merely put: A analysis report on exhausting drive failure charges in 2022 confirms that the age of a drive is a key predictor of doubtless failure. The report examined 230,921 HDDs and just one 8TB Seagate (Model: ST8000NM000A) had zero failures.
A fast look on the newest report from cloud storage supplier Backblaze concludes that larger-capacity drives (12TB, 14TB, and 16TB) fail much less continuously than smaller-capacity variations. According to Andy Klein, chief cloud storage evangelist for Backblaze, the annualized failure charge (AFR) of HDDs has elevated considerably over the previous 12 months from 1.01% in 2021 to 1.37% in 2022.
At the top of 2022, the cloud backup firm used 236,608 HDDs, together with 4,299 boot drives and 235,608 information drives. Backclaze excluded the boot unit and 388 information HDDs from the evaluation as a result of they have been both used for testing or had a fleet dimension of lower than 60 items. In this manner, a complete of 230,921 HDDs have been studied.
“In our quarterly drive statistics report for Q2 2022 and Q3 2022, we famous a rise in total AFR quarter-over-quarter and attributed this to drive growing old, however is that actually the case? Klein requested.
It seems the reply is sure.
Klein noticed that when evaluating higher-capacity HDDs (12TB, 14TB, and 16TB) to smaller HDDs (4TB, 6TB, 8TB, and 10TB) between 2021 and 2022, each dimension (besides 16TB drives) ) will improve in AFR. The AFR for small drives is 2.12%, considerably larger than the 1.37% development for all HDDs in 2022. Additionally, though small units will account for less than 28.7% of drive days in 2022, they are going to account for 44.5% of drive failures.
However, Klein famous that though smaller drives failed extra continuously final 12 months, they have been additionally older. The oldest drive examined was a 6TB Seagate (ST6000DX000) with a median age of 92.5 months. Its 2021 AFR is 0.11%, and 2022 is 0.68%.
Backblaze’s desk grouping AFR by vendor reveals that Seagate and Toshiba are the 2 with the very best failure charges. However, most Seagate items are a lot older than the opposite HDDs checked. The firm expects to exchange older drives with 16TB and bigger drives in 2023, which implies its 4TB drives and 6TB Seagate drives could also be on the verge of retirement.