Backblaze is a cloud-based online backup tool. They conducted a study to find out which hard disk drive models were the most reliable, and thus able to last longest before failing. The challenge many end users are facing when they choose their drives is how to find out what the most reliable hard disk drives from all of the different brands and models available, with different capacities for storing data in them. A group of engineers founded Backblaze in 2007 year as an American company that specializes in online data backup. They started keeping track of what how long drives lasted based on their model. One useful thing about this research? It takes note of how long each type lasts until it fails.
Backblaze has been testing a range of hard drives from HGST, Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital. All these brands are known for producing high-capacity disks that compromise slightly on data performance. The capacity of each respective disk model tested ranges from 4 TB to 16 TB depending on the make. Backblaze conducted two tests in 2021 but first let’s hear what their main findings were in the first one performed this year across 171,919 disks spread across four different centers with 348 failing (equal to 0.85% AFR).
A satisfying result. They added 42,000 new hard drives to their farm and migrated another 23,600 over the period- four models reported no failures at all: Seagate ST6000DX000 (6TB 128MB Cache 7200RPM), Toshiba MD04ABA400V (4TB 128MB Cache 5400RPM), Toshiba MG08ACA16TEY (16TB 512MB Cache 7200 RPM) and WD WUH721816ALE6L0. Two disks recorded only 1 failure; Toshiba MG07ACA14TA and Seagate ST1600NM0138. The conclusion is that these mentioned models had very well performed with zero failures or close to it – they would be a great choice for you if you need a disk with less storage capacity than 6 TB because of cost reasons like 4 TB HDD – this model HSGT HMS5C4040ALE640 has an annualized failure rate of 0.64% which means just 5 disks failed out of 3163 during this time period!
Backblaze conducted a second test in 2021, and found that 177,935 disks had an annualized failure rate of 1.01%. This is slightly higher than Q1’s 0.96% but we can also take into consideration the 6016 new drives added to the total amount of tested ones which makes it more understandable why there are some differences between this and last report on disk failures by Backblaze. In both reports we can conclude that Seagate ST6000DX000 and WDC WUH721816ALE6LO were among the best performers in regards to disk reliability during back up storage competition held by Backblaze with average age for Seagate ST600MDX000 being just over six years (74 months) while having only one failure recorded since opening – not too bad at all! The drive WDWDWUH721816ALE6L has been installed for three months so far without any failures though its AFR moved from 0%, as seen before, to 4% now… Interesting enough HSGT HUH72212ALEX60 resides on Dell company servers where they seem back on track again with zero reported faults within past two quarters.
The BackBlaze report provides helpful insight because it uses thousands of hard drives for storage. That makes the information one of the best sources to find out about the reliability and other things about hard drives. However, reports from BackBlaze are not perfect, and there has been some controversy over them as well. It is said that they’ve changed their storage pod designs which could have impacted certain models’ reliability while also using consumer-grade drives in a business setting where they’re running 24/7 with no downtime at all. Additionally, when measuring only manufacturers without taking into account different models or capacities-the numbers were found to be pretty inaccurate; Toshiba’s 3TB and 4TB HDDs actually failed most often followed by Seagate’s 4TB HDD model after an average time lapse of four years (while WD was much better).
According to the last test, obviously, you should consider skipping Seagate and opting for Toshiba or HGST when it comes to 4TB drives. But even among different capacity disks there are models at different price ranges that can be expected have a higher or lower success rate over time.
For example: Backblaze found that the specific models of the 6 TB Seagate (0% failure rate in 2021) and 12 TB HSGT & 16 TB WDC had no failures so far – which is quite impressive! And they can be one of your next hard drives if reliability is what matters most. We can conclude from this data that hard drive reliability depends on model type and environmental conditions where they are running- extra metrics like MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) also matter when purchasing new disks.
If you happen to be in the business of data storage, then yes these tiny percentage differences can make a huge difference for you. But if not, than it doesn’t matter which drive manufacturer and model is going to work best based on this information alone. All that matters is that you keep backing up your data and don’t have any disasters related to loss of data anytime soon!
If you need your files recovered off a failed harddrive, be sure to do thorough research into lists of the best data recovery companies available so as not end up paying more money than necessary or worse – being left with nothing after they take months longer than they said they would deliver results. Consider cost, experience rating (reviews), turnaround time while shopping for such services online.