Which HDD is more reliable? Backblaze statistics on 27134 drives for 4 years of work
Backblaze company has published in its blog statistics on the use of disk drives in their servers. Backblaze provides a cheap cloud backup service. Their infrastructure is based on consumer-grade hard drives. Over the four years of operation, the company has collected decent statistics on the resiliency of various types of disks used in their storage. The Backblaze drive park consists mainly of Seagate and Hitachi drives - almost 13,000 each. Another 2838 disks are produced by Western Digital, and several dozens of Samsung and Toshiba drives. Thus, Backblaze data allows you to compare the work of consumer-level drives of three manufacturers - Seagate, WD and Hitachi - in terms of the data center.
When buying discs, the company is guided by the principle of “the cheapest disc that will work”, however, if the discs of a certain model show extremely high reliability, the purchase of slightly more expensive drives can be justified. Backblaze is constantly experimenting, buying small batches of disks of a particular model and testing them in combat conditions. The main conclusions can be drawn from these two graphs, the first of them, located above, shows the level of disk failures over time, within 36 months. The second one below shows the number of failures per year for disks of different capacity and brand:
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The most reliable drives were Hitachi. However, most of them were purchased before Western Digital acquired Hitachi's disk division, and it is impossible to draw a conclusion from Backblaze how the quality of disks of both brands changed and did change after merging. During the year of operation, 1% -1.5% of Hitachi drives fail, regardless of the capacity of the drive. Somewhat higher - at the level of 3% -3.5% - the percentage of failures of Western Digital, and a very noticeable part of the failed disks fails in the first few months of operation. But the remaining disks then work almost smoothly.
Backblaze Seagate drives work the worst. In the first six months, their reliability is even higher than WD, but over time they break more and more often. This is clearly seen in both the first and second graphs. If relatively new four-terabyte disks are kept below 4%, then the level of three-byte failures reaches 9%, and the oldest, 1.5-terabyte ones - 13.5%.
Hitachi drives lead in another important indicator - the number of failures that do not lead to total failure, but require the intervention of data center technicians:
Briefly, on the basis of its statistics, Backblaze draws the following conclusions on brands:
A more detailed breakdown by specific drive models is in this table:
When buying discs, the company is guided by the principle of “the cheapest disc that will work”, however, if the discs of a certain model show extremely high reliability, the purchase of slightly more expensive drives can be justified. Backblaze is constantly experimenting, buying small batches of disks of a particular model and testing them in combat conditions. The main conclusions can be drawn from these two graphs, the first of them, located above, shows the level of disk failures over time, within 36 months. The second one below shows the number of failures per year for disks of different capacity and brand:
')
The most reliable drives were Hitachi. However, most of them were purchased before Western Digital acquired Hitachi's disk division, and it is impossible to draw a conclusion from Backblaze how the quality of disks of both brands changed and did change after merging. During the year of operation, 1% -1.5% of Hitachi drives fail, regardless of the capacity of the drive. Somewhat higher - at the level of 3% -3.5% - the percentage of failures of Western Digital, and a very noticeable part of the failed disks fails in the first few months of operation. But the remaining disks then work almost smoothly.
Backblaze Seagate drives work the worst. In the first six months, their reliability is even higher than WD, but over time they break more and more often. This is clearly seen in both the first and second graphs. If relatively new four-terabyte disks are kept below 4%, then the level of three-byte failures reaches 9%, and the oldest, 1.5-terabyte ones - 13.5%.
Hitachi drives lead in another important indicator - the number of failures that do not lead to total failure, but require the intervention of data center technicians:
| The brand | In work | Failures | Number of disks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seagate | 99.72 | 0.28% | 12459 |
| Western digital | 99.83 | 0.17% | 933 |
| Hitachi | 99.99 | 0.01% | 12956 |
Briefly, on the basis of its statistics, Backblaze draws the following conclusions on brands:
- Hitachi - if it were not for the price, their entire fleet of drives would consist exclusively of these disks.
- WD - terabyte drives purchased at the very beginning still serve faithfully. Of the newer three-terabyte models, Western Digital Red 3TB (WD30EFRX) disks have proven themselves well.
- Seagate - their main advantage is low price. At first, they show themselves well, but over time they bring more and more problems. The company continues to purchase these discs, as in general, their purchase justifies itself.
A more detailed breakdown by specific drive models is in this table:
| Model | Volume | amount drives | Average age in years | Annual percent bounce |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seagate Desktop HDD.15 (ST4000DM000) | 4.0TB | 5199 | 0.3 | 3.8% |
| Hitachi GST Deskstar 7K2000 (HDS722020ALA330) | 2.0TB | 4716 | 2.9 | 1.1% |
| Hitachi GST Deskstar 5K3000 (HDS5C3030ALA630) | 3.0TB | 4592 | 1.7 | 0.9% |
| Seagate barracuda (ST3000DM001) | 3.0TB | 4252 | 1.4 | 9.8% |
| Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000 (HDS5C4040ALE630) | 4.0TB | 2587 | 0.8 | 1.5% |
| Seagate Barracuda LP (ST31500541AS) | 1.5TB | 1929 | 3.8 | 9.9% |
| Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 (HDS723030ALA640) | 3.0TB | 1027 | 2.1 | 0.9% |
| Seagate barracuda 7200 (ST31500341AS) | 1.5TB | 539 | 3.8 | 25.4% |
| Western digital green (WD10EADS) | 1.0TB | 474 | 4.4 | 3.6% |
| Western digital red (WD30EFRX) | 3.0TB | 346 | 0.5 | 3.2% |
| Seagate Barracuda XT (ST33000651AS) | 3.0TB | 293 | 2.0 | 7.3% |
| Seagate Barracuda LP (ST32000542AS) | 2.0TB | 288 | 2.0 | 7.2% |
| Seagate Barracuda XT (ST4000DX000) | 4.0TB | 179 | 0.7 | n / a |
| Western digital green (WD10EACS) | 1.0TB | 84 | 5.0 | n / a |
| Seagate barracuda green (ST1500DL003) | 1.5TB | 51 | 0.8 | 120.0% |
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/209894/
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