New data illustrates time’s effect on hard drive failure rates

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SSDs have usurped laborious disk drives (HDDs) in the case of efficiency, however whether or not constructing a network-attached storage (NAS) or having high-capacity wants on a finances, loads of individuals nonetheless depend on spinning platters. Older drives which have seen plenty of use, nonetheless, is probably not as dependable as earlier than. Information Backblaze shared this week highlights how a tough drive’s common failure charge (AFR) can enhance with age.

Since 2013, Backblaze, a backup and cloud storage firm, has revealed an annual report analyzing the AFRs of laborious drives in its knowledge heart. The 2022 report shared on Tuesday examines 230,921 laborious drives throughout 29 fashions from HGST, Seagate, Toshiba, and WDC, with capacities starting from 4–16TB. All fashions included no less than 60 drives that weren’t beforehand used for testing.

Understand that the pattern group solely consists of drives that Backblaze had available, and they’re of various ages, with some used for extra days than others. Nonetheless, Backblaze’s report does give us a singular look into the outcomes of long-term laborious drive use.

In case you wanted a reminder of the morbid nature of time, Backblaze’s report exhibits proof of laborious drives’ AFR growing with age. That is not shocking information, however Backblaze is offering the information to color an image of what that appears like.

Backblaze’s evaluation of its findings stated that the graph beneath “exhibits that the older drives, when grouped by measurement, fail extra typically.”

Note that the 6TB and 10TB samples only included one drive model each, while the rest have at least four each.

Observe that the 6TB and 10TB samples solely included one drive mannequin every, whereas the remainder have no less than 4 every.

Backblaze famous that a rise in AFR as an HDD ages falls according to the tub curve, the place failures are usually increased upon launch earlier than dropping, stabilizing, after which growing because the product ages. Backblaze stated that the typical failure charge of its laborious drives was 1.01 p.c in 2021 and 1.37 p.c in 2022.

“The growing older of our fleet of laborious drives does seem like essentially the most logical purpose for the elevated AFR in 2022. We might dig in additional, however that’s in all probability moot at this level,” Backblaze’s weblog stated.

All the drives in this chart have at least 1 million drive days in their lifetime.
Enlarge / All of the drives on this chart have no less than 1 million drive days of their lifetime.

The oldest (common age of 92.5 months) laborious drive Backblaze examined was a 6TB Seagate (ST6000DX000). Its AFR was 0.11 p.c in 2021 and 0.68 p.c in 2022. Backblaze stated this was “a really respectable quantity any time, however particularly after almost eight years.”

Seagate, adopted by Toshiba, topped Backblaze’s chart grouping AFRs by vendor, however many of the Seagate drives are a lot older than the remainder of the drives examined.

“On the whole, Seagate drives are cheaper and their failure charges are sometimes increased in our surroundings,” Backblaze stated. “However, their failure charges are sometimes not excessive sufficient to make them much less cost-effective over their lifetime. You might make a great case that for us, many Seagate drive fashions are simply as cost-effective as dearer drives.”

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