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Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024

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Re: Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024

#131

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

Kelvin506 wrote: post #125
CTDOCodebases wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take these stats with a grain of salt. I am becoming more and more convinced that hard drive reliability is linked to the batch more than to the individual drive models themselves. Often you will read online of people experiencing multiple failures from drives purchased from the same batch. I cannot prove this because I have no idea about Blackblazes procurement patterns but I bought one of the better drives in this…

IME heat is a significant factor with spindle drives. People will buy enterprise-class drives, then stick them in enclosures and computer cases that don't flow much air over it, leading to the motor and logic board getting much warmer than they should.

Heat is also a problem for flash. If you care about your data, you have to keep it cool and redundant.

Re: Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024

#132

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

loeg wrote: post #114
ecliptik wrote: post #14

It's not a best practice, but the last 10 years I've run my home server with a smaller faster drive for the OS and a single larger disk for bulk storage that I choose using Backblaze Drive Stats. None of have failed yet (fingers-crossed). I really trust their methodology and it's an extremely valuable resource for me as a consumer. My most recent drive is a WDC WUH722222ALE6L4 22TiB, and looking at the stats (albeit…

I switched to TLC flash last time around and no regrets. With QLC the situations where HDDs are cheaper, including the cost of power, are growing narrower and narrower.

It really depends on your usage patterns. Write-heavy workloads are still better cases for spinning rust due to how much harder they are on flash, especially at greater layer depths.

Re: Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024

#133

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

nubinetwork wrote: post #38
antithesis-nl wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They, ironically, got acquired by Western Digital. But the 'Ultrastar' line name is still alive, if that's what you're looking for. 'Deskstar' seems to be gone, though.

> 'Deskstar' seems to be gone, though. Considering we used to call them deathstars, I'm surprised they didn't get rid of the line sooner...

I still have some of those in working condition, somewhere.

If I can be bothered to power on the antiques, which they are built in.

Which is rare, but it happens.

I abused them really hard when they weren't antique.

Still working every time, so far...

Re: Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024

#134

Post by MathiasPius »

frontierkodiak wrote: post #120

I've owned 17 Seagate ST12000NM001G (12TB SATA) drives over the last 24mos in a big raidz3 pool. My personal stats, grouping by the first 3-4 SN characters: - 5/8 ZLW2s failed - 1/4 ZL2s - 1/2 ZS80 - 0/2 ZTN - 0/1 ZLW0 All drives were refurbs. Two from the Seagate eBay store, all others from ServerPartDeals. 7/15 of the drives I purchases from ServerPartDeals have failed, at least four of those failures have been wit…

I think impact can have a big influence on mechanical hard drive longevity, so it could be that the way the ServerPartDeals drives were sourced, handled or shipped compromised them.

Re: Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024

#135

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

textlapse wrote: post #97

Great to see this every year. Although a minor pet peeve (knowing this is free): I would have loved to see a 'in-use meter' in addition to just 'the drive was kept powered on'. AFR doesn't make sense for a HDD unless we know how long and how frequently the drives were being used (# of reads/writes or bytes/s). If all of them had a 99% usage through the entire year - then sure (really?).

Probably can't say too much, but I know that the I/O on these drives stays pretty consistently high. Enough so that Backblaze has to consider staying on smaller drives due to rebuild times and the fact that denser drives really don't stand up to as much abuse.

Re: Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024

#136

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

homarp wrote: post #48
staindk wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OneDrive space (through MS365 single or family licence) works out much cheaper in my country. I'm sure in the EU it is GDPR-compliant. YMMV but OneDrive has been improving a lot. Their web photos browsing is comparable to Google Photos these days.

linux sync works?

It's supported by rclone.

Re: Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024

#137

Post by meindnoch »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #127
ecliptik wrote: post #14

It's not a best practice, but the last 10 years I've run my home server with a smaller faster drive for the OS and a single larger disk for bulk storage that I choose using Backblaze Drive Stats. None of have failed yet (fingers-crossed). I really trust their methodology and it's an extremely valuable resource for me as a consumer. My most recent drive is a WDC WUH722222ALE6L4 22TiB, and looking at the stats (albeit…

Nobody should ever have peace of mind about a single drive. You probably have odds around 5% that the storage drive fails each cycle, and another 5% for the OS drive. That's significant. And in your particular situation, 3 refurbished WUH721414ALE6L4 are the same total price. If you put those in RAIDZ1 then that's 28TB with about as much reliability as you can hope to have in a single device. (With backups still bein…

>You probably have odds around 5% that the storage drive fails each cycle

What do you mean by cycle?

Re: Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024

#138

Post by Dylan16807 »

meindnoch wrote: post #137
Dylan16807 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody should ever have peace of mind about a single drive. You probably have odds around 5% that the storage drive fails each cycle, and another 5% for the OS drive. That's significant. And in your particular situation, 3 refurbished WUH721414ALE6L4 are the same total price. If you put those in RAIDZ1 then that's 28TB with about as much reliability as you can hope to have in a single device. (With backups still bein…

>You probably have odds around 5% that the storage drive fails each cycle What do you mean by cycle?

"My most recent drive [...] it should be fine for the next few years until it's time for the cycle to repeat."

The amount of time they stay on a single drive.

Re: Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024

#139

Post by CTDOCodebases »

Kelvin506 wrote: post #125
CTDOCodebases wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take these stats with a grain of salt. I am becoming more and more convinced that hard drive reliability is linked to the batch more than to the individual drive models themselves. Often you will read online of people experiencing multiple failures from drives purchased from the same batch. I cannot prove this because I have no idea about Blackblazes procurement patterns but I bought one of the better drives in this…

IME heat is a significant factor with spindle drives. People will buy enterprise-class drives, then stick them in enclosures and computer cases that don't flow much air over it, leading to the motor and logic board getting much warmer than they should.

I have four of those drives mentioned and the one that did fail had the highest maximum temperature according to the SMART data. It was still within the specs though by about 6 degrees Celsius.

The drives are spaced apart by empty drive slots and have a 12cm case fan cranked to max blowing over it at all times.

It is in a tower though so maybe it was bumped at some time and that caused the issue. Being in the top slot this would have had the greatest effect on the drive. I doubt it though.

Usage is low and the drives are spinning 24/7.

Still I think I am cursed when it comes to Seagate.

Re: Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024

#140

Post by cm2187 »

CTDOCodebases wrote: post #72
ecliptik wrote: post #14

It's not a best practice, but the last 10 years I've run my home server with a smaller faster drive for the OS and a single larger disk for bulk storage that I choose using Backblaze Drive Stats. None of have failed yet (fingers-crossed). I really trust their methodology and it's an extremely valuable resource for me as a consumer. My most recent drive is a WDC WUH722222ALE6L4 22TiB, and looking at the stats (albeit…

Take these stats with a grain of salt. I am becoming more and more convinced that hard drive reliability is linked to the batch more than to the individual drive models themselves. Often you will read online of people experiencing multiple failures from drives purchased from the same batch. I cannot prove this because I have no idea about Blackblazes procurement patterns but I bought one of the better drives in this…

Well to me the report is mostly useful to illustrate the volatility of hard drive failure. It isn't a particular manufacturer or line of disks, it's all over the place.

By the time Backblaze has a sufficient number of a particular model and sufficient time lapsed to measure failures, the drive is an obsolete model, so the report cannot really inform my decision for buying new drives. These are new drive stats, so not sure it is that useful for buying a used drive either, because of the bathtub shaped failure rate curve.

So the conclusion I take from this report is that when a new drive comes out, you have no way to tell if it's going to be a good model, a good batch, so better stop worrying about it and plan for failure instead, because you could get a bad/damaged batch of even the best models.

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