Backblaze, an online backup provider, has published its Hard Drive Stats for 2016 report. The report details the reliability of different hard drive brands and models.
The company bases its statistics on the drives it uses to store customer data for its online backup business.
“At the end of 2016, we had 73,653 spinning hard drives. Of that number, there were 1,553 boot drives and 72,100 data drives,” said Backblaze.
Backblaze calculated the annualised drive failure rate for each drive model. This is based on data from 1 January 2016 through December 2016.
“Failure rate, in the context we use it, is more accurately described as the Annualised Failure Rate. It is computed based on Drive Days and Drive Failures, not on the Drive Count,” said Backblaze.
Hard Drive Failure Rates
The tables below show the hard drive failure stats for 2016.
HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) had the lowest failure rate, followed by Toshiba, Seagate, and WDC (Western Digital).
| Hard Drive Failure Rates by Drive Size | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drive Size | Drive Count | Drive Days | Drive Failures | Failure Rate |
| 3TB | 6,605 | 2,416,353 | 93 | 1.40% |
| 4TB | 54,189 | 18,504,977 | 1,042 | 2.06% |
| 5TB | 45 | 16,425 | 1 | 2.22% |
| 6TB | 2,335 | 850,992 | 41 | 1.76% |
| 8TB | 8,765 | 1,093,435 | 48 | 1.60% |
| Totals | 71,939 | 22,882,182 | 1,225 | 1.95% |
| Hard Drive Failure Rates by Manufacturer | ||||
| Manufacturer | Drive Count | Drive Days | Drive Failures | Failure Rate |
| HGST | 24,545 | 8,028,068 | 132 | 0.60% |
| Toshiba | 237 | 86,308 | 3 | 1.27% |
| Seagate | 45,531 | 14,194,485 | 1,029 | 2.65% |
| WDC | 1,626 | 573,321 | 61 | 3.88% |
| Totals | 71,939 | 22,882,182 | 1,225 | 1.95% |
This article first appeared on MyBroadband and is republished with permission.
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2 WD drives of different sizes assembled in different countries and neither lasted a year, I’m never touching WD again!