Cloud storage provider Backblaze is one of the industry players providing insightful reports into the health and reliability of the storage mediums they invest in to support their business. In its most recent report, the company shared data that may finally be pointing towards the general perception (and one of SSD's call to fame upon their introduction): that they boast of higher reliability and lower failure rates than HDDs.

The company's latest reports shows that SSDs have entered their fifth operating year without an escalation in failure rates: something that seems to plague HDDs pretty heavily starting from year 4. The idea is simple: SSDs should be more reliable because there are no moving part (no platters and no read/write heads that can fail). However, SSDs do have other points of failure, such as NAND itself (the reason there's TBW ratings) or its controller. Backblaze's data does however show that those concerns may be overrated. Of course, there's a chance that SSDs employed by Backblaze will hit a "reliability" wall of the sort that HDDs seem to enter in year four of their operation, where failure rates increase immensely. More data throughout a larger span of time will be welcome, but for now, it does seem that SSDs are the best way for users to keep their data available.

TerraMaster, a professional brand that specializes in providing innovative storage products for home, businesses and enterprises, launches a comprehensive data backup and sync function to provide bolstered protection. Recently, QNAP NAS device was attacked by a new type of ransomware known as Checkmate. Checkmate attacks via SMB services exposed to the internet and employs a dictionary attack to break accounts with weak passwords. Data protection from ransomware and other cyberattacks is a major concern for NAS users - a concern very much acknowledged by TerraMaster.

Today, TerraMaster releases new single portal folder level data backup and synchronization features for TerraMaster devices. The recently released TOS 5's new applications such as centralized backup, TFSS, and TFM Backup provides a variety of data backup and recovery options.

Backblaze, a cloud storage provider has recently released their latest annual report on the performance of their 202,759 hard disks in operation. The company operates drives of various capacities and ages from Seagate, Toshiba, HGST, and WDC monitoring each models annualized failure rate (AFR). The latest report shows that the AFR for all drives in operation rose to 1.01% in 2021 up from 0.93% in 2020 but significantly below the 1.83% reported in 2019. The larger capacity newer drives are primarily responsible for this figure with them accounting for 69% of total active drives but only 57% of drive failures.

The most reliable drive operated by Backblaze remains the 6 TB Seagate ST6000DX000 with an AFR of just 0.11% while having an average age of 80.4 months. The least reliable drive is also from Seagate with the 14 TB ST14000NM0138 having an AFR of 4.66% in Q4 2021 down from 6.29% in Q3 2021. While these statistics cannot be used to reliably judge the quality of drives from any particular manufacturer they serve as a good reference for general trends in hard drive reliability.

Remember Backblaze - the hosting company that releases regular reports on HDD and SSD reliability deployed on their data servers? Well, the company seems to have found an unexplored market niche between pent up demand for HDD storage and the consumer channel's inability to provide enough hardware for would-be Chia farmers and general consumers who just want to back up their family photos. Unlike some cloud storage providers, who have updated their terms of service so as to exclude usage of their infrastructure to either plot/farm Chia, Backblaze now offers a monthly subscription which, for $5 a month, allows users to store up to 1 TB of plots, while also enabling them to be farmed.

Users will still have to plot their "lottery tickets" on their local computer (and/or acquire them through a number of services which have started offering the ability to download ready-made plots), and then upload them to Backblaze's servers for farming. The Chia Calculator places winnings from 1 TB of plots at around $6.43 per month (considering the current Chia price and overall network space - that does amount to quite meager winnings of $1.43 per month, and doesn't take into account Chia network's space growth, which currently stands at ~20 EiB. Users wanting to make use of this service will have a 100 TB limit on uploaded plots.

In the initial days of SSDs, some 11-odd years ago, SSDs were considered unreliable. They'd randomly fail on you, causing irrecoverable data loss. Gaming desktop users usually installed an HDD to go with the SSD in their builds, so they could take regular whole-disk images of the SSD onto the HDD; Microsoft even added a disk imaging feature with Windows 7. Since then, SSDs have come a long way with reliability, are now backed with longer warranties than HDDs, and high endurance. Notebook vendors are increasingly opting for SSDs as the sole storage device in their thin-and-light products. A Backblaze study reveals an interesting finding: SSDs are 21 times more reliable than HDDs.

Backblaze is popular for conducting regular actionable studies on storage device reliability in the enterprise segment, particularly dissecting how each brand of HDD and SSD fares in terms of drive failures or average failure rates (AFR). In a study covering Q1 2021 (January 1 to March 31), Backblaze finds that the AFR of HDDs across brands, stands at 10.56%. In the same period, SSDs across brands lodged an AFR of a stunning 0.58%. In other words, roughly 1 in 10 HDDs failed, compared to roughly 1 in 200 SSDs. Things get interesting when Backblaze looks all the way back to 2013, when it started studying drive reliability.

As of June 30, 2020, Backblaze had 142,630 spinning hard drives in our cloud storage ecosystem spread across four data centers. Of that number, there were 2,271 boot drives and 140,059 data drives. This review looks at the Q2 2020 and lifetime hard drive failure rates of the data drive models currently in operation in our data centers and provides a handful of insights and observations along the way. As always, we look forward to your comments.

Quarterly Hard Drive Failure Stats for Q2 2020
At the end of Q2 2020, Backblaze was using 140,059 hard drives to store customer data. For our evaluation we remove from consideration those drive models for which we did not have at least 60 drives (see why below). This leaves us with 139,867 hard drives in our review. The table below covers what happened in Q2 2020.

As of March 31, 2020, Backblaze had 132,339 spinning hard drives in our cloud storage ecosystem spread across four data centers. Of that number, there were 2,380 boot drives and 129,959 data drives. This review looks at the Q1 2020 and lifetime hard drive failure rates of the data drive models currently in operation in our data centers and provides a handful of insights and observations along the way. In addition, near the end of the post, we review a few 2019 predictions we posed a year ago. As always, we look forward to your comments.
Hard Drive Failure Stats for Q1 2020

At the end of Q1 2020, Backblaze was using 129,959 hard drives to store customer data. For our evaluation we remove from consideration those drives that were used for testing purposes and those drive models for which we did not have at least 60 drives (see why below). This leaves us with 129,764 hard drives. The table below covers what happened in Q1 2020.

QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading computing, networking and storage solution innovator, today announced its collaboration with Backblaze, Inc. ("Backblaze"), a US-headquartered data storage provider, for the integration of Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage into several QNAP solutions, including HybridMount, VJBOD Cloud, and Hybrid Backup Sync 3 (HBS 3). With Backblaze B2, QNAP NAS users can now enjoy a cloud storage service that is easy, affordable, and predictable.

"By supporting the advanced Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, we've provided QNAP NAS users with greater choice in building fast, cost-effective, and expandable hybrid cloud solutions," said Josh Chen, product manager of QNAP.

As of March 31, 2019, Backblaze had 106,238 spinning hard drives in our cloud storage ecosystem spread across three data centers. Of that number, there were 1,913 boot drives and 104,325 data drives. This review looks at the Q1 2019 and lifetime hard drive failure rates of the data drive models currently in operation in our data centers and provides a handful of insights and observations along the way.

Hard Drive Failure Stats for Q1 2019
At the end of Q1 2019, Backblaze was using 104,325 hard drives to store data. For our evaluation we remove from consideration those drives that were used for testing purposes and those drive models for which we did not have at least 45 drives (see why below). This leaves us with 104,130 hard drives. The table below covers what happened in Q1 2019.

As of September 30, 2018 Backblaze had 99,636 spinning hard drives. Of that number, there were 1,866 boot drives and 97,770 data drives. This review looks at the quarterly and lifetime statistics for the data drive models in operation in our data centers. In addition, we'll say goodbye to the last of our 3TB drives, hello to our new 12TB HGST drives, and we'll explain how we have 584 fewer drives than last quarter, but have added over 40 petabytes of storage.

Hard Drive Reliability Statistics for Q3 2018
At the end of Q3 2018, Backblaze was monitoring 97,770 hard drives used to store data. For our evaluation, we remove from consideration those drives that were used for testing purposes and those drive models for which we did not have at least 45 drives (see why below). This leaves us with 97,600 hard drives. The table below covers what happened in Q3 2018.

As of June 30, 2018 we had 100,254 spinning hard drives in Backblaze's data centers. Of that number, there were 1,989 boot drives and 98,265 data drives. This review looks at the quarterly and lifetime statistics for the data drive models in operation in our data centers. We'll also take another look at comparing enterprise and consumer drives, get a first look at our 14 TB Toshiba drives, and introduce you to two new SMART stats. Along the way, we'll share observations and insights on the data presented and we look forward to you doing the same in the comments.
Hard Drive Reliability Statistics for Q2 2018

Of the 98,265 hard drives we were monitoring at the end of Q2 2018, we removed from consideration those drives used for testing purposes and those drive models for which we did not have at least 45 drives. This leaves us with 98,184 hard drives. The table below covers just Q2 2018.

As of March 31, 2018 we had 100,110 spinning hard drives. Of that number, there were 1,922 boot drives and 98,188 data drives. This review looks at the quarterly and lifetime statistics for the data drive models in operation in our data centers. We'll also take a look at why we are collecting and reporting 10 new SMART attributes and take a sneak peek at some 8 TB Toshiba drives. Along the way, we'll share observations and insights on the data presented and we look forward to you doing the same in the comments.

Overview
At the end of 2017 we had 93,240 spinning hard drives. Of that number, there were 1,935 boot drives and 91,305 data drives. This post looks at the hard drive statistics of the data drives we monitor. We'll review the stats for Q4 2017, all of 2017, and the lifetime statistics for all of the drives Backblaze has used in our cloud storage data centers since we started keeping track.

Hard Drive Reliability Statistics for Q4 2017
At the end of Q4 2017 Backblaze was monitoring 91,305 hard drives used to store data. For our evaluation we remove from consideration those drives which were used for testing purposes and those drive models for which we did not have at least 45 drives (read why after the chart). This leaves us with 91,243 hard drives. The table below is for the period of Q4 2017.

The following was posted by Seagate Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Mark Re, in a Guest Blog Post on Backblaze: "Earlier this year Seagate announced plans to make the first hard drives using Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording, or HAMR, available by the end of 2018 in pilot volumes. Even as today's market has embraced 10TB+ drives, the need for 20TB+ drives remains imperative in the relative near term. HAMR is the Seagate research team's next major advance in hard drive technology.

HAMR is a technology that over time will enable a big increase in the amount of data that can be stored on a disk. A small laser is attached to a recording head, designed to heat a tiny spot on the disk where the data will be written. This allows a smaller bit cell to be written as either a 0 or a 1. The smaller bit cell size enables more bits to be crammed into a given surface area - increasing the areal density of data, and increasing drive capacity.

Backblaze has just revealed their HDD failure rates statistics, with updates regarding 2016's Q4 and full-year analysis. These 2016 results join the company's statistics, which started being collected and collated in April 2013, to shed some light on the most - and least reliable - manufacturers. A total of 1,225 drives failed in 2016, which means the drive failure rate for 2016 was just 1.95 percent, a improving over the 2.47 percent that died in 2015 and miles below the 6.39 percent that hit the garbage bin in 2014.

Organizing 2016's failure rates by drive size, independent of manufacturer, we see that 3 TB hard drives are the most reliable (with 1,40% failure rates), with 5 TB hard drives being the least reliable (at a 2,22% failure rate). When we organize the drives by manufacturer, HGST, which powers 34% (24,545) of the total drives (71,939), claims the reliability crown, with a measly 0,60% failure rate, and WDC bringing up the rear on reliability terms, with an average 3,88% failure rate, while simultaneously being one of the least represented manufacturers, with only 1,626 HDDs being used from the manufacturer.