Stories with Tag Failure Rates

• 12 years of Backblaze data center storage drives, visualized

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  Posted: 2025-02-18 19:55:33

  Verbose tl;dr

  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.

  • Hard Drives
  • HDD
  • SSD
  • Storage
  • Data Centers
  • Backblaze
  • Failure Rates
  • lifespan
  • Visualization
  • Data Analysis
  • Drive Statistics
  • Reliability

  Summary of Comments ( 41 )
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43094241

  Verbose tl;dr

  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.

• Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024

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  Posted: 2025-02-11 14:55:45

  Verbose tl;dr

  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.

  Backblaze's 2024 hard drive statistics report, covering Q1, provides a detailed look into the reliability of various hard drive models used in their data centers. The report encompasses data from a staggering 235,960 spinning hard drives, totaling over 2.8 exabytes of storage. While this vast collection includes boot drives and drives in storage pods undergoing decommissioning, the primary focus for failure rate analysis is the 222,341 data drives actively storing customer data.

  A significant highlight of the report is the introduction of a new metric: the "Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) curve." This curve goes beyond the traditional annualized failure rate calculation, which provides a single snapshot in time, to showcase how drive failure rates evolve over their lifespan. The AFR curve offers valuable insights into the "bathtub curve" of drive reliability, visualizing the higher failure rates during the early "infant mortality" phase, the lower, more stable rates during the operational life, and the eventual increase in failures as drives approach end-of-life or experience "wear-out."

  The report dives deep into the performance of various drive manufacturers and models, with specific focus on the high-capacity 16TB, 18TB, and 22TB drives, reflecting the increasing demand for larger storage solutions. Detailed tables showcase each model's population, total drive days, drive failures, and the calculated annualized failure rate, allowing for direct comparison across manufacturers and capacities. The report observes trends in failure rates, noting that Seagate drives exhibit slightly higher AFRs than Western Digital models in certain capacity segments. However, Backblaze emphasizes the overall decline in average failure rates across most drive capacities compared to previous years, indicating improved reliability in modern hard drive technology.

  Beyond the AFR data, the report also delves into the lifetime AFR for different drive models, offering a broader perspective on long-term reliability. This includes an overview of models that have reached their end-of-life and been retired from service, providing a complete picture of their performance throughout their operational lifespan. The report underscores the importance of continuous monitoring and analysis for optimizing drive selection and proactively mitigating potential storage failures. Backblaze concludes by acknowledging the complexities involved in interpreting drive statistics and the need for considering multiple factors, including manufacturer, model, capacity, workload, and environmental conditions when assessing drive reliability. They also reiterate their commitment to transparency and sharing these detailed statistics with the wider community, fostering informed decision-making for individuals and organizations alike.

  • Backblaze
  • hard drive
  • HDD
  • Drive Stats
  • Reliability
  • Failure Rates
  • Storage
  • Data Centers
  • 2024
  • Annual Report
  • Drive Statistics

  Summary of Comments ( 101 )
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43013431

  Verbose tl;dr

  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.

  The Hacker News post titled "Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024" has generated several comments discussing the linked Backblaze report on hard drive reliability. Many of the comments focus on the continued dominance of HGST drives in terms of reliability, with users expressing their preference for these drives based on Backblaze's consistent findings over the years.

  Several commenters discuss the surprising resilience of older drives. Some note that the high failure rates of newer drives, particularly larger capacity models, is concerning. This leads to speculation about potential contributing factors, such as manufacturing processes, component quality, or even increased susceptibility to external factors. The observation that larger drives often have higher failure rates sparks a discussion around the balance between capacity and reliability.

  The methodology used by Backblaze is also a topic of conversation. Some users acknowledge the limitations of the data, noting that Backblaze's usage case (primarily in data centers) may not reflect typical consumer usage. Despite this, the data is still considered valuable for providing general insights into drive reliability trends.

  Another recurring theme in the comments is the trade-off between cost and reliability. While HGST drives are generally praised for their reliability, their higher price point is also acknowledged. Some users suggest that the lower cost of other drives, even with slightly higher failure rates, might represent a better value proposition depending on the specific use case.

  A few commenters mention their personal experiences with different drive brands, often corroborating or contrasting with Backblaze's findings. These anecdotal accounts add another layer to the discussion, providing real-world context to the statistical data.

  Finally, there's a brief exchange about the implications of these statistics for different storage strategies, including RAID configurations and cloud backups. Some users emphasize the importance of redundancy regardless of drive brand, highlighting that any hard drive can fail eventually.