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.
Backblaze's 2024 hard drive stats reveal a continued decline in annualized failure rates (AFR) across most drive models. The overall AFR for 2024 was 0.83%, the lowest ever recorded by Backblaze. Larger capacity drives, particularly 16TB and larger, demonstrated remarkably low failure rates, with some models exhibiting AFRs below 0.5%. While some older drives experienced higher failure rates as expected, the data suggests increasing drive reliability overall. Seagate drives dominated Backblaze's data centers, comprising the majority of drives and continuing to perform reliably. The report highlights the ongoing trend of larger drives becoming more dependable, contributing to the overall improvement in data storage reliability.
Hacker News users discuss Backblaze's 2024 drive stats, focusing on the high failure rates of WDC drives, especially the 16TB and 18TB models. Several commenters question Backblaze's methodology and data interpretation, suggesting their usage case (consumer drives in enterprise settings) skews the results. Others point out the difficulty in comparing different drive models directly due to varying usage and deployment periods. Some highlight the overall decline in drive reliability and express concerns about the industry trend of increasing capacity at the expense of longevity. The discussion also touches on SMART stats, RMA processes, and the potential impact of SMR technology. A few users share their personal experiences with different drive brands, offering anecdotal evidence that contradicts or supports Backblaze's findings.
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.