The most reliable hard drives in the world
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% | ||
Loading ...