HDD failure rate is nearly equivalent to enterprise for consumers, Backblaze reports HDD failure rate 2017 Q 2 report

Backblaze, which provides cloud storage service, released the report for the second quarter of 2017 which summarizes the failure rate of the hard disk (HDD) operated by the company. Regarding data on enterprise HDDs which was introduced in large quantities in the first quarter, though the operation time is still short and it is reference level, it is said that figures equivalent to those for consumers are issued.

2017 Hard Drive Reliability By Manufacturer and Model
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-stats-q2-2017/

According to Backblaze, the change in number of drives between the first quarter of 2017 and the second quarter was replaced with 4286 units, and since 4921 units were newly added, it is 635 plus deductions. Total number of units used was 80 315 units.

A total of 17 HDDs are in operation, capacity is 3 TB to 8 TB. According to Backblaze, it is said that if the total HDD operation time of the same model does not exceed 50,000 days, it will not be useful as data, so the figures of the eight models below it should be regarded as reference level. By subtracting that, the highest failure rate was Seagate's "ST 4000 DM000". We have operated more than 34,000 units, and the failure rate is 3.25%. In Seagate's model, the failure rate shows around 1%. On the other hand, the failure rate is in the mid-0% range while the HGST's 3 TB and 4 TB models operate for at least 200,000 hours, respectively.


In the first quarter of 2017, the failure rate of "ST 8000 NM 055" for enterprises, which was introduced in large quantities, was 1.55% at 6054 units. "ST 8000 DM 002" for consumers was 0.98% in 9870 units operation, so the failure rate for enterprises is higher, but Backblaze still has a relatively short total operation time of about 300 thousand days, Normally, the failure rate gradually decreases as the operation time increases, so it is considered premature to conclude at this stage. As a cornerstone of this, it seems that the failure rate was 1.60% in the data when the operation time of "ST 8000 DM 002" reached about 900 thousand days was about 300 thousand days, so it finally settles where it cuts 1% I wonder.

By the way, Backblaze is supposed to start installing 12 TB HDD from September 2017, commenting that "8 TB may be" antique ".