Hard drive Failure Rates

[LunarMist]

It's not working on this device. I'll recheck Thursday US time.

 

[sechs]

Is WD being hands-off with the HGST drives? Why are they continuing to not inherit WD's poor quality?

 

[Mercutio]

Buck said it's operating independently. I trust his insight on the matter but I don't know why they wouldn't be replacing everything they do with HGST tech.

 

[Stereodude]

The data doesn't paint a very good picture of Seagate, yet they keep buying Seagate drives. Lots of people use their reports as the justification for not buying Seagate.

 

[Mercutio]

The most current report makes WD look worse. Once the 3TB "DM" Barracudas were removed from their pods, the rest of Seagate's drives fell in at approximately average levels of reliability, including the other 3TB Seagate models. If you read the whole post, they basically say that the Seagate drives still make the most sense because that 15% lower unit cost matters more for their needs than 50% greater per unit reliability (compared to HGST) based on the sheer number of drives they're using.

 

[Howell]

Some manufacturers may not be able to meet their volume demands either.

 

[Mercutio]

Yeah. They actually say that it has a lot to do with OEM availability from their channel partners.

 

[Stereodude]

Some manufacturers may not be able to meet their volume demands either.

They're not buying that many drives. They said they bought 16k drives last year? I can only imaging that Dell, HP, Levovo, etc buy orders of magnitude more drives. I can't imagine that the various HDD makers don't have the capacity to support their volumes. I'm sure they're buying from different channels though.

 

[Mercutio]

Consider that after the floods in 2011, these guys were going around to Sam's Club and Costco to buy up local stock so they could de-shell cheap external drives. I'm guessing they're not big enough to get the breaks they want/need directly from drive vendors or top-tier suppliers but too big for retail or consumer supply. I also wonder if publishing their reliability info strains any relationship they might have with drive manufacturers.

 

[snowhiker]

I also wonder if publishing their reliability info strains any relationship they might have with drive manufacturers.

/conspiracy theory on
Or perhaps a "strained" relationship led to the publishing of their data? Or they want to get a better deal for HGST drives so massage the stats?
/conspiracy theory off

 

[Stereodude]

Consider that after the floods in 2011, these guys were going around to Sam's Club and Costco to buy up local stock so they could de-shell cheap external drives. I'm guessing they're not big enough to get the breaks they want/need directly from drive vendors or top-tier suppliers but too big for retail or consumer supply. I also wonder if publishing their reliability info strains any relationship they might have with drive manufacturers.

That's when they were small. I'd like to see a graph of their drive buying numbers per year. I'm sure they could get drives direct now.

 

[mubs]

Latest Backblaze data.

HGST best again.

 

[LunarMist]

What about modern drives; is the 6TB NASD any good?

 

[Handruin]

What about modern drives; is the 6TB NASD any good?

I do not see HGST 6TB NAS drives listed in their data. I have several in my workstations and they've been fine but I'm a tiny sample.

 

[LunarMist]

I do not see HGST 6TB NAS drives listed in their data. I have several in my workstations and they've been fine but I'm a tiny sample.

I have one and it is rather oddly noisy. I'm concerned that an octo-RAD would be terrible.

 

[sechs]

Quarterly update:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q2-2016/

 

[LunarMist]

Quarterly update:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q2-2016/

I never understand their logic. Does the Backblaze just buy whatever is on sale that week? Most of the cheap drives are not designed for ser multi-disk environment with vibration detection and compensation, so how do they account for that?

 

[sechs]

I never understand their logic. Does the Backblaze just buy whatever is on sale that week? Most of the cheap drives are not designed for ser multi-disk environment with vibration detection and compensation, so how do they account for that?

They cost half as much enterprise drives and fail at a less than 25% (total) rate.

They've built their system around redundancy and can take the drive loses. Considering the number of drives that they buy, it's an acceptable trade-off.

 

[Chewy509]

Necro thread...

Backblaze reliability for Q1 - 2019.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-q1-2019/

 

[time]

I wondered how 99 drives recorded 12662 days of operation in a three month (90 day) period. You have to add back the figures from the Removed table to the closing Counts.

It's interesting how many 12 and 14TB drives seem to suffer from infant mortality, based on the Average Days to failure. The pattern suggests that after that, they're incredibly reliable.