B2 cloud storage and computer back up tools provider, Backblaze, has released hard drive failure rate report for all its major supplier around the world. Backblaze had 106,238 hard drives in their three data centers of cloud storage ecosystem. Out of that number, 104,325 were data drives, and 1,913 were boot drives. Backblaze examined the stats of those hard drives in all the three data centers, and published a review of only two periods, from January 1, 2019 to March 31, 2019 (Q1 2019), and April 2013 to March 2019.
Primary hard drive suppliers such as HGST, Seagate, Toshiba, and WDC hard drives’ performance were examined during the periods. If a supplier’s drive model has a failure rate of 0%, it means the hard drive of that model worked well without any failure during the periods. Two drive models, 4 TB and 5 TB of Toshiba in Q1 were found with a failure rate of 0%, means both the drives worked without any failure. There were 195 drives which were not included in the report because they were in hard drive recovery and malfunction testing.
The report concluded that Backblaze cloud storage would not use lower density 2,3 and 4 TB drives in the future. They will be replaced with larger density 10,12 and 14 TB hard drives. However, Toshiba 5 TB model hard drive will remain with the company in the future. The company will also install 1 HAMR Seagate hard drive for testing purpose and check the performance of the installed 1-exabyte hard drive to replace 850 petabytes hard drives with it.
