Hardware9.11.2018

The most reliable hard drives in the world

Hard drive

Cloud backup solutions provider Backblaze has released its hard drive reliability statistics for the third quarter of 2018.

Backblaze compared hard drives used in its operations – from Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, and HGST – for the report.

Reliability is measured as an annualised failure rate, calculated using the number of drive failures relative to the number of drives.

Backblaze then recorded the failure rates of its hard drives from 1 July to 30 September 2018, along with the annualised failure rate.

The backup provider has removed the last of its 3TB drives as it begins to focus more on its high-capacity 12TB drives, it added.

This has resulted in the company having 584 fewer drives than the previous quarter while adding over 40 petabytes of capacity.

Backblaze actively monitored 97,600 drives throughout Q3 2018, removing models without at least 45 drives present from the data.

Drives used for testing purposes were also removed from the data set. The results of its report are detailed below.


Q3 2018 Failure Rates

Model Drive Count Drive Days Drive Failures Annualised Failure Rate
4TB Hard Drives
WD WD40EFRX 46 4,232 0 0.00%
Toshiba MD04ABA400V 146 13,432 0 0.00%
HGST HDS5C4040ALE630 67 6,657 0 0.00%
HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 14,664 1,368,030 10 0.27%
HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 4,706 434,134 4 0.34%
Seagate ST4000DM000 24,308 2,368,070 148 2.28%
5TB/6TB Hard Drives
Toshiba MD04ABA500V 45 4,140 0 0.00%
Seagate ST6000DX000 1,523 157,334 8 1.86%
WD WD60EFRX 383 39,374 5 4.64%
8TB Hard Drives
HGST HUH728080ALE600 1,045 95,108 1 0.38%
Seagate ST8000DM002 9,883 909,387 22 0.88%
Seagate ST8000NM0055 14,384 1,323,924 35 0.96%
10TB/12TB Hard Drives
HGST HUH721212ALN604 79 6,320 0 0.00%
Seagate ST10000NM0086 1,220 112,240 3 0.98%
Seagate ST12000NM0007 25,101 2,210,476 78 1.29%

Lifetime Failure Rates

Model Drive Count Annualised Failure Rate
4TB Hard Drives
HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 14,664 0.46%
HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 4,706 0.50%
HGST HDS5C4040ALE630 67 0.77%
Toshiba MD04ABA400V 146 0.80%
WD WD40EFRX 46 1.93%
Seagate ST4000DM000 24,308 2.81%
5TB/6TB Hard Drives
Seagate ST6000DX000 1,523 1.07%
Toshiba MD04ABA500V 45 1.25%
WD WD60EFRX 383 4.13%
8TB Hard Drives
Seagate ST8000NM0055 14,384 0.97%
HGST HUH728080ALE600 1,045 0.98%
Seagate ST8000DM002 9,883 1.01%
10TB/12TB Hard Drives
HGST HUH721212ALN604 79 0.00%
Seagate ST10000NM0086 1,220 0.48%
Seagate ST12000NM0007 25,101 1.21%

Now read: Western Digital unveils world’s biggest hard drive – 15TB

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