It turned out that the operation data of more than 40 thousand HDDs was released and the tendency of reliable hard disk manufacturers changed

Provide online storage serviceBackblazeThinks which brand HDD is the most reliable "from the large amount of HDD operation data used in its own service and periodically announces the result. Up to now it was a reliability report that only severe HDD of Seagate saw it, but it seems that there is a big change in the trend in the latest version announced in January 2015.

The Ultimate Hard Drive Test: What Hard Drive is Best?
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

The history of the reliability report so far can be seen in the following article.

Finally which manufacturer's hard disk is hardest to break is revealed with 25,000 survey results - GIGAZINE


The overwhelming destruction of Seagate products revealed from the record of operating approximately 35,000 HDDs - GIGAZINE


As of December 31, 2014, the HDD operated by Backblaze which reached a total of 42,133 units is now changing to a 4 TB model, and some of them are beginning to introduce a 6 TB model .

The main HDD data list for the full year 2014 looks like this. You can see that some Seagate products have models with high failure rates. In addition, the model written in HGST also includes those of the former brand Hitachi.


On the other hand, this is a graph showing the failure rate of HDD for the entire year. A gray bar shows year-round data for 2013 and a colored bar shows full year data for 2014. Seagate's 3 TB model seems to have broken up through 2014.


According to the growing demand for cloud storage services, Backblaze has switched to operation with a larger capacity HDD, as mentioned above, said that most 1.5 TB models have switched to the 4 TB model. The reason for transferring data to the 4 TB model rather than the 3 TB model seems to be not only that the capacity unit price of the 4 TB model is cheaper and the cost performance is improved but also its high reliability.

A graph showing the failure occurrence rate of 2013 and 2014 of the 4 TB model of HGST · Seagate. The reliability of the 4 TB model is rising regardless of the type of manufacturer.


Backblaze is paying attention to the low failure rate of Seagate's 4 TB model. The Seagate 4TB HDD is relatively cheap, so the backblaze's adoption is also large, the failure occurrence rate through 2014 which is the first year of operation is 2.6% which is very low and excellent. This is a remarkable excellent result compared with Seagate's 3 TB model's first year failure rate of 9.3%, "Seagate products that had high failure rates until now, but it seems to be able to expect for 4 TB models" "Says Backblaze. Since the price of Western Digital's 4 TB model is high, so far the number of hires adopted so far is not included in the data this time.

3 TB model · 4 TB model is mainstream for HDD operated by Backblaze Currently, it is HGST that shows high reliability in both 3 TB and 4 TB models. However, in the 4 TB model, Seagate seems to be as excellent as HGST is. It is expected that the adoption of the 6TB model with larger capacity will also increase in the future, and the trend of "Which manufacturer is the most reliable HDD?"

· Continued
"Raw data" of model breakdown rate obtained by operating more than 40,000 HDDs is released and available for download - GIGAZINE