Most reliable hard drives revealed

Years-long testing by BackBlaze has shown that Western Digital’s high-capacity hard disk drives (HDDs) are generally the most dependable for enterprise-level data storage, with three of the company’s HDDs making it into the top three most reliable drives.

While HDDs are an older technology that solid-state drives (SSDs) are increasingly replacing, HDDs are cheaper and still very efficient for storing large amounts of data.

SSDs offer higher reading and writing speeds. However, HDDs still offer plenty of speed for data that isn’t required at a moment’s notice.

BlackBlaze has analysed the performance of hundreds of thousands of data and boot HDDs for over a decade, and as of 2024’s fourth quarter, it had 4,060 boot and 301,120 data HDD and SSD drives under its management.

However, it removed 487 drives from testing, as they didn’t meet the criteria to be included. As a result, it analysed reliability for 300,633 HDDs.

In its reliability testing in 2024’s fourth quarter, only five HDD models recorded zero failures:

• HGST 4TB HMS5C4040ALE640
• Seagate 8TB ST8000NM000A
• Seagate 14TB ST14000NM000J
• Seagate 16TB ST16000NM002J
• Seagate 24TB ST24000NM002H

However, BlackBlaze noted that all of the zero-failure drives carried the caveat of having a relatively small number of drives and drive days.

It also highlighted Seagate’s 24TB drives, which were only introduced in early December 2024.

“The 1,200 drives filled one Backblaze Vault with no failed drives through the end of Q4,” said BlackBlaze.

“The 24TB Seagate drives join the 20TB Toshiba and 22TB WDC drive models in the 20-plus TB capacity club as we continue to dramatically increase storage capacity while optimising existing storage server space.”

Meanwhile, 4TB drives are on their way out, with BlackBlaze describing them as “nearly extinct”.

Since its testing began, BlackBlaze has tested 298,320 HDDs, with a combined total of 425.3 million drive days, and recorded an annualised failure rate (AFR) of 1.31%.

“The current lifetime AFR for all of the drives is 1.31%. This is down from 1.46% in 2023. The drop is primarily due to the completion of the migration of the 4TB Seagate drives in 2024,” says BlackBlaze.

“As a consequence, the 79 million drive days and over 5,600 drive failures racked up by the 4TB Seagate drives by the end of 2023 are not included in the data presented.”

The five HDDs with the best lifetime AFRs include two HGST models and three Western Digital drives.

The WD 16TB WUH721816ALE6L4 has performed best overall, with a lifetime AFR of 0.34%. It is followed closely by the HGST 4TB HMS5C4040BLE640 with a 0.39% lifetime AFR.

Western Digital’s 14TB WUH721414ALE6L4 HDD and 16TB WUH721816ALE6L0 HDD placed third and fourth, with lifetime AFRs of 0.45% and 0.55%, respectively.

HGST’s 12TB HUH721212ALE600 placed fifth with a lifetime AFR of 0.58%.

The five worst-performing HDDs were all Seagate models. They scored lifetime AFRs as follows:

• Seagate 12TB ST12000NM008 — 1.96%
• Seagate 12TB ST12000NM007 — 2.21%
• Seagate 10TB ST10000NM0086 — 2.79%
• Seagate 12TB ST12000NM00J — 3.29%
• Seagate 14TB ST14000NM0138 — 5.92%

The table below summarises the most reliable hard drives revealed by BlackBlaze’s testing, based on lifetime AFR, while the graph underneath compares AFR by manufacturer over each quarter since Q1 2022.