Failure Rate Analysis - Best 10Tb+ hard drives: Seagate, Western Digital or Toshiba?

About this Video

• Video Title: Failure Rate Analysis - Best 10Tb+ hard drives: Seagate, Western Digital or Toshiba?
• Channel: SomeTechGuy
• Speakers: SomeTechGuy (host)
• Duration: 00:15:45

Introduction

This video analyzes the failure rates of large capacity (10TB+) hard drives from Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, and HGST using Backblaze's publicly available hard drive reliability data. The analysis focuses on models with at least 500 deployed units and one year of data, comparing Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) over time to determine which manufacturers produce the most reliable drives.

Key Takeaways

• Western Digital's newest large capacity enterprise drives (HC530 and HC550) are currently the most reliable. The 14TB and 16TB models show impressively low and consistent AFR, with the 14TB model even meeting its datasheet AFR of 0.35%.
• HGST drives (now under Western Digital) also perform well, demonstrating a solid track record of reliability that has seemingly continued under Western Digital's branding.
• Toshiba drives tend to have higher initial failure rates (DOA), but their AFR generally stabilizes below 1% after a few months. Long-term reliability data is still limited for some models.
• Seagate drives have the largest deployed base and widest model variety, but historically haven't been as reliable. However, the newer Exos X16 series shows improvement with AFR around 1%. The video notes several specific older Seagate models with problematic AFRs, including the Exos X12 NM7 and the Exos X14.
• Real-world AFR changes over time and often doesn't match manufacturer specifications. The video uses cumulative data to provide a smoothed view of AFR development over the lifetime of each drive model.