Backblaze Quarterly Drive Failure Stats

[Jud]

Backblaze, a data backup company (where I store a backup copy of my music) puts out nice, detailed quarterly failure rate information for all the drives in its system.  (They also have a couple of intriguing blog posts on HDDs vs. SSDs, both of which they utilize.)

 

Here’s the latest:

 

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2021/?utm_campaign=Business Newsletter-B2%2C B1B%2C B2&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--KWsUZkHSK7dH2F0VWI8MT9E6ZmbjFfelMdl9uAK3SsiCQaIcj3VX_PEztyGd4Noql-16YyxfSdGZ1zvPfzQBY33UV-A&_hsmi=178010784&utm_content=178010784&utm_source=hs_email&hsCtaTracking=a1279978-becc-419e-a13d-f4941bca64a5|55371848-670d-4152-9f07-56d71ddebe67

[AudioDoctor]

Jud, I took the expensive leap into all SSD storage with Seagate Ironwolf NAS drives, if you want i'll start collecting data for you. 

[yamamoto2002]

It seems they stopped to use consumer HDDs a few years ago, their list becomes less relevant for home users.

 

Recently I've got Toshiba MG08ACA16TE, its two-dimensional magnetic recording is technically interesting, IIRC when writing, it records denser bits than read head limit and, when reading, every bits are gathered with the help of multiple read heads, signal processing and error correction technique.

 

Following is my storage setup, 4TB x8 drive RAID10 with 1 hot spare and 16TB x3 RAID5 backup.

[jabbr]

On 11/3/2021 at 12:49 AM, AudioDoctor said:

Jud, I took the expensive leap into all SSD storage with Seagate Ironwolf NAS drives, if you want i'll start collecting data for you. 

Personally have tended toward HGST ultrastar in SAS (WD acquired from Hitachi) because of the low error rate. I've had lots of problems with Seagate over the years and Backblaze confirms.

 

SSDs haven't been more reliable for me, less actually, in the mirrored RAID usage. That said NVME SSDs have very interesting applications.

[AudioDoctor]

5 hours ago, jabbr said:

Personally have tended toward HGST ultrastar in SAS (WD acquired from Hitachi) because of the low error rate. I've had lots of problems with Seagate over the years and Backblaze confirms.

 

SSDs haven't been more reliable for me, less actually, in the mirrored RAID usage. That said NVME SSDs have very interesting applications.

 

well... I guess I'll keep a close eye on my storage and keep this in mind if I start getting problems.

[jabbr]

On 11/25/2021 at 4:51 PM, AudioDoctor said:

 

well... I guess I'll keep a close eye on my storage and keep this in mind if I start getting problems.

yeah the blackblaze site is looking into this as well. the early annual failure rates of SSD vs the better HDD aren't entirely dissimilar. I have found that the SDD is more likely to "brick" without warning, whereas I replace my HDDs as soon as they start to early errors. The word is still out.

[AudioDoctor]

9 minutes ago, jabbr said:

yeah the blackblaze site is looking into this as well. the early annual failure rates of SSD vs the better HDD aren't entirely dissimilar. I have found that the SDD is more likely to "brick" without warning, whereas I replace my HDDs as soon as they start to early errors. The word is still out.

 

Through the years I have had very few disk failures and/or problems. Even with SSDs. Out of the 20 Seagate SSDs I recently put into use, 1 died almost immediately and Seagate replaced it quickly and without fuss.

[Gregory]

Thank you for posting the link. Haven't check this report for a while. I'm currently using 4TB HGST drives in my NAS, so far so good, but they're getting old now. It's maybe time to replace them, just in case.