Feb 12, 2020 12:20:00

Statistical data of HDD failure rate by manufacturer / model 2019 version, what was the highest failure rate?

Backblaze , a cloud storage service provider, has released a 2019 edition of data that summarizes the failure rate of HDDs used in its data center. Data on more than 120,000 HDDs is organized by manufacturer and data capacity, so you can easily see which models have a higher failure rate.

2019 Hard Drive Reliability: Failure Rates Continue to Rise
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2019/

At the end of 2019, 122,658 HDDs were operating as Backblaze data storage. Data collected from 122,507 HDDs excluding HDDs used for test purposes and models with less than 5,000 days of total working days and not a statistically significant number are as follows It is as follows. The average annual failure rate (AFR) for all HDDs in 2019 was 1.89%, down 0.74 points from 1.25% in 2018. The only 4TB HDD that had no failures in 2019 was the Toshiba model (MD04ABA400V), which had only 99 units in operation.

There are two main factors that caused the annual failure rate to deteriorate from 2018 to 2019. First, the 8TB model from Seagate is approaching the middle of its life cycle and the annual failure rate has begun to worsen. The annual failure rate itself is not high enough to be a concern, but as it accounts for a large percentage of the total number of HDDs, the average annual failure rate has been raised. The second point is that the annual failure rate of the Seagate 12TB model, which has more than 30,000 units in operation, is higher than usual. The cause is currently under investigation and will be resolved in cooperation with Seagate.

Backblaze succeeded in increasing the total capacity by 181PB (181,000TB) from 2018 as a result of increasing capacity, such as replacing all 8800 HDDs with 12TB models in 2019. The diversity of HDD manufacturers used has also improved, with Seagate models accounting for 78.15% in 2018 to 73.28%, HGST models from 20.77% to 23.69%, and Toshiba products from 1.34% to 3.03% And the emphasis on Seagate has improved.

Finally, for all models that were operating on Backblaze as of the end of 2019, the total failure rates from the start of operation in 2013 to the end of 2019 are as follows. All HGST models have a failure rate of less than 1% and boast phenomenal reliability. Despite the small number of units in operation, Toshiba models are also maintaining a low failure rate.

Backblaze has released HDD data operated by the company every year since 2013, and you can refer to the data for each year from the following.

Backblaze Hard Drive Stats

https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html