Most reliable hard drives in the world
Backblaze has released its Drive Stats report for the second quarter of 2022, giving useful data on the performance of the hard drives it uses in data centres across the world.
By the end of June 2022, Backblaze was monitoring 219,444 hard drives and SSDs in its data centres.
The company removed 4,020 boot drives and 413 drives that were used for testing purposes or did not meet monitoring parameters, ending up with a total of 215,011 drives in its sample.
The cloud storage and backup company measured reliability using an annualised failure rate (AFR) for each drive.
AFR is calculated using the number of drive failures relative to the number of active drive days for each disk.
Backblaze’s report shows five drive models that recorded zero failures during the second quarter:
- HGST 8TB drive (model: HUH728080ALE604)
- Toshiba 4TB drive (model: MD04ABA400V)
- Toshiba 14TB drive (model: MG07ACA14TEY)
- Toshiba 16TB (model: MG08ACA16TA)
The WDC 16TB drive (model: WUH721816ALE6L4) is the only device with one recorded drive failure.
Backblaze said the Toshiba 4TB drive (model: MD04ABA400V) is the second oldest drive in their sample, sitting at an average age of 86.7 months.
Despite its age, the 4TB Toshiba had no failures in Q2, with the last failure recorded in Q2 2021.
The previous most reliable drive was Seagate’s 6TB (model: ST6000DX000), which recorded its first failure since Q3 2021.
“Given this is the oldest drive model in our fleet with an average age of 86.7 months of service, a failure or two is expected,” Backblaze said.
The company said the 4TB Seagate drives with an average age of 80.3 months had consistent increases in quarterly failure rate over the last four quarters to 3.42% in Q2 2022.
After accounting for a minimum drive days number of one million, Backblaze’s simplified lifetime hard drive failure rate table showed the drives with the highest AFRs.
The three drives with the highest lifetime annualised failure rates are as follows:
- Seagate 8TB drive (model: ST8000NM0055)
- Seagate 12TB drive (model: ST12000NM0007)
- Toshiba 14TB drive (model: MG07ACA14TA)
The table below shows the most reliable mechanical hard drives as monitored by Backblaze in Q2 2022.
| Model | Drive Size | Drive Count | Avg Age (months) | Drive Days | Drive Failures | Annualised Failure Rate | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4TB Hard Drives | ||||||||
| Toshiba MD04ABA400V | 4TB | 97 | 85.3 | 8,730 | — | 0.00% | ||
| HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 | 4TB | 12,728 | 68.2 | 1,154,012 | 18 | 0.57% | ||
| HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 | 4TB | 3,664 | 71.4 | 325,695 | 13 | 1.46% | ||
| Seagate ST4000DM000 | 4TB | 18,359 | 80.3 | 1,662,649 | 156 | 3.42% | ||
| 6TB Hard Drives | ||||||||
| Seagate ST6000DX000 | 6TB | 886 | 86.7 | 80,626 | 2 | 0.91% | ||
| 8TB Hard Drives | ||||||||
| HGST HUH728080ALE604 | 8TB | 76 | 61.9 | 6,846 | — | 0.00% | ||
| HGST HUH728080ALE600 | 8TB | 1,126 | 50.5 | 101,318 | 3 | 1.08% | ||
| Seagate ST8000DM002 | 8TB | 9,630 | 68.6 | 872,039 | 48 | 2.01% | ||
| Seagate ST8000NM0055 | 8TB | 14,370 | 58.1 | 1,294,335 | 79 | 2.23% | ||
| 10TB Hard Drives | ||||||||
| Seagate ST10000NM0086 | 10TB | 1,180 | 55.8 | 106,596 | 9 | 3.08% | ||
| 12TB Hard Drives | ||||||||
| HGST HUH721212ALE600 | 12TB | 2,605 | 32.9 | 234,867 | 2 | 0.31% | ||
| HGST HUH721212ALE604 | 12TB | 13,138 | 15.3 | 1,186,624 | 19 | 0.58% | ||
| HGST HUH721212ALN604 | 12TB | 10,802 | 38.9 | 972,567 | 16 | 0.60% | ||
| Seagate ST12000NM0008 | 12TB | 20,033 | 27.0 | 1,812,740 | 108 | 2.17% | ||
| Seagate ST12000NM001G | 12TB | 12,389 | 19.4 | 1,111,321 | 35 | 1.15% | ||
| Seagate ST12000NM0007 | 12TB | 1,288 | 31.7 | 116,642 | 16 | 5.01% | ||
| 14TB Hard Drives | ||||||||
| Toshiba MG07ACA14TEY | 14TB | 501 | 16.6 | 44,174 | — | 0.00% | ||
| WDC WUH721414ALE6L4 | 14TB | 8,408 | 37.4 | 761,275 | 2 | 0.10% | ||
| Toshiba MG07ACA14TA | 14TB | 38,205 | 20.1 | 3,455,150 | 97 | 1.02% | ||
| Seagate ST14000NM001G | 14TB | 10,728 | 17.0 | 970,470 | 28 | 1.05% | ||
| Seagate ST14000NM0138 | 14TB | 1,571 | 18.8 | 142,330 | 22 | 5.64% | ||
| 16TB Hard Drive | ||||||||
| Toshiba MG0BACA16TA | 16TB | 2,488 | 2.0 | 32,064 | — | 0.00% | ||
| Toshiba MG0BACA16TEY | 16TB | 4,032 | 9.4 | 299,701 | 2 | 0.24% | ||
| WDC WUH721816ALE6L0 | 16TB | 2,702 | 17.5 | 242,077 | 2 | 0.30% | ||
| WDC WUH721816ALE6L4 | 16TB | 1,199 | 9.0 | 107,979 | 1 | 0.34% | ||
| Seagate ST16000NM001G | 16TB | 16,860 | 8.9 | 1,393,804 | 44 | 1% | ||
| Toshiba MG0BACA16TE | 16TB | 5,946 | 8.7 | 536,234 | 41 | 2.79% | ||
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