A moment of silence for all the drives that died in the making of this Backblaze report

Cloud retention and backup supplier Backblaze has released a study connected its difficult thrust nonaccomplishment rates for 2022 which appears to verify that nan property of a thrust is simply a cardinal metric for predicting imaginable failure.

Backblaze regularly releases stats covering nan nonaccomplishment rates of each nan difficult drives nether its management, and these datasets person proven a wealth trove for others to analyse for their ain purposes – provided they mention Backblaze arsenic nan root and do not waste nan data.

The latest figures published connected nan Backblaze blog screen nan difficult thrust nonaccomplishment rates it saw for 2022 crossed its retention portfolio, which stood astatine 235,608 individual drives arsenic of December 31.

However, 4,299 of these were footwear drives while different 388 drives were removed from information because they had been utilized for testing purposes aliases were models for which nan institution did not person astatine slightest 60 drives successful operation. This still leaves statistic covering 230,921 difficult drives utilized for information retention purposes.

According to Backblaze's main unreality retention evangelist, Andy Klein, location was a notable summation successful nan annualized nonaccomplishment complaint (AFR) during past year, rising from 1.01 percent successful 2021 to 1.37 percent during 2022.

"In our Q2 2022 and Q3 2022 quarterly Drive Stats reports, we noted an summation successful nan wide AFR from nan erstwhile 4th and attributed it to nan aging fleet of drives, but is that really nan case?" he asked.

The answer, it seems, is yes.

Klein compared 2021 and 2022 annualized nonaccomplishment rates for ample drives (which Backblaze defines arsenic 12TB, 14TB and 16TB) against smaller drives (4TB, 6TB, 8TB and 10TB) and recovered that each size (with nan objection of 16TB drives) showed an summation successful AFR betwixt 2021 and 2022. The figures show nan smaller drives failing much often, but they are besides older.

A floor plan showing nan mean property of each thrust exemplary deployed by Backblaze against size shows intelligibly that nan smaller a thrust is successful capacity, nan older it tends to be, pinch 16TB spinners little than six months aged while immoderate 4TB and 6TB models were complete 90 months old.

This summation arsenic a thrust exemplary ages follows nan bathtub curve, whereby a emblematic thrust tin beryllium expected to grounds a rash of early failures, followed by a play erstwhile location are comparatively few, followed by an uptick erstwhile much arsenic each nan drives attack nan extremity of their lives and deterioration out.

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Looking astatine a floor plan of annualized nonaccomplishment rates complete clip and by manufacturer, it mightiness look that overmuch of nan wide emergence complete nan past twelvemonth has been driven by Seagate and Toshiba models. However, Klein points retired that successful nan lawsuit of Seagate, astir of nan models from that vendor are importantly older than galore others, and location is besides nan lifecycle costs of a fixed difficult thrust exemplary versus its nonaccomplishment complaint to consider.

"In general, Seagate drives are little costly and their nonaccomplishment rates are typically higher successful our environment. Their nonaccomplishment rates are typically not precocious capable to make them little costs effective complete their lifetime. You could make a bully lawsuit that for us, galore Seagate thrust models are conscionable arsenic costs effective arsenic much costly drives," he said.

When it comes to nan life annualized nonaccomplishment rates crossed each nan thrust models successful accumulation astatine Backblaze, nan existent wide complaint is 1.39 percent, which nan institution reckons is down from that of a twelvemonth agone (1.40 percent) and besides down from nan erstwhile 4th (1.41 percent).

Klein says that successful 2023, nan company's attraction is expected to beryllium connected replacing nan older drives pinch 16TB and larger difficult drives, which intends that its 4TB drives and nan 6TB Seagate drives (which person an mean property of 92.5 months) are apt to go.

As usual, nan complete information group utilized for Backblaze's study is disposable from nan company's Hard Drive Test Data page. ®