Take this data with a grain of salt. They buy consumer drives and run them in data centers. So unless your use case is similar, you probably won’t see similar results. A “good” drive from their data may fail early in a frequent spin up/down scenario, and a “bad” drive may last forever if you’re not writing very often.
It’s certainly interesting data, but don’t assume it’s directly applicable to your use case.
It’s absolutely useful data, but there are a bunch of caveats that are easy to ignore.
For example, it’s easy to sort by failure rate and pick the manufacturer with the lowest number. But failures are clustered around the first 18 months of ownership, so this is more a measure of QC for these drives and less of a “how long will this drive last” thing. You’re unlikely to be buying those specific drives or run them as hard as Backblaze does.
Also, while Seagate has the highest failure rates, they are also some of the oldest drives in the report. So for the average user, this largely impacts how likely they are to get a bad drive, not how long a good drive will likely last. The former question matters more for a storage company because they need to pay people to handle drives, whereas a user cares more about second question, and the study doesn’t really address that second question.
The info is certainly interesting, just be careful about what conclusions you draw. Personally, as long as the drive has >=3 year warranty and the company honors it without hassle, I’ll avoid the worst capacities and pick based on price and features.
You’re correct, but this is pretty much “Statistics 101”. Granted most people are really bad at interpreting statistics, but I recommend looking at Backblaze reports because nothing else really comes close.
Is a home NAS a frequent spin up/down scenario though? I’d imagine you’d keep the drives spinning to improve latency and reduce spin-up count. Not that I own any spinning drives currently though - so that’s why I’m wondering.
My drives are usually spun down because it’s not used a ton. Everything runs off my SSD except data access, so unless there’s a backup or I’m watching a movie or something, the drives don’t MHD need to be spinning.
If I was running an office NAS or something, I’d probably keep them spinning, but it’s just me and my family, so usage is pretty infrequent.
Take this data with a grain of salt. They buy consumer drives and run them in data centers. So unless your use case is similar, you probably won’t see similar results. A “good” drive from their data may fail early in a frequent spin up/down scenario, and a “bad” drive may last forever if you’re not writing very often.
It’s certainly interesting data, but don’t assume it’s directly applicable to your use case.
Sure, YMMV for any statistical study but it’s also the best source that exists for stats on consumer Hard Drives tested at scale.
It’s absolutely useful data, but there are a bunch of caveats that are easy to ignore.
For example, it’s easy to sort by failure rate and pick the manufacturer with the lowest number. But failures are clustered around the first 18 months of ownership, so this is more a measure of QC for these drives and less of a “how long will this drive last” thing. You’re unlikely to be buying those specific drives or run them as hard as Backblaze does.
Also, while Seagate has the highest failure rates, they are also some of the oldest drives in the report. So for the average user, this largely impacts how likely they are to get a bad drive, not how long a good drive will likely last. The former question matters more for a storage company because they need to pay people to handle drives, whereas a user cares more about second question, and the study doesn’t really address that second question.
The info is certainly interesting, just be careful about what conclusions you draw. Personally, as long as the drive has >=3 year warranty and the company honors it without hassle, I’ll avoid the worst capacities and pick based on price and features.
You’re correct, but this is pretty much “Statistics 101”. Granted most people are really bad at interpreting statistics, but I recommend looking at Backblaze reports because nothing else really comes close.
Is a home NAS a frequent spin up/down scenario though? I’d imagine you’d keep the drives spinning to improve latency and reduce spin-up count. Not that I own any spinning drives currently though - so that’s why I’m wondering.
My drives are usually spun down because it’s not used a ton. Everything runs off my SSD except data access, so unless there’s a backup or I’m watching a movie or something, the drives don’t MHD need to be spinning.
If I was running an office NAS or something, I’d probably keep them spinning, but it’s just me and my family, so usage is pretty infrequent.