Running a storage cloud means serving as both builder and building inspector. You choose the materials, put them to work at scale, and return quarter after quarter to see how the structure is holding up. After 13+ years of publishing Drive Stats, we know the materials in this particular house pretty well. So, when our preferred home improvement store introduces a new and improved brick (so to speak) we want to understand how it fits into the build. That question is becoming more relevant as higher-capacity drives become more (dare we say) load bearing. We’ve already been tracking the performance of drives at 20TB and above as a group; later in this installment of Drive Stats, we’ll talk about some of the differences between our current building blocks (CMR HDDs) and the new bricks. But first, to take this extended pun to its inevitable conclusion, the inspection (a.k.a. The Stats).…