Backblaze sees onerous drive failure charge rise as fleet ages • The Register
Cloud storage and backup supplier Backblaze has launched a report on its failed drives for 2022, which seems to confirm that drive age is a key metric for predicting potential failure.
Backblaze repeatedly publishes statistics masking the failure charges of all onerous drives below its administration, and these datasets have confirmed a treasure trove for others to investigate for their very own functions – so long as they cite Backblaze because the supply and do not promote the info.
The newest figures revealed on the Backblaze blog cowl the onerous drive failure charges it noticed for 2022 throughout its storage portfolio, which stood at 235,608 particular person drives as of December 31.
Nevertheless, 4,299 of those had been launch drives whereas one other 388 drives had been faraway from consideration as a result of they had been used for testing functions or had been fashions for which the corporate didn’t have no less than 60 drives in operation. This nonetheless leaves statistics masking 230,921 onerous drives used for information storage.
In accordance with Backblaze’s chief evangelist, Andy Klein, there was a big enhance within the annual failure charge (AFR) during the last yr, rising from 1.01 p.c in 2021 to 1.37 p.c throughout 2022.
“In our Q2 2022 and Q3 2022 quarterly Drive Stats stories, we famous a rise in general AFR from the earlier quarter and attributed it to the growing old fleet of drives, however is that basically the case?” he requested.
The reply, it appears, is sure.
Klein in contrast 2021 and 2022 annualized failure charges for big drives (which Backblaze defines as 12TB, 14TB and 16TB) versus smaller drives (4TB, 6TB, 8TB and 10TB) and located that each dimension (besides 16TB drives) confirmed a rise. in AFR between 2021 and 2022. The figures present the smaller discs failing extra usually, however they’re additionally older.
A chart exhibiting the common age of every drive mannequin deployed by Backblaze in opposition to dimension exhibits clearly that the smaller the drive in capability, the older it tends to be, with 16TB drives lower than six months outdated, whereas some 4TB and 6TB fashions had been older than 90. months outdated.
Common of Blackblaze onerous drives
This enhance as a driving mannequin ages follows the bathtub curvewhereby a typical drive could be anticipated to exhibit a rash of early failures, adopted by a interval when there are comparatively few, adopted by a rise as soon as extra as all drives strategy the tip of their lives and put on out.
Taking a look at a chart of annualized failure charges over time and by producer, it would seem that a lot of the general enhance over the previous yr has been pushed by Seagate and Toshiba fashions. Nevertheless, Klein factors out that within the case of Seagate, most of that vendor’s fashions are considerably older than many others, and there’s additionally the lifecycle value of a given onerous drive mannequin versus its failure charge to contemplate.
Backblaze failure charges
“Generally, Seagate drives are cheaper and their failure charges are sometimes larger in the environment. Their failure charges are often not excessive sufficient to make them much less cost-effective over their lifetime. You might make a superb case that for us, many Seagate drive fashions are simply as value efficient as dearer drives,” he stated.
With regards to the lifetime annualized failure charges throughout all drive fashions in manufacturing at Backblaze, the present general charge is 1.39 p.c, which the corporate says is decrease than a yr in the past (1.40 p.c) and in addition decrease than the earlier quarter. (1.41 p.c).
Klein says that in 2023, the corporate’s focus is anticipated to switch the older drives with 16TB and bigger onerous drives, which implies that its 4TB drives and the 6TB Seagate drives (which have a median age of 92.5 months) will in all probability go. .
As standard, the entire information used for Backblaze’s report is on the market from the corporate Hard Drive Test Data web page ®
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