Backblaze releases study results about ‘longest-lasting’ and ‘most reliable’ hard drives

Backblaze releases study results about ‘longest-lasting’ and ‘most reliable’ hard drives

On the basis of the results of a comprehensive three-year study to ascertain which hard drive vendors' products last the longest, cloud service provider Backblaze has revealed that hard drives from Western Digital are the longest-lasting drives on average, followed by Hitachi and Seagate drives.  However, a few of the Hitachi models perform better in terms of reliability.

For the study, Backblaze gathered details from more than 28,000 hard drives which it uses in its data centers.  The company used 12,956 Hitachi drives; 12,765 Seagate drives; 2,838 Western Digital drives; and 58 and 18 drives respectively from Toshiba and Samsung.

According to the findings of the Backblaze study, the average life of Western Digital's drives is 2.5 years; while that of Hitachi drives is 2 years, and Seagate drives is 1.4 years.

With regard to reliability of the drives, the study showed that two of Hitachi's models are the `most reliable' drives.  These models are: the Hitachi 3TB Deskstar 7K3000 (HDS723030ALA640) and the Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000
(HDS5C3030ALA630).  Both the drives have a 0.9 percent failure rate; and the average lifetime of the two models is 2.1 years and 1.7 years respectively.

About the annual failure rate based on manufacturer and capacity, Backblaze said in its official blog post: "Hitachi does really well.  There is an initial die-off of Western Digital drives, and then they are nice and stable.  The Seagate drives start strong, but die off at a consistently higher rate, with a burst of deaths near the 20-month mark."