Backblaze Study Ranks HGST Drives Most Reliable for Data Centers
TL;DR. A new IEEE study of 443,000 Backblaze hard drives found HGST units to be the most reliable, with Toshiba as the least dependable. - The analysis covered 1.66 million drive-years, re-crunching Backblaze's public data from 2013 through Q2 2025. - HGST drives failed at roughly 41% of Seagate's rate, while Toshiba's failure rate more than quadrupled past 60 months. - Increased operating temperature also significantly raised failure rates across all drive types in data center environments.
- IEEE study analyzed 443,156 Backblaze hard drives over 1.66 million drive-years.
- HGST drives were found most reliable, failing at 41% of Seagate's rate when normalized.
- Toshiba drives had the highest failure rate, more than quadrupling after 60 months in service.