{"id":110853,"date":"2024-02-13T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-13T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=110853"},"modified":"2025-12-11T10:54:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T18:54:09","slug":"backblaze-drive-stats-for-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/backblaze-drive-stats-for-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Backblaze Drive Stats for 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
\"A<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
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As of December 31, 2023, we had 274,622 drives under management. Of that number, there were 4,400 boot drives and 270,222 data drives. This report will focus on our data drives. We will review the hard drive failure rates for 2023, compare those rates to previous years, and present the lifetime failure statistics for all the hard drive models active in our data center as of the end of 2023. Along the way we share our observations and insights on the data presented and, as always, we look forward to you doing the same in the comments section at the end of the post.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

2023 Hard Drive Failure Rates<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

As of the end of 2023, Backblaze was monitoring 270,222 hard drives used to store data. For our evaluation, we removed 466 drives from consideration which we\u2019ll discuss later on. This leaves us with 269,756 hard drives covering 35 drive models to analyze for this report. The table below shows the Annualized Failure Rates (AFRs) for 2023 for this collection of drives.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Notes and Observations<\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

One zero for the year<\/strong>: In 2023, only one drive model had zero failures, the 8TB Seagate (model: ST8000NM000A). In fact, that drive model has had zero failures in our environment since we started deploying it in Q3 2022. That \u201czero\u201d does come with some caveats: We have only 204 drives in service and the drive has a limited number of drive days (52,876), but zero failures over 18 months is a nice start.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Failures for the year<\/strong>: There were 4,189 drives which failed in 2023. Doing a little math, over the last year on average, we replaced a failed drive every two hours and five minutes. If we limit hours worked to 40 per week, then we replaced a failed drive every 30 minutes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

More drive models:<\/strong> In 2023, we added six drive models to the list while retiring zero, giving us a total of 35 different models we are tracking.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Two of the models have been in our environment for a while but finally reached 60 drives in production by the end of 2023.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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  1. Toshiba 8TB, model HDWF180: 60 drives.<\/li>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
  2. Seagate 18TB, model ST18000NM000J: 60 drives.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

    Four of the models were new to our production environment and have 60 or more drives in production by the end of 2023.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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    1. Seagate 12TB, model ST12000NM000J: 195 drives.<\/li>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
    2. Seagate 14TB, model ST14000NM000J: 77 drives.<\/li>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
    3. Seagate 14TB, model ST14000NM0018: 66 drives.<\/li>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
    4. WDC 22TB, model WUH722222ALE6L4: 2,442 drives.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      The drives for the three Seagate models are used to replace failed 12TB and 14TB drives. The 22TB WDC drives are a new model added primarily as two new Backblaze Vaults of 1,200 drives each.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      Mixing and Matching Drive Models<\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      There was a time when we purchased extra drives of a given model to have on hand so we could replace a failed drive with the same drive model. For example, if we needed 1,200 drives for a Backblaze Vault, we\u2019d buy 1,300 to get 100 spares. Over time, we tested combinations of different drive models to ensure there was no impact on throughput and performance. This allowed us to purchase drives as needed, like the Seagate drives noted previously. This saved us the cost of buying drives just to have them hanging around for months or years waiting for the same drive model to fail.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      Drives Not Included in This Review<\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

      We noted earlier there were 466 drives we removed from consideration in this review. These drives fall into three categories.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n