#Backblaze hard drive failure rates drivers

First, the 8 TB drives as a group seem to be having a mid-life crisis as they get older, with each model exhibiting their highest failure rates recorded.

#Backblaze hard drive failure rates drivers

There are two primary drivers behind this rise. About 75% of the different drive models experienced a rise in AFR from 2018 to 2019. The total AFR for 2019 rose significantly in 2019. The data for each year is inclusive of that year only and for the drive models present at the end of each year. The chart below compares the Annualized Failure Rates (AFR) for each of the last three years. Comparing Hard Drive Stats for 2017, 2018, and 2019 They have logged a total of 100 drive days, so it is way too early to say anything other than more to come in the Q1 2020 report. You won’t find these in the Q4 stats, but in Q1 2020 we added 20 (twenty) Toshiba 16 TB drives, model: MG08ACA16TA. As with the Toshiba 8 TB, purchasing more of these 10 TB drives is unlikely. The HGST drives recorded only 1,840 drive days in Q4 and a total of 8,042 since being installed. They reside in the same Backblaze Vault as the Seagate 10 TB drives. These drives have been in service a little over one year. There are 20 (twenty) HGST 10 TB drives, model: HUH721010ALE600 in the operation. Given we are moving to 16 TB drives and beyond, we most likely will not be buying any of these drives in the future. We like these drives, but by the time they were available to us in quantity, we could buy 12 TB drives at the same cost per TB. In Q4, they only had 1,840 drive days, below the reporting threshold, but lifetime they do have 13,994 drive days with only 1 drive failure, giving us an AFR of 2.6%. These drives have been installed for nearly two years. In Q4 2019 there were 20 (twenty) Toshiba 8 TB drives, model: HDWF180. Assuming they continue to pass our drive qualification process, they will be used in the 12 TB migration project and to add capacity as needed in 2020. There have been 0 (zero) failures through Q4, making the AFR 0%, a good start for any drive. As of the end of Q4 we had 40 (forty) drives in operation, with a total of 1,440 drive days-well below our 5,000 drive day threshold for Q4, so they didn’t make the 2019 chart. In Q4 2019 we started qualifying Seagate 16 TB drives, model: ST16000NM001G. We wanted to take a few minutes to shed some light on these drive models and where they are going in our environment. There are a handful of drive models that didn’t make it to the 2019 chart because they hadn’t recorded enough drive-days in operation. Beyond the 2019 Chart-“Hidden” Drive Models The AFR for 2019 for all drive models was 1.89% which is much higher than 2018. For their part, the Seagate 6 TB and 10 TB drive continue to be solid performers with annualized failure rates of 0.96% and 1.00% respectively. The Toshiba 14 TB drive, model MG07ACA14TA, is performing very well at a 0.65% AFR, similar to the rates put up by the HGST drives. For example, if there had been just 1 (one) drive failure during the year, the Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) for that Toshiba model would be 0.92%-still excellent, not 0%. That’s very good, but the data sample is still somewhat small. The only drive model not to have a failure during 2019 was the 4 TB Toshiba, model: MD04ABA400V. The 5,000 drive-day limit removes those drive models where we only have a limited number of drives working a limited number of days during the period of observation. These drives were either used for testing or did not have at least 5,000 drive days during Q4 of 2019.

There were 151 drives (122,658 minus 122,507) that were not included in the list above. The table below covers what happened in 2019. For evaluation they removes from consideration those drives that were used for testing purposes and those drive models for which did not have at least 5,000 drive days during Q4. 2019 Hard Drive Failure RatesĪt the end of 2019 Backblaze was monitoring 122,658 hard drives used to store data. Of that number, there were 2,229 boot drives and 122,658 data drives. Backblaze had 124,956 spinning hard drives. Backblaze published its 2019 hard drive failure rates for the data drive models in operation in their data centers.