![]() The AFR Stayed Low in 2021: In 2021, the AFR for all drives was 1.01%. Note that for the WDC data, a blank value means we did not have any countable WDC drives in our data center in that quarter. The data for each year is inclusive of that year only and for the active drive models present at the end of each year.ĭigging a little deeper, we can aggregate the different drive models by manufacturer to see how failure rates per manufacturer have fared over the last three years. The chart below compares the AFR for each of the last three years. Comparing Drive Stats for 2019, 2020, and 2021 The next section will compare the data from the last three years. The AFR for 2021 for all drive models was 1.01%, which was slightly higher than the 0.93% we reported for 2020. We’ll continue to follow this process over the coming quarters. The 19 drives that failed in Q4 were shipped off for further analysis. The results were that the quarterly failure rate dropped from 6.29% in Q3 to 4.66% in Q4, stabilizing the rapid rise in failures we’d seen in Q2 and Q3. #BACKBLAZE HARD DRIVE RELIABILITY 2020 UPGRADE#The failed drives were examined by fault analysis specialists and in late Q3 it was decided as a first step to upgrade the firmware for that cohort of drives still in service. They were failing at a higher than expected rate and everyone-Backblaze, Seagate, and Dell-wanted to know why. The Patient Is Stable: Last quarter, we reported on the state of our 14TB Seagate drives (model: ST14000NM0138) provisioned in Dell storage servers. We count the number of drive days each drive contributes throughout the period and annualize the total using this formula:ĪFR = (drive failures / (drive days / 365)) * 100 For example, a new drive installed in Q4 might contribute just 43 days, while a drive that failed in July might contribute 186 days, while drives in continuous operation for the year could contribute 365 days each. In our environment, drives are added and leave throughout the year. This is different from an annual failure rate in which the number of drives is the same for each model (cohort) throughout the annual period. In both cases, the number of drive days is on the lower side, but these two drive models are off to a good start.ĪFR stands for annualized failure rate. While the 16TB Toshiba drive cohort (model: MG08ACA16TE) has an average age of 3.57 months and an AFR of 0.91%. The 16TB WDC drive cohort (model: WUH721816ALE6L0) has an average age of 5.06 months and an AFR of 0.14%. ![]() The Kids Are Alright: Two drive models are new for 2021 and both are performing well. The number of drives, 886, and 2021 drive days, 323,390, are on the lower side, but after nearly seven years in operation, these drives are thumbing their nose at the tail end of the bathtub curve. This is even more impressive when you consider that this 6TB drive model is the oldest in the fleet with an average age of 80.4 months. The Old Guy Rules: For 2021, the 6TB Seagate (model: ST6000DX000) had the lowest failure rate of any drive model, clocking in with an annualized failure rate (AFR) of 0.11%. ![]() This leaves us with 202,759 hard drives to analyze for this report. For our evaluation, we removed 409 drives from consideration which were used for either testing purposes or drive models for which we did not have at least 60 drives. 2021 Hard Drive Failure RatesĪt the end of 2021, Backblaze was monitoring 203,168 hard drives used to store data. Along the way, we share our observations and insights on the data presented and, as always, we look forward to you doing the same in the comments section at the end of the post. We will review the hard drive failure rates for 2021, compare those rates to previous years, and present the lifetime failure statistics for all the hard drive models active in our data center as of the end of 2021. ![]() This report will focus on our data drives. Of that number, there were 3,760 boot drives and 203,168 data drives. As a consumer – forget the reviewer bit – I just don't yet trust drives larger than 2TB for mainstream or production use.In 2021, Backblaze added 40,460 hard drives and as of December 31, 2021, we had 206,928 drives under management. I can deal with losing 2TB of data (and it's easier to back up), but losing 4TB is just too much. Number of Hard Drives by Model at Backblazeįor personal use, I tend to stick to 2TB WD Black HDDs and have not yet gone over 2TB in capacity. Smaller drives – like 1TB WD devices – have proven more stable. WD 3TB drives aren't immune to worsened lifespan, though, and have also jumped from 4% to 7% in annual failures. The latest report reinforces earlier data that Seagate has some of the poorest longterm endurance of all tested devices, with 3TB drives climbing to a 15% annual failure rate (from 9% at the time of last reporting). ![]() BackBlaze just reported its annual failure rate for 34,881 drives that house 100 petabytes of data (that's 100,000,000 gigabytes). ![]()
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