May 08, 2023 14:35:00

Backblaze, which operates over 230,000 HDDs, publishes ``Statistical data by manufacturer/model 2023 Q1 edition'' summarizing failure rates by model

Backblaze , a cloud storage company that operates more than 230,000 HDDs as of March 31, 2023, will report on HDD failure rates in the first quarter of 2023 (January to March) by manufacturer, model, and usage. We published a report that analyzes each year.

Backblaze Drive Stats for Q1 2023
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q1-2023/

Backblaze operates a huge amount of HDDs at data centers owned around the world, and publishes a `` HDD failure rate report for data drives '' every quarter. On May 4, 2023, Backblaze released a failure rate report for 237,278 data HDDs in operation as of the end of the first quarter of 2023 (March 31, 2023).

The table below summarizes the HDD failure rate by model, 'MFG' is the HDD manufacturer, 'Model' is the model name, 'Drive Size' is the capacity, 'Drive Count' is the number of units in operation, 'Avg. 'Age' is the average number of months of operation, 'Drive Days' is the total number of operating days, 'Drive Failures' is the number of failures, and 'AFR' is the annual failure rate. There are 7 types of HDD models, 13 types of Seagate , 7 types of Toshiba, and 3 types of WDC , and Backblaze operates a total of 30 types of models.

The model with the highest annual failure rate was 7.46% of Seagate's ST12000NM0007 (12 TB), and the number of Backblaze units in operation was 1239, the cumulative number of operation days was 112,607 days, and the average number of operation months was 40.6 months. The next highest failure rate was Seagate's ST14000NM0138 (14 TB), with a failure rate of 6.23%, the number of units in operation was 1497, the cumulative number of operating days was 134,818 days, and the average number of operating months was 27.8 months. .

In addition, the annual failure rate of all HDDs in the first quarter of 2023 is 1.54%, which is higher than 1.21% in the fourth quarter of 2022, which is the previous quarter, and 1.22% in the first quarter of 2022, which is the same period of the previous year. increase. Backblaze notes that quarterly annual failure rates can fluctuate, but they help identify trends that warrant further investigation.

For example, the following three types of HDDs have more than doubled the annual failure rate from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the first quarter of 2023, and these HDDs require further review.

Below is a list of HDDs that did not fail or only one failed in the first quarter of 2023. Backblaze states that models with less than 50,000 cumulative operating days do not have statistically sufficient data, but Seagate's ST16000NM002J (16TB) has been reported to have failed in the fourth quarter of 2022. No, the ST8000NM000A (8TB) has reported no failures since its introduction in Q3 2022.

This is a graph that categorizes the annual HDD failure rate in the first quarter of 2023 by HDD size. In addition, only Seagate's ST6000DX000 is used for 6TB HDD, and Seagate's ST10000NM0086 is the only 10TB HDD. Among the sizes with multiple models, the 8 TB HDD had the highest failure rate, and the 16 TB HDD had the lowest failure rate. In addition, since the average number of operation months is less than 20 months for all 16 TB HDDs, the short number of operation months may be related to the low failure rate.

Below is a graph of the annual failure rate for each manufacturer. Seagate has the highest failure rate of 2.28%, but Backblaze said that the reason for this may be related to the fact that many of the HDDs that have been in operation for a long time are made by Seagate.