Feb 13, 2026 16:00:00

Which manufacturer makes the most fragile HDDs? Backblaze announces annual HDD failure rate for 2025

Backblaze , a company that operates a large number of hard disk drives (HDDs) for its cloud storage and data backup services, has published a report detailing the failure rates of storage devices operated in its data centers by make and model. The report, released on February 12, 2026, includes statistics such as the annual failure rate (AFR) through 2025.

Backblaze Drive Stats for 2025
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-2025/

As of the end of 2025, Backblaze will have 349,462 HDDs in its inventory. Of these, 4,176 boot drives and 1,090 data drives were excluded from the statistics because they did not meet Backblaze's annual criteria of 'more than 250 drives and more than 50,000 days of operation.' The annual failure rate for 2025 was calculated for a total of 344,196 HDDs of 30 types.

Below is a table showing Backblaze's HDD operation statistics for 2025. The most popular drive is Western Digital's WD Ultrastar HC570 WUH722222ALE6L4 22TB , with 44,577 units. Next is Toshiba's MG08ACA16TA, with 40,411 units. The 'AFR' on the far right of the table represents the annual failure rate, and the 'vulnerable HDD' with the highest AFR is Toshiba's MG08ACA16TEY , with an AFR of 6.30%.

Below is the AFR trend through 2025: 1.42% in the first quarter, 1.36% in the second quarter, 1.55% in the third quarter, and 1.13% in the fourth quarter.

The following is a comparison of the annual AFRs from 2022 to 2025. The AFR in 2022 is 1.37%, in 2023 it is 1.70%, in 2024 it is 1.57%, and in 2025 it is 1.36%. The AFR, which rose in 2023, has gradually declined and returned to the 2022 level.

Backblaze also cited HGST's HUH728080ALE600 8TB as a notable example for the fourth quarter of 2025. The HUH728080ALE600 8TB was the only model in the statistics for the same period to have a double-digit failure rate of 10.29, and Backblaze noted that since the failure rate over the past year was not particularly high, it is an example that definitely warrants investigation. According to Backblaze, environmental factors such as changes in temperature and airflow may also be a factor when drives are installed in the same location within a data center.

Additionally, in

the report for the third quarter of 2025 , Toshiba's ' MG08ACA16TEY ' showed an extremely high failure rate of 16.95%. Investigation revealed that the error was caused by a control issue in Toshiba's firmware. Expectations were high that the rate would return to normal in the fourth quarter of 2025, when the firmware was corrected, but the AFR was 4.14, which, while an improvement, is still higher than before.

The overall lifetime failure rate for drives with 500 or more drives and 100,000 or more days of operation by December 31, 2025, is 1.30%.

The complete failure rate study data set is available on Backblaze's 'Hard Drive Reliability Test Data ' page.

Backblaze Drive Stats: Download Hard Drive Reliability Stats, Reports, and Test Data
https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/resources/hard-drive-test-data