The most reliable hard drives in 2015, according to Backblaze

[Brink]

Backblaze, a cloud storage company, records the reliability of different hard drives from different suppliers. The 2015 numbers reveal the success of the 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000, of which Backblaze now owns almost 30,000.

Here's a surprise: Seagate hard drives may now be more reliable than Western Digital models, according to Backblaze's Hard Drive Reliability Review for 2015. The failure rates in the bar chart above are cumulative from April 2013 to the end of 2015, by which time the company had 56,224 hard drives containing customer data in 1,249 Backblaze Storage Pods.

Previously, some Seagate hard drives exhibited high failure rates, with almost a third of Backblaze's 3TB Seagate drives (ST3000DM001) failing in 2012. In September 2014, I reported that "the three least reliable drives tested are all Seagate Barracuda models. The Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 has had an annual failure rate of 24.9 percent, the 3TB 7200.14 of 15.7 percent, and the 1.5TB Barracuda LP of 9.6 percent." (See Who makes the most reliable hard disk drives? Backblaze has updated its stats)

As Robin Harris reported here in April, Backblaze eventually pulled the 3TB Seagate drives out of service.

Historically, HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, but now owned by Western Digital) hard drives have been by far the most reliable, but in 2015, Backblaze still went for Seagate. The company explains that "the HGST 4TB drives, while showing exceptionally low failure rates, are no longer available having been replaced with higher priced, higher performing models. The readily available and highly competitive price of the Seagate 4TB drives, along with their solid performance and respectable failure rates, have made them our drive of choice."

Backblaze now reports that the Seagate 4TB hard drives had a failure rate of just under 3 percent, which was only a little higher than the 4TB WD models (barchart below).

Read more: The most reliable hard drives in 2015, according to Backblaze | ZDNet

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Read this with a grain of salt. The third quarter report for 2015 pointed out that, although WD had a sharp increase in number of failures, the average age of the drives was almost six years with some being as old as seven years.

The Western Digital 1TB drives in use are nearly 6 years old on average. There are several drives with nearly 7 years of service. It wasn’t until 2015 that the failure rate rose above the annual average for all drives. This makes sense given the “bathtub” curve of drive failure where drives over 4 years start to fail at a higher rate. Still the WD 1TB drives have performed well for a long time.

I have no idea why Backblaze didn't include more data in this most recent report like it did in the previous one.

 

[indianacarnie]

Well, looks like Seagate may be getting its mojo back and thats nice to see. That does not mean I will be buying anymore Seagate's though as every drive I've ever had fail were theirs. I'm happy to see Toshiba's drives doing so well too as those are what I've been getting lately.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Well, looks like Seagate may be getting its mojo back and thats nice to see. That does not mean I will be buying anymore Seagate's though as every drive I've ever had fail were theirs. I'm happy to see Toshiba's drives doing so well too as those are what I've been getting lately.

That's the way I would feel about WDs except that I'm hoping I never have to buy another HDD. Samsung is going to release a 4TB 850 EVO late in the second quarter and a 4TB 850 PRO in the third quarter. Sizewise, that is the magic point I've been waiting for. If Samsung SSD prices continue to drop at the rate they have been, there is an excellent chance I will be running nothing but SSDs in my rig instead of 2-4TB HDDs. I will still be using HDDs for backups due to the expense of replacing all of them but, as a backup HDD dies, I will replace it with a SSD.

 

[lehnerus2000]

Read this with a grain of salt. The third quarter report for 2015 pointed out that, although WD had a sharp increase in number of failures, the average age of the drives was almost six years with some being as old as seven years.

The Western Digital 1TB drives in use are nearly 6 years old on average. There are several drives with nearly 7 years of service. It wasn’t until 2015 that the failure rate rose above the annual average for all drives. This makes sense given the “bathtub” curve of drive failure where drives over 4 years start to fail at a higher rate. Still the WD 1TB drives have performed well for a long time.

I have no idea why Backblaze didn't include more data in this most recent report like it did in the previous one.

I suspect that there will be a lot more failures amongst their oldest drives.

My 6.5 year old WD 1TB HDD died a few days ago.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Six years or more is a pretty darned good lifespan for a HDD.

 

[mjf]

I actually like mathematics and statistics as an area of maths. Interpretation is the challenge.

 

[whs]

I have followed this over the years. The Japanese makes were always on top. I wonder what they pay them.

 

[mjf]

It's hard to know sometimes what "Japanese" products are made in Japan. Also, HDD manufacture has become consolidated in the last 5 years.

 

[whs]

But even if they are made some other place, the Japanese manufacturers seem to make sure there is a proper quality control.

 

[lehnerus2000]

Good ROI

Six years or more is a pretty darned good lifespan for a HDD.

I am quite happy with the "return on investment".