IEEE research of 443,000 arduous drives ranks HGST as most dependable
A peer-reviewed IEEE research reanalysing 12 years of Backblaze arduous drive information has revealed that HGST drives recorded the bottom failure price, adopted by Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba.
Within the IEEE research named “Are There Producer Variations in Exhausting-Drive Reliability?” (through Tom’s {Hardware}), economists Christoph Siemroth and Yeomyung Park analysed 443,156 enterprise arduous drives from 2013 by means of Q2 2025. Controlling for drive age, capability, kind issue, and working temperature, the researchers discovered that HGST drives fail at roughly 41% of Seagate’s price. Western Digital sits at roughly 52% of Seagate’s failure price, whereas Toshiba posted the very best failure price at 107%.
Adjusting for age was crucial, as Backblaze’s uncooked quarterly figures pit ageing models towards newer drives. Toshiba drives displayed a pointy leap in month-to-month failure charges after passing 60 months in service, reaching 5 to 6 failures per 1000 drives per 30 days, after 50 months of utilization. Seagate confirmed larger early failure charges that remained regular as drives aged.
Environmental and bodily components additionally impacted lifespan. Every extra 1°C in common temperature elevated failure charges by 2.1%, whereas each additional 1TB of capability decreased failure charges by roughly 3.4%. The authors attribute this capability profit to helium-filled enclosures and newer head fabrication methods. Be aware that, as a result of the dataset depends on information centre drives, these outcomes could not translate on to shopper environments.
KitGuru says: Are you shocked by these outcomes, or did they match your expectations?