Backblaze's 12-year hard drive failure rate analysis, visualized through interactive charts, reveals interesting trends. While drive sizes have increased significantly, failure rates haven't followed a clear pattern related to size. Different manufacturers demonstrate varying reliability, with some models showing notably higher or lower failure rates than others. The data allows exploration of failure rates over time, by manufacturer, model, and size, providing valuable insights into drive longevity for large-scale deployments. The visualization highlights the complexity of predicting drive failure and the importance of ongoing monitoring.
This comprehensive and visually engaging blog post, titled "12 Years of Backblaze Data Center Storage Drives," meticulously presents an extensive analysis of hard drive failure rates within Backblaze's data centers, spanning from April 2013 to March 2025. The analysis leverages an impressive dataset encompassing over 2.6 million drive days and covering 32 distinct drive models from various manufacturers, primarily Seagate, Western Digital, HGST, and Toshiba.
The author employs a variety of graphical representations, including line charts, bar graphs, and heatmaps, to illustrate the evolving landscape of hard drive reliability over this 12-year period. A key focus of the visualization is the Annualized Failure Rate (AFR), which is calculated for each drive model and year, providing a standardized metric for comparison. The charts depict the AFR fluctuations across different manufacturers, capacities, and drive models, revealing trends and outliers within the dataset.
The post meticulously details the methodology behind the AFR calculations, emphasizing the importance of accounting for drive lifespan and population size to avoid biases. It explains how the data is aggregated and smoothed to present clearer trends, while acknowledging the limitations inherent in analyzing such a complex dataset. The visualizations highlight which drive models have demonstrated consistently low failure rates, which models have experienced periods of elevated failures, and which have been discontinued or phased out over time.
Furthermore, the interactive nature of the visualizations allows for granular exploration. Users can filter the data by manufacturer, capacity, or drive model, enabling them to focus on specific subsets of the data and gain deeper insights into the performance of particular drives. This level of interactivity allows for customized analysis based on individual interests and requirements. The author concludes by providing contextual information about Backblaze's data center environment and operational practices, offering further nuance to the interpretation of the presented data. The post serves as a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding the long-term reliability trends of various hard drive models in a real-world production environment.
Summary of Comments ( 41 )
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43094241
Hacker News users discussed the methodology and presentation of the Backblaze data drive statistics. Several commenters questioned the lack of confidence intervals or error bars, making it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about drive reliability, especially regarding less common models. Others pointed out the potential for selection bias due to Backblaze's specific usage patterns and purchasing decisions. Some suggested alternative visualizations, like Kaplan-Meier survival curves, would be more informative. A few commenters praised the long-term data collection and its value for the community, while also acknowledging its limitations. The visualization itself was generally well-received, with some suggestions for improvements like interactive filtering.
The Hacker News post titled "12 years of Backblaze data center storage drives, visualized" generated a fair number of comments discussing various aspects of Backblaze's drive statistics and data presentation.
Several commenters focused on the visualization itself. Some praised its clarity and the ability to easily compare drive models and failure rates over time. Others suggested improvements, like logarithmic scales for better visualizing failure rates across different orders of magnitude, or different groupings and filtering options to further analyze the data. One commenter specifically wished for a way to see the correlation between drive age and failure rate independent of model.
A significant portion of the discussion revolved around the reliability of different drive manufacturers and models, with commenters sharing their own experiences and comparing them to Backblaze's data. Some pointed out the apparent good performance of HGST drives, while others noted the variability within specific Seagate models. The complexities of interpreting annualized failure rates were also discussed, with some commenters emphasizing the importance of considering drive age and usage patterns. One commenter even offered a detailed explanation of how Backblaze calculates their annualized failure rates.
Several commenters delved into the technical aspects of drive technology, such as Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) and its potential impact on reliability. The discussion touched on the challenges of extrapolating consumer-grade drive reliability to data center environments and the different workloads and usage patterns in each.
Some commenters also discussed the business implications of Backblaze's data, including how it might influence purchasing decisions for individuals and businesses. The topic of data recovery and backup strategies also emerged, with some commenters sharing their preferred methods and tools.
A few commenters expressed interest in the raw data and wished for Backblaze to make it publicly available for further analysis and exploration. Others speculated on the reasons behind certain trends in the data, such as the observed increase in drive sizes over time.
Finally, a handful of commenters mentioned other resources and tools for monitoring drive health and predicting failures, offering alternative perspectives on the topic of drive reliability.