The first Drive Stats report of 2025 marks a new chapter as it transitions under the guidance of Backblaze staff writer Stephanie Doyle and chief technical evangelist Pat Patterson. This shift follows the retirement of the previous analyst, Andy Klein. The report highlights key metrics, including the annualized failure rates (AFRs) of hard drives managed by Backblaze as of March 31, 2025.
Hard Drive Overview
As of March 31, 2025, Backblaze managed a total of 312,831 drives, comprised of 3,970 boot drives and 308,861 data drives. Throughout the quarter, 318,426 drives were monitored, which includes those taken out of service either due to failure or temporary use. After removing these, 317,833 HDDs were considered for analysis in this report.
Annualized Failure Rates (AFR) for Q1 2025
The following data showcases the annualized failure rates for hard drives with a count greater than 100 and more than 10,000 drive days during the first quarter of 2025:
| Drive Model | Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) |
|---|---|
| 4TB HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 | 0.00% |
| 4TB HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 | 0.34% |
| Seagate 8TB ST8000NM000A | 0.00% |
| Seagate 12TB ST12000NM000J | 0.00% |
| Seagate 14TB ST14000NM000J | 0.00% |
| 24TB Seagate ST24000NM002H | 1.11% |
| 20TB+ Drive Pool | 0.72% |
Observations on Drive Performance
- 4TB Drives: The 4TB drives continue to perform exceptionally well, with zero failures in the latest quarter.
- 20TB+ Drives: The 24TB Seagate model faced eight failures but maintained a reasonable AFR of 1.11%. The overall performance of 20TB+ drives shows promise with a lower than average AFR of 0.72%.
- Quarterly Failure Rate Increase: The overall quarterly failure rate saw a slight rise from 1.35% to 1.42%, with notable outliers like the Seagate 10TB model showing an AFR of 4.72%.
Lifetime HDD Failure Rates
As of the end of Q1 2025, a collection of 312,493 drives was analyzed for lifetime performance, consisting of specific models with at least 500 drives and over 100,000 accumulated drive days:
| Drive Model | Lifetime Failure Rate |
|---|---|
| 12TB HGST | 1.31% |
| 14TB Seagate | 1.40% |
| WDC 22TB | 1.48% |
Data Collection Improvements
To enhance the accuracy and efficiency of data reporting, Backblaze recently migrated to a Snowflake database system. This shift eliminates the reliance on manual data exports, allowing for faster and more reliable data analytics. The team validated this new methodology by replicating prior quarter results with success.
Accessing the HDD Stats Data
For those interested in exploring the hard drive dataset used for this report, the full dataset is available for free download on Backblaze’s HDD Test Data page. Users are encouraged to cite Backblaze as the source while utilizing the data responsibly.