BackBlaze Posts Hard Drive Failure Rate Study For 2014
If you’re wondering what the most reliable brand of hard drive to buy for your computer is, you don’t have a lot of places to look for that info. In the end, most of us rely on what the guy at the computer store says or what the search engine of your choice manages to find. BlackBlaze however has taken the liberty of posting the data on hard drive failures in their environment. They did this last year and it turned heads. So they’ve done it again. Here’s a link to the study and it does note the following:
- 4TB are the drive to buy from a reliability standpoint. 3TB, not so much.
- HGST and Seagate are the brands to buy at the moment. Western Digital, not so much… Though BackBlaze doesn’t have a lot of 4TB drives from Western Digital to form a real opinion.
- The jury is still out on 6TB drives.
The methodology of this study is sound, thus I would take the results as being valid. That’s going to really help me when I buy drives for the Network Attached Storage unit that I’m building. I’m sure it will help you as well.
January 23, 2015 at 11:16 am
Interesting post – thanks for pointing out the article from BackBlaze. I’ve always been loyal to WD, and have had great experiences with their drives: zero failures even after years of use. They may cost a bit more, but it has been worth it for me. BackBlaze’s good experiences with Hitachi drives might make me give them a try, but I avoid Seagate due to personal experience/preference.