Statistical data of HDD failure rate by manufacturer and model 2020 version, what was the highest failure rate?



Backblaze , a cloud storage service provider, has released the 2020 version of the failure rate report for 160,000 HDDs operating in its data center.

Backblaze Hard Drive Stats for 2020
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-for-2020/

As of the end of 2020, Backblaze was operating 162,530 HDDs for data storage. The table below summarizes the failure rates from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020 for 162,299 HDDs, excluding test HDDs and HDDs with a short operation period.



Looking at the models whose 'Drive Days', which is the total number of working days for each model, exceeds 250,000 days, which can guarantee the validity of the failure rate, the annual failure of Seagate's 6TB model 'ST6000DX000' The failure rate was 0.23%, the lowest failure rate of all models. Regarding the failure rate of HGST HDDs, which show good reliability in the company's report every year, the 4TB model 'HMS5C4040ALE640' and 'HMS5C4040BLE640' are 0.27%, the 8TB model 'HUH728080ALE600' is 0.29%, and the 12TB model 'HUH721212ALE600' is 0.31. %, Maintaining a low level.

The table below lists the new HDD models that cleared Backblaze's rating during 2020 and were introduced into the data center. The policy of introducing a new model to secure the diversity of HDDs has led to strong operation that can withstand the disruption of the supply chain due to the spread of the new coronavirus infection.



It should be noted that the Western Digital (WD) HDD, which Backblaze excluded for reasons such as price, is being reintroduced in 2019. Backblaze explained that the WD 14TB model 'WUH721414ALE6L4' introduced this time inherits the HGST system acquired by WD, and the annual failure rate is 0.16%, which is low although it has just started operation. It is a standard.

Below is a table comparing the annual failure rates by model for 2018, 2019, and 2020. Compared to 2019, when the annual failure rate of the entire model was 1.89%, the annual failure rate in 2020 is 0.93%, an improvement of about 50%.



Backblaze commented that this improvement was 'due to corporate efforts.' In the 2019 report, it was explained that 'the increase in HDDs in the middle of the life cycle' and 'the high failure rate of Seagate 12TB model HDDs' led to the deterioration of the overall annual failure rate. In 2020, these problems have been addressed, and the failure rate of old HDDs has improved overall, and the failure rate of Seagate's 12TB model 'ST12000NM0007', which recorded a high failure rate of 3.31% in 2019, is 1.04. It has dropped to%.

Below is the total failure rate from the start of operation in 2013 to the end of 2020 for all models operated by Backblaze as of the end of 2020. In this table, an item called 'Confidence Intervals' indicating 'reliability of annual failure rate' has been added, and the smaller the difference between the 'Low' and 'High' values, the more reliable the annual failure rate value. something like. For example, the failure rate of 'ST18000NM000J' is 12.54%, which is the highest value in the table, but the low value of Confidence Intervals is 1.5% and the high value is 45.8%, which is quite different, so the reliability of the failure rate is low. It can be used for judgments such as.



The original data used in this report can be downloaded from the following page.

Backblaze Hard Drive Stats
https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html



in Hardware, Posted by darkhorse_log