Nov 15, 2023 20:00:00

Backblaze, which operates 259,533 HDDs, releases a summary of failure rates by model 2023 Q3 version

Cloud storage company Backblaze has announced the failure rate by model of 259,533 HDDs operated in the third quarter of 2023 (July to September). For the first time, drive failure rates by data center are revealed.

Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2023

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2023/

◆Annual failure rate
The table below shows the annual failure rate by model in the third quarter of 2023. From left to right: 'MFG (manufacturer)', 'Model', 'Drive Size', 'Drive Count', 'Avg.Age' (average number of operating months), and 'Drive Days' (total number of operating days). 'Drive Failures' and 'AFR (Quarterly Annual Failure Rate)' are listed.

There are a total of six models with a failure rate of 0%, but with the exception of WDC's '

WUH722222ALE6L4 ', for which only one day has passed from the installation to the measurement date, only the models with statistically significant values were obtained. Seagate's 6TB model ' ST6000DX000 ' only. The number of machines in operation was 883, and the average number of months of operation was 101.1 months.

A total of four models had only one failure during the period. Of these, statistically significant values were obtained for WDC's 16TB model '

WUH721816ALE6L0 ' (AFR 0.15%) and Toshiba's 14TB model ' MG07ACA14TEY ' (AFR 0.63%).

In addition, Backblaze adds that AFR is a result based on quarterly values, and results may change from quarter to quarter. For reference, the results for the second quarter of 2023 (April to June) are below, and three ST6000DX000 units failed during this period, and the AFR reached 1.36%.

◆AFR comparison with previous quarter
AFR for all drives in Q3 2023 was 1.47%, down from 2.2% in Q2 and down from 1.65% year over year, although quarterly AFR can vary. Apparently it's common. In the second quarter report, it was pointed out that the AFR may increase due to the 'ageing of the entire drive,' but this result refutes the theory of aging.

As NASA researchers have pointed

out , ``2023 is almost certain to be the hottest year on record,'' and 2023 has been a year of relatively hot days. Temperature had a considerable influence on the results for the third quarter, which falls in the summer, with a total of 354 drives exceeding the maximum temperature specified by the manufacturer for at least one day. However, only two of these drives failed, and these two drives are excluded from our statistics.

◆Failure rate by data center
Backblaze manages multiple data centers and also publishes failure rates for each data center.

sac0 (Sacramento) has the highest AFR of all data centers, but it should be noted that it has the oldest drives. Older drive models generally fail more often. IAD (Ashburn) is a data center that has just been opened and has only been in operation for a short period of time. This is the first time we've shown statistics by data center, so Backblaze will continue to track this data in hopes of gleaning some insights.

◆Lifetime failure rate
Below is a table showing how many failures will occur when the HDD is used up to its service life. The most important column is 'Confidence Interval (95% confidence interval)', and the lower this value, the higher the reliability of AFR. In particular, a confidence interval of 0.5% or less is desirable; anything greater than that means the data are sparse or inconsistent.

The table below shows only models with a confidence interval of 0.5% or less. For example, the AFR of the aforementioned 'ST6000DX000' is 0.88%.

You can check the failure rate statistics of SSD in the following article.

'Which SSD is hard to break?' BackBlaze, which manages 3144 SSDs, releases 'Statistical data by manufacturer and model 2023 mid-term review SSD version' - GIGAZINE