It's worked out a mathematical formula that tells the company which drive models are the most efficient in terms of cost, including whether or not to buy drives that are known to have a higher AFR but at a lower price compared to others.īackblaze gives a fictitious example of three different 14TB drives priced at $225, $250, and $275. Backblaze says this is due to the aging of the entire drive fleet, and as a result we should expect this number to go back down soon as older drives are flushed out and replaced with newer drives.īackblaze takes all of its drive statistics and failure rate analysis into consideration when making purchasing decisions on hard drive replacements for its cloud storage servers. The Q3 2022 AFR for all drives was 1.64%, compared to Q2 2022's 1.46% AFR overall, and 1.10% AFR from a year ago. These numbers are still much higher than last quarter, with Backblaze concluding that all three drives seem to be wearing out at a noticeably higher rate after 7 years of operation, presumably due to their spindles, actuators, and media starting to wear out from non-stop spinning.īackblaze also states that its quarterly AFR has increased versus last quarter. However, Backblaze notes that the high failure rates for the Toshiba drive are related to the limited number of drive days in the quarter, with its rather low drive pool of 95 drives in total. Finally, the Toshiba 4TB drive went from zero failures last quarter to a whopping 8.25% in Q3. ![]() The Seagate 4TB went from 3.42% in Q2 to 4.38% in Q3, while the 6TB model increased from 0.91% AFR in Q2 to 1.34% AFR in Q3. These drives are experiencing an increased annualized failure rate (AFR) in this quarter specifically. HGST's slice of the pie has dropped to under 20% as well, though the yearly fluctuations are relatively flat compared to the other brands.īackblaze's Oldest Drives Are Really Showing Their Ageīackblaze continues by sharing details on its three oldest drives in its workforce today, the Seagate 4TB ST4000DM000, 6TB ST6000DX000, and Toshiba 4TB MD04ABA400V. The current status shows that Seagate has lost a lot more of its drive share, dropping to just under 50% of Backblaze's overall capacity. It was at more than 10% volume by Q3 2020, and that growth trend continued in 20, with Toshiba reaching around 23% drive capacity and Western Digital growing to around 8% drive capacity by Q3 2022. ![]() These ratios began to change in the 2020s, with Toshiba taking huge chunks out of Seagate's drive capacity. ![]() Toshiba and Western Digital meanwhile made up an incredibly small amount of capacity, with less than 5% of the total hard drive capacity combined. HGST took second place with an average of 25% of Backblaze's storage capacity. From Q3 2017 through Q3 2019, Backblaze's storage servers were predominantly populated with Seagate-branded hard drives, which making up around 70% of the companies entire storage volume. Moving on, Backblaze also shared a graph of its drive models based on the brand, and how the company has shifted to different brands over the past six years of operation.
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