Study finds that when HDDs fail, it's typically within 3 years of operation

[midian182]

In a nutshell: Are you still using a hard disk drive that's coming up to three years old? If so, it might be prudent to make sure your backups are up to date. A new study of 17,155 failed HDDs by Backblaze found that the average age at which these drives borked was two years and six months.

California-based cloud and data backup service Backblaze regularly posts about the reliability of its thousands of storage units – a recent report showed that SSD reliability was only slightly better than HDD.

Part of the company's Q1 2023 drive statistics report looks at hard drive lifetime failure rates. Backblaze analyzed 17,155 failed HDDs covering 72 different models. It did not include failed boot drives, drives that had no SMART raw attribute data, or drives with out-of-bounds data.

Recording the failure date, model, serial number, capacity, failure, and SMART raw value, Backblaze found that the average time the drives failed was after 22,360 hours, which is 932 days, or just over two years and six months.

Backblaze added that if its examinations were limited to drive models no longer operational in its data centers, there would be 35 models consisting of 3,379 drives with a slightly longer average life: two years and seven months.

Backblaze decided to look at HDD failure rates this way after Block & Files published an article based on the work of Timothy Burlee at Secure Data Recovery. It found that of the 2,007 failed hard drives analyzed, the average age at which they failed was 1,051 days, or two years and ten months. Backblaze thought the number was too low, but its own examination found that the failure age was even lower.

The results showed that smaller-capacity drives between 1TB and 4 TB lasted longer than those with higher capacities of 12TB and larger. Backblaze did add a caveat: there are no smaller drives in operation in the data set, while larger drives are still being used. "In other words, as these larger drives continue to fail over the coming months and years, they could increase or decrease the average failure age of that drive model," the post explained.

Backblaze also included its usual table showing all its HDDs lifetime failure rates. After removing those only used for testing purposes or without at least 60 drives, it was left with 236,893 hard drives grouped into 30 different models.

The lifetime Average Failure Rate (AFR) was 1.4%, slightly higher than the previous quarter's 1.39%. Western Digital fared best with an annualized failure rate of 0.31%, while Seagate was last at 2.28%, though Backblaze did previously say that Seagate drives were much cheaper and, therefore, just as cost-effective as expensive HDDs.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/98574-backblaze-study-finds-hdds-typically-fail-under-3.html

 

[amghwk]

What study is that? My HDDs are running just fine more than 5 years now.

Before 5 years? I just upgraded from older smaller drives. They too didn't fail.

(The only drive I saw failed was a 40GB Maxtor 3.5" HDD that was used in a Pentium 4 system more than 15 years ago, I think. Failed in the sense that, it was making loud clicking noise. It was still working though. And the occasional bad sectors during the DOS age with the sub 100MB drives.)

I think keeping a clean, well ventilated CPU casing is a must for all the inner components to have a longer life.

 

[Lozzy]

What study is that? My HDDs are running just fine more than 5 years now.

Before 5 years? I just upgraded from older smaller drives. They too didn't fail.

(The only drive I saw failed was a 40GB Maxtor 3.5" HDD that was used in a Pentium 4 system more than 15 years ago, I think. Failed in the sense that, it was making loud clicking noise. It was still working though. And the occasional bad sectors during the DOS age with the sub 100MB drives.)

I think keeping a clean, well ventilated CPU casing is a must for all the inner components to have a longer life.

It's not that the average hard drive lasted under 3 years. What they're saying is that, of those which DID fail, the average age was just under 3 years. Huge difference.

 

[amghwk]

It's not that the average hard drive lasted under 3 years. What they're saying is that, of those which DID fail, the average age was just under 3 years. Huge difference.

Finally, what it means is that your HDD is more susceptible to failure within 3 years.

 

[madboyv1]

I'm not sure if my armful of ten-year-old drives are sweating or if that is just condensation (a significant problem in itself).

But my own anecdotal experience is that drives of which have failed under my care tend to have failed very quickly... often under a year, or at least are showing deterioration by that point with bad sectors and excessive seeking. So this study doesn't actually surprise me too much.

 

[Julio Franco]

It's not that the average hard drive lasted under 3 years. What they're saying is that, of those which DID fail, the average age was just under 3 years. Huge difference.

Correct. The story title was a tad misleading, now fixed.

 

[3volv3d]

Well I told someone not to get Seagate a while back, I wouldn't touch them after they fell off their pedestal like 20 years ago. But they have a name like Sony. And people still think they rock.
His argument was that his Seagate HDD's of 5 years were going strong. Why?
Old batches of Seagates. Thats all. He bought at the right time. All batches vary.

The biggest thing would be to compare Size of hdds to fall over rates. As back then when building a NAS you could get 4tb and 8tb, but you would be replacing one very quickly. That is compared to a 2tb. 2tb and under were rock solid.
You have the same size device, fitting more in or on, and that's where bigger sucked.

Also everyone wants a cool rig. Mechanical drives get hot, but they are ok to run hot as long as they stay warm and constant, cooling is an issue which can comprimise the drive, or so I read. Unsure on SSD and m.2, but the latter are better with heatsinks like ram, so go figure.

 

[kira setsu]

My 8yr old 6tb seagates are all doing fine, actually seagates are the only spinning drives I've ever used.

I would like info on how well ssd's and nvme's last though, especially nvme drives, the speeds they work at seem stressful and they need heat dissipation unlike the older drives types.

 

[cldmstrsn]

Damn. I have had my 500 GB hard drive since like 2009 nor 2010. Still holds all my porn like a champ

 

[Aus spot]

Thanks for the correction to the title. I tried to point out the average failure % didn’t equal the average 3 years life span, but it never posted.

However as per every other report on spinning hard drives, the stats and title is still misleading.

We all know hdd fail in a U shape with the vast majority failing well within the first year then the drives are far more stable for their useful lives. Then later in life, way past 3 years normally, the drives start dying.

Blackblaze does not generally keep drives for a long time, they are swapped out for larger drives as soon as the upswing in failures starts to happen, if not sooner.

So the “fact” that most drives die within 3 years is misleading and based on faulty data collection. Most drives fail within the first year and then are fairly stable. Then later outside of the time window blackblaze is reporting they start to fail again.

However this is not the whole story as these drives blackblaze use get a lot of usage and failures happen a lot more than the average consumer used drive. So while consumers find the initial 1 year failure rate, they often get far more years of happy use than blackblaze does.

 

[poohbear]

I'd like to see this info for SSDs. I retired my HDDs years ago.

 

[Vanderlinde]

Before people start comparing these drives with their home drives: above drives are usually run 24/7 on a heavy load. Your consumer HDD is basicly rated for 8 hours a day usage. And not even full time usage that is.

Seagate is overall bad. I know because I just not owned a few drives that died but also did data recovery for 2.5 years. The most common faillure was simply seagate. Esp the firmware that somehow got corrupted and the drive stopped working. Or the quality of components on PCB's that just give up. Or actual drive damage, for whatever cause that might be, the overall faillure with seagate is just higher then the rest of the drives in the market.

The best brand in my book, would be samsung. Believe it or not. I have 2006 hard drives here of each 250GB (5 peaces) that still work flawless and once in a while ramped up to add backups to it.

 

[Arbie]

Three years... unless it's a Seagate 3TB. Then that's the max value.

 

[Athlonite]

Also everyone wants a cool rig. Mechanical drives get hot, but they are ok to run hot as long as they stay warm and constant, cooling is an issue which can compromise the drive, or so I read. Unsure on SSD and m.2, but the latter are better with heatsinks like ram, so go figure.

This statement is just full on wrong mech HDD's do not like to run hot infact the cooler you can keep them while they're running the better. And this is why
The read/write head sits on an arm that's rather like the wing of a plane and they use the spinning air in an HDD to cause a certain amount of lift the hotter the air the more it expands and the thinner it becomes and the less lift you get and the closer to the plater the head will sit when reading/writing any platter vibration may cause head slap damaging the head and the platter so if at all possible keep the temps of your HDD's under 45c and they'll last much longer.

As for SSD's they are required to run hot only when writing which is one of the downfalls of nand flash is that it requires the cells to be hotter than normal for accurate writing of data what you don't want though is the controller also getting hot as this will cause it to work slower so a nice chonky HSF on the controller chip is really all you need

 

[captaincranky]

Damn. I have had my 500 GB hard drive since like 2009 nor 2010. Still holds all my porn like a champ

If you only have 500 GB of porn, you're simply not trying.

 

[toooooot]

I would not mix them all together. Those that have 1y warranty, yes. They are cheap and fall apart quickly. But storage companies would not provide 5 year warranty to their more expensive drives if those weren't built to last at least 5 years.
There was a period of time when I did not want to use cheaper HDDs at all because they were dying on me one by one. And it was giving a very bad name for these companies, I think. They made such terrible consumer drives that people who remember that quality won't go back unless they must.

 

[LAMBDA471]

I bought my last PC in 2019 with SSD and HDD and the only difference between then and now is that for some reason the metal mesh on the front of my case has some slight corrosion and the PC is a bit louder than it used be 4 years ago. Performance hasn't dropped and nothing has failed or was broken. My SSD may have failed or something a few months after I bought the PC, but it was under warranty, I gave it back, after a week they returned it and hasn't caused me any problems for 4 years. I won't upgrade that PC until it becomes somehow very slow due to new software/OS be too demanding or the PC explodes for some reason.

I think if a storage unit fails prematurely, it's just faulty.

 

[OortCloud]

Haven't bought anything but WDC hard drives for a long time now and this is why. If you stick to the WD blacks they are bulletproof. Used to come with 5 year warranties - not sure they still do that but they are still great drives.

 

[KofeViR]

I have 2 WD HDDs running on year 12 now, zero SMART errors or issues and 4 more, newer and bigger drives, passing 6 years soon. In a server meaning 24/7/365 usage.

WD have been flawless for me. I changed from Samsung SSD to WD as well now. SN850/SN850X has been my go to drives since 2020.

Seagate on the other hand, failed left and right for me.

 

[Lozzy]

Finally, what it means is that your HDD is more susceptible to failure within 3 years.

Exactly. And, in my experience, if anything is likely to fail (be it hard disk, SSD, motherboard or even a car) it'll be in the first 5 minutes.

 

[Gezzer]

Before people start comparing these drives with their home drives: above drives are usually run 24/7 on a heavy load. Your consumer HDD is basicly rated for 8 hours a day usage. And not even full time usage that is.

Seagate is overall bad. I know because I just not owned a few drives that died but also did data recovery for 2.5 years. The most common faillure was simply seagate. Esp the firmware that somehow got corrupted and the drive stopped working. Or the quality of components on PCB's that just give up. Or actual drive damage, for whatever cause that might be, the overall faillure with seagate is just higher then the rest of the drives in the market.

The best brand in my book, would be samsung. Believe it or not. I have 2006 hard drives here of each 250GB (5 peaces) that still work flawless and once in a while ramped up to add backups to it.

This is what hasn't been mentioned in either the article or all the other posts. The use case isn't the same as it would be for the average consumer user. At best it gives a slight hint at over all manufacturer quality. All drives both SSD and HDD are rated for average failure rate after set hours of use.

And if you compare drives in use to total days in use all of a sudden things make more sense. For example the 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000 has a failure rate of 2.6% which looks pretty bad. At least until you consider that this is a pool of 18,000 drives used over a period of 74.5 million days of most likely 24/7 use.

Then compare it to to the 14TB Toshiba MG07ACA14TA which has a 1% failure rate, which seems much better. But this is based on a little over 38,000 drives used over a period of close to 34 million days of again 24/7 use. It then becomes pretty obvious that the Segates have been in service for a much longer period of time and you would expect a higher rate for them.

Anything mechanical will fail eventually. It all depends on how much it's used and the conditions it's used under. Using this list to decide who makes the best drives is an exercise in futility IMHO. And I give it about as much credence as I do all the anecdotal posts here. In my experience the only drives I've had fail over the years have been WD, all my Segates are still working fine.

OTOH 2 of the WDs that failed were 36GB raptors in a R.A.I.D. 0 array that I was using to boot windows with and saw heavy use. Those drives were pretty old when they went. As for the other? An over 10 year old 2TB green in a NAS that again saw a lot of network use. Now I could say that WD sucks, and Seagate makes the best drives based on my personal experience. But I know that isn't true and I have a 10 year old 4TB Seagate that could be on its way out by now. Or not, because it's simply not certain...

 

[Bamda]

I use my PC every day. I have had one HDD failure in over 30 years of PC use. It was a Quantum 250MB HDD, that died after a few years of use. I currently use only Seagate and I have 4 of their HDDs ranging from 1TB to 8TB, all work fine. So in retrospect, I have been very fortunate with the hard drives I have purchased.