Backblaze, a company specializing in data backup and cloud storage, has published hard drive failure statistics for 2023. The report is based on 35 different Hard Disk Drive (HDD) models, pushing the company’s total count to over 250,000.
The table below shows an array of 35 HDD models along with their numbers, average operating time, and the number of failed hard drives, including their percentual share. Backblaze still retains working HDD models in its inventory that are over 8.5 years old. The Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) for all HDD’s stands at 1.7%.
The following gives a more compact selection showcasing the most popular HDD models and their three-year AFR data. Notably, the AFR indicator is increasing over time, hinting at a worrisome trend – HDD’s are becoming less reliable. More worrisome, the 14TB Seagate drives failed the most, while the 16TB Western Digital hard drives were the least likely to fail.
The company also prepared an AFR statistic, taking into account the volume of HDD and operating time from Q1 2021 to Q4 2023. As the graph below suggests, 6TB hard drives broke down the least, while 10TB drives failed the most.
Additionally, Backblaze provided the yearly breakdown frequency of hard drives, factoring in age. The sample included HDD’s from HGST, Seagate, Toshiba, and WD. Over a 36 month period, only Seagate hard drives had a breakdown level greater than 1.5%.
Despite these findings, the sample is not highly representative as Backblaze did not amass sizable data for HDD’s from other manufacturers concerning this parameter.
