“At an average age of nine years, these drives continue to defy their age.”
Backblaze ran 279,572 hard drives last quarter and the annualized failure rate fell to 1.41%. The best performers are 6TB Seagates installed in 2015, with zero failures this quarter and a 0.86% lifetime rate. Backblaze also pulled 275 drives from the math for running past their manufacturer’s temperature spec. The drop comes from retiring old 4TB drives that hit 2.33% in Q2 2023. Throwing out the worst cohort is the whole improvement.