I will never trust Toshiba enterprise drives again. At my old company, we got in several new systems with 13 74GB 10k Toshiba drives in the main system and 22 in an expansion tray, and some spares, with a total order of 430 drives for testing of a new backup storage product line. In the following 3 years, every single one of those drives failed, with some cases where one would die and the power spike would take out the drives on both sides of it, for example drive 14 would die and take drives 13 and 15 with it. This was particularly troublesome since the product specs were that drives would be configure in RAID 1 pairs right next to each other. So, inevitably, we had several cases where both a drive and its mirror would die, leaving the system unusable. If it had been live backup data on our customers' systems, they would have lost all of their backup data. Even better was that we had a couple instances where the failed drive also managed to damage the backplane.
Drives that had an MTBF and implied that we should have 90%+ in operation 5 years later, yet ALL of them died within 3 years.
For some reason, management decided to ship with these drives. Our customers paid for it, since several had their storage appliances die from triple drive failures, and in one case, the Federal Reserve had a backup appliance die with a triple drive and backplane power spike. That one was fun to clean up. I had to prepare the replacement for shipping personally, after a 3 day test to confirm stability. I also had to take a picture of every drive to show there were no Toshiba drives in the unit before they would accept it.
It was embarrassing and badly hurt my company's credibility. I will not trust Toshiba enterprise drives again, specifically because of this experience.
The internet is alight with reports of the Intel CPU bug and here is Anandtech reporting on Toshiba SAS HDDs... As if more proof was needed as to in who's pocket does their journalistic integrity sits.
Really? Anandtech posts a press release for a Toshiba drive so you're calling their integrity into question?
You live a sad, miserable life posting on a site you despise every day. You're not making any actual points, just snide comments that one would expect from the average neckbeard of the internet. I don't get why the editors continue to let you post here, but I guess that speaks more about their integrity than any press release would.
I don't think you got it but it's forgiven because you seem new here: they post all kinds of updates on every little piece of uninteresting news EXCEPT the biggest news of the beginning of this year. The one about the Intel CPU bug.
AT always has a way of delaying any bad news about Intel while flooding you with good articles and reviews as soon as Intel launches something. Every site out there reported on this, some of them wrote lengthy articles full of technical details.
Now what do you call a man who jumps to conclusions without making any effort to understand what this is about? Other than a jordanclock I mean.
I'm not so sure about that any more. I often read quite superficial articles on Ars, then need to come somewhere else (often here) to get the technical details over and above the press-release level stuff that Ars often posts these days.
It's amazing how things like this happen, almost as if the person who posts news about new products, and the people who do in depth articles about major technical issues are separate people.
You're right, I mean it's not like they're paid by the same publication and have the same target: to report on the news. I'm sure all the guys who are allowed to write about Intel are on vacation or something.
Dan, you've been known to miss some pretty obvious points but it looks like you're going for the record.
And by the way, it's not that I hate AT. Actually this has been my absolute number 1 source of tech info for years. Why hate me for holding the current editorial team to high standards? I expect them to deliver like when Anand was still part of that team. And they don't.
You blame me, hate me, or insult me for pointing out something that is objectively true as if I am the one responsible for this. In the past years you can see an obvious trend and a strong Intel bias here. Bad news are delayed, positive news are always at hand on the front page, everything that is competition gets put on the back burner (if I remember correctly Intel forgot to report on the Threadripper or Epyc launch for weeks during which time the front page was flooded by dozens of Intel articles).
And mind you, the guy who should handle the in depth articles on the kind of topic I'm talking about was available just 2 days ago to post a lengthy report on an Intel product reported with scarce details only on the Intel India page. https://www.anandtech.com/show/12207/intel-with-ra...
More time is allocated to rumors about a product that to what looks like one of the biggest security bugs in recent history, affecting every CPU going back at least a decade, a bug who's fix incurs up to 35% performance penalty!!! Big news! Pretty quiet here on AT no?
So hate me all you want. Your real problem is that you know I'm right and that you have to admit it at least to yourselves.
Another agreeing with ddriver here. It's been at least 13 hours as of this post, and counting. Still nothing from AT about the Intel CPU kernel bug. 13 hours is plenty of time report it.
Actually, now that the embargo is over and the security reports are public... the early hints that it was a big Intel bug were misleading at best.
There's two bugs, codenamed Meltdown and Spectre. Meltdown was only demonstrated as an effective exploit on Intel parts. AMD is apparently vulnerable, but far more difficult to exploit. AMD is apparently spinning this as "we aren't vulnerable."
Spectre, on the other hand, is demonstrably usable on Intel, AMD, and more. It actually isn't even tied to processor architecture, as it was demonstrated as a valid attack against ARM processors as well.
Both exploits are similar in that they take advantage of interactions between CPU cache and out-of-order execution behaviors to capture data from memory that the process shouldn't have access to.
x86-wise, basically every processor released since the Pentium is vulnerable. Exceptions include Atoms released before 2013, and... that's it. Pentium 2s are vulnerable, Thunderbirds are vulnerable, Pentium 4s are vulnerable, Sledgehammers are vulnerable, Core 2s are vulnerable, Zen is vulnerable. If it has out-of-order execution, it is vulnerable. The answer to "is my system affected" is unusually simple in this case, as there are so few qualifiers.
That's the danger of reporting on rumors. Everyone else has piled onto the rumor mill and heaped speculation on top of hearsay and now everyone thinks this is Management Engine Rootkit 2 when it is actually something far more widespread. It makes friggin' Heartbleed look like a niche issue.
Anandtech has shown a reluctance in the past to report on rumor and hearsay, so no one should be surprised they haven't posted an article on Meltdown and Spectre yet. It makes them appear late to the party sometimes, but it also results in them offering less misinformation as fact.
A news story can always develop, that's not a good reason to completely ignore it. You'd end up never reporting anything because some details can change.
It's pretty detailed, might have some developments. But I'll take it instead of silence. I more or less gave up on AT. In depth articles are good but not when they come after everybody else gives you the same details.
The first article was largely speculative, and wound up being part wikipedia article about virtual memory, part hopeful speculation, and part *just plain wrong.*
The second article was rushed, and missed important chunks of the whitepapers, like the part where they had limited success with Meltdown on AMD and ARM processors and it isn't just an Intel problem. I particularly liked where Ars claims "neither one is sufficient on its own to, for example, break out of a Web browser", when the Spectre whitepaper details a Javascript implementation to do exactly that.
I do understand that audiences demand an article as soon as the rumor mill starts rolling, or within minutes of a press release, but... there are advantages to waiting until there is actual information to process. Advantages like not spending spend two days telling people about a devastating security flaw in Intel processors that is actually a collection of security flaws in post-1995 processor design. And personally, I value ACCURATE news over fast news.
You think Toshiba enterprise drives are bad...have you had any experience with their e-Studio's? Man those things are total SHIT. They actually get less reliable as you get higher end machines. The entry level 2500AC's are basically bulletproof, but really underpowered for a "copyroom" machine for a large office. So those poor people usually get fucked with a 6500 series, and I can't tell you how many control board, feeders and imaging belts I've replaced on 6540's. The shitbox of Japan. Get a Canon.
Try to google that intel report. you find alot of same 3hit on internet. intel burning money to not get hurt! but this problem is almost 10 years. and now who got a old 1155 plataform will be need to upgrade because the cpu WILL have a BIG HIT in performance. ALL people who need to upgrade from this intel Scam, get an AMD system. MACFEE WILL BE SMILE!
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23 Comments
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dgingeri - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
I will never trust Toshiba enterprise drives again. At my old company, we got in several new systems with 13 74GB 10k Toshiba drives in the main system and 22 in an expansion tray, and some spares, with a total order of 430 drives for testing of a new backup storage product line. In the following 3 years, every single one of those drives failed, with some cases where one would die and the power spike would take out the drives on both sides of it, for example drive 14 would die and take drives 13 and 15 with it. This was particularly troublesome since the product specs were that drives would be configure in RAID 1 pairs right next to each other. So, inevitably, we had several cases where both a drive and its mirror would die, leaving the system unusable. If it had been live backup data on our customers' systems, they would have lost all of their backup data. Even better was that we had a couple instances where the failed drive also managed to damage the backplane.Drives that had an MTBF and implied that we should have 90%+ in operation 5 years later, yet ALL of them died within 3 years.
For some reason, management decided to ship with these drives. Our customers paid for it, since several had their storage appliances die from triple drive failures, and in one case, the Federal Reserve had a backup appliance die with a triple drive and backplane power spike. That one was fun to clean up. I had to prepare the replacement for shipping personally, after a 3 day test to confirm stability. I also had to take a picture of every drive to show there were no Toshiba drives in the unit before they would accept it.
It was embarrassing and badly hurt my company's credibility. I will not trust Toshiba enterprise drives again, specifically because of this experience.
ddrіver - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
The internet is alight with reports of the Intel CPU bug and here is Anandtech reporting on Toshiba SAS HDDs... As if more proof was needed as to in who's pocket does their journalistic integrity sits.jordanclock - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
Really? Anandtech posts a press release for a Toshiba drive so you're calling their integrity into question?You live a sad, miserable life posting on a site you despise every day. You're not making any actual points, just snide comments that one would expect from the average neckbeard of the internet. I don't get why the editors continue to let you post here, but I guess that speaks more about their integrity than any press release would.
ddrіver - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
I don't think you got it but it's forgiven because you seem new here: they post all kinds of updates on every little piece of uninteresting news EXCEPT the biggest news of the beginning of this year. The one about the Intel CPU bug.AT always has a way of delaying any bad news about Intel while flooding you with good articles and reviews as soon as Intel launches something. Every site out there reported on this, some of them wrote lengthy articles full of technical details.
Now what do you call a man who jumps to conclusions without making any effort to understand what this is about? Other than a jordanclock I mean.
StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
Or Anandtech might be doing a thorough investigation and wishes to get all their facts right before reporting on the CPU bug.Anandtech has typically lagged behind other outlets, but their article quality tends to be more indepth, accurate and generally superior.
Spunjji - Thursday, January 4, 2018 - link
You might want to look at Ars Technica to see how quality /and/ speed can be done.rpg1966 - Thursday, January 4, 2018 - link
I'm not so sure about that any more. I often read quite superficial articles on Ars, then need to come somewhere else (often here) to get the technical details over and above the press-release level stuff that Ars often posts these days.StevoLincolnite - Thursday, January 4, 2018 - link
It's been posted now. So people can stop complaining.Hurr Durr - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
Come on, hypetane histrionics are entertaining!DanNeely - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
It's amazing how things like this happen, almost as if the person who posts news about new products, and the people who do in depth articles about major technical issues are separate people.ddrіver - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
You're right, I mean it's not like they're paid by the same publication and have the same target: to report on the news. I'm sure all the guys who are allowed to write about Intel are on vacation or something.Dan, you've been known to miss some pretty obvious points but it looks like you're going for the record.
ddrіver - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
And by the way, it's not that I hate AT. Actually this has been my absolute number 1 source of tech info for years. Why hate me for holding the current editorial team to high standards? I expect them to deliver like when Anand was still part of that team. And they don't.You blame me, hate me, or insult me for pointing out something that is objectively true as if I am the one responsible for this. In the past years you can see an obvious trend and a strong Intel bias here. Bad news are delayed, positive news are always at hand on the front page, everything that is competition gets put on the back burner (if I remember correctly Intel forgot to report on the Threadripper or Epyc launch for weeks during which time the front page was flooded by dozens of Intel articles).
And mind you, the guy who should handle the in depth articles on the kind of topic I'm talking about was available just 2 days ago to post a lengthy report on an Intel product reported with scarce details only on the Intel India page. https://www.anandtech.com/show/12207/intel-with-ra...
More time is allocated to rumors about a product that to what looks like one of the biggest security bugs in recent history, affecting every CPU going back at least a decade, a bug who's fix incurs up to 35% performance penalty!!! Big news! Pretty quiet here on AT no?
So hate me all you want. Your real problem is that you know I'm right and that you have to admit it at least to yourselves.
supdawgwtfd - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
Have to agree with ddriver here...As soon as I saw reports about the bug I got anandtech up for details.
Nothing.
Went elsewhere.
As he said... Potentially biggest security bug that is in hardware that goes back a decade which to fix will hurt performance...
People are interested in that.
wuzy - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
Another agreeing with ddriver here.It's been at least 13 hours as of this post, and counting. Still nothing from AT about the Intel CPU kernel bug. 13 hours is plenty of time report it.
Hurr Durr - Wednesday, January 3, 2018 - link
Didn`t you know that AT was one person writing under pseudonyms all this time? Let the man have his sleep.Lord of the Bored - Thursday, January 4, 2018 - link
Actually, now that the embargo is over and the security reports are public... the early hints that it was a big Intel bug were misleading at best.There's two bugs, codenamed Meltdown and Spectre. Meltdown was only demonstrated as an effective exploit on Intel parts. AMD is apparently vulnerable, but far more difficult to exploit. AMD is apparently spinning this as "we aren't vulnerable."
Spectre, on the other hand, is demonstrably usable on Intel, AMD, and more. It actually isn't even tied to processor architecture, as it was demonstrated as a valid attack against ARM processors as well.
Both exploits are similar in that they take advantage of interactions between CPU cache and out-of-order execution behaviors to capture data from memory that the process shouldn't have access to.
x86-wise, basically every processor released since the Pentium is vulnerable. Exceptions include Atoms released before 2013, and... that's it.
Pentium 2s are vulnerable, Thunderbirds are vulnerable, Pentium 4s are vulnerable, Sledgehammers are vulnerable, Core 2s are vulnerable, Zen is vulnerable. If it has out-of-order execution, it is vulnerable.
The answer to "is my system affected" is unusually simple in this case, as there are so few qualifiers.
That's the danger of reporting on rumors. Everyone else has piled onto the rumor mill and heaped speculation on top of hearsay and now everyone thinks this is Management Engine Rootkit 2 when it is actually something far more widespread. It makes friggin' Heartbleed look like a niche issue.
Anandtech has shown a reluctance in the past to report on rumor and hearsay, so no one should be surprised they haven't posted an article on Meltdown and Spectre yet. It makes them appear late to the party sometimes, but it also results in them offering less misinformation as fact.
close - Thursday, January 4, 2018 - link
A news story can always develop, that's not a good reason to completely ignore it. You'd end up never reporting anything because some details can change.https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/whats-behi...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/meltdown-a...
It's pretty detailed, might have some developments. But I'll take it instead of silence. I more or less gave up on AT. In depth articles are good but not when they come after everybody else gives you the same details.
Lord of the Bored - Friday, January 5, 2018 - link
The first article was largely speculative, and wound up being part wikipedia article about virtual memory, part hopeful speculation, and part *just plain wrong.*The second article was rushed, and missed important chunks of the whitepapers, like the part where they had limited success with Meltdown on AMD and ARM processors and it isn't just an Intel problem.
I particularly liked where Ars claims "neither one is sufficient on its own to, for example, break out of a Web browser", when the Spectre whitepaper details a Javascript implementation to do exactly that.
I do understand that audiences demand an article as soon as the rumor mill starts rolling, or within minutes of a press release, but... there are advantages to waiting until there is actual information to process. Advantages like not spending spend two days telling people about a devastating security flaw in Intel processors that is actually a collection of security flaws in post-1995 processor design. And personally, I value ACCURATE news over fast news.
XabanakFanatik - Thursday, January 4, 2018 - link
Can you cite a source about AMD being technically vulnerable to Meltdown?Lord of the Bored - Thursday, January 4, 2018 - link
Meltdown whitepaper, section 6.4https://meltdownattack.com
vidal6x6 - Friday, January 5, 2018 - link
Agree With ddriver. anand and toms have some biased sh1% about intel :) no one make DPC test latency.Samus - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
You think Toshiba enterprise drives are bad...have you had any experience with their e-Studio's? Man those things are total SHIT. They actually get less reliable as you get higher end machines. The entry level 2500AC's are basically bulletproof, but really underpowered for a "copyroom" machine for a large office. So those poor people usually get fucked with a 6500 series, and I can't tell you how many control board, feeders and imaging belts I've replaced on 6540's. The shitbox of Japan. Get a Canon.vidal6x6 - Friday, January 5, 2018 - link
Try to google that intel report. you find alot of same 3hit on internet. intel burning money to not get hurt! but this problem is almost 10 years. and now who got a old 1155 plataform will be need to upgrade because the cpu WILL have a BIG HIT in performance. ALL people who need to upgrade from this intel Scam, get an AMD system. MACFEE WILL BE SMILE!IF you don't belive https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-to-...