chz linked me this interesting read from Carnegie Mellon University's Parallel Data Lab on hard drive uniqueness:
www.pdl.cmu.edu/PDL-FTP/Storage/CMU-PDL-11-102.pdf
I'm getting ready to build a new RAID box and had asked if the standard was still to spread out drive purchases to avoid getting all drives from one batch. Apparently this is no longer the case with modern hard drives and adaptive zoning. Good to see some actual research data before investing money in disks!
