IEEE examine of 443,000 exhausting drives ranks HGST as most dependable
A peer-reviewed IEEE examine reanalysing 12 years of Backblaze exhausting drive knowledge has revealed that HGST drives recorded the bottom failure fee, adopted by Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba.
Within the IEEE examine named “Are There Producer Variations in Arduous-Drive Reliability?” (through Tom’s {Hardware}), economists Christoph Siemroth and Yeomyung Park analysed 443,156 enterprise exhausting drives from 2013 by way 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 fee. Western Digital sits at roughly 52% of Seagate’s failure fee, whereas Toshiba posted the very best failure fee at 107%.
Adjusting for age was vital, as Backblaze’s uncooked quarterly figures pit ageing models in opposition to 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 thirty days, after 50 months of utilization. Seagate confirmed larger early failure charges that remained regular as drives aged.
Environmental and bodily elements additionally impacted lifespan. Every further 1°C in common temperature elevated failure charges by 2.1%, whereas each additional 1TB of capability lowered failure charges by roughly 3.4%. The authors attribute this capability profit to helium-filled enclosures and newer head fabrication strategies. Notice that, as a result of the dataset depends on knowledge centre drives, these outcomes might not translate on to client environments.
KitGuru says: Are you stunned by these outcomes, or did they match your expectations?