for isolating defective regions while preserving most of the drive’s capacity. Real-world examples and best practices will be shared to illustrate how this technology is being deployed today to optimize storage availability and minimize the need to deploy service personnel for replacements.