Backblaze is a company specializing in cloud storage. It therefore has large infrastructures with a (very) large number of hard drives in service. To give you an idea, this 2025 report is based on 344,196 drives. These drives have totaled 115,638,676 days of operation. In other words, the company has access to sufficiently large samples to produce relevant statistics.
Will hard drive reliability improve in 2025?
Broadly speaking, of the more than 344,000 drives operating within the company, 4,317 failed. This gives us an overall annual failure rate of 1.36%, the company’s best result since 2022. In fact, reliability is improving compared to previous years, as the overall failure rate in 2024 was 1.57% compared to 1.70% in 2023.
The best performers:
The company has identified two models that proved to be particularly reliable, with only one failure in the whole of 2025. These are the Seagate ST16000NM002J 16TB and the Western Digital WUH722626ALE6L4 26TB. These two models are followed by a 16TB Toshiba model (MGO9ACA16TE) with three failures, a 12TB Seagate model (ST12000NM000J) with four failures, and a 4TB HGST model (HMS5C4040BLE640) with five failures.
The worst performers:
Overall, there are no models that present particular risks, although the HGST HUH728080ALE600 8TB model has a failure rate of 10.29%. After investigation, it appears that vibrations are the cause of the problems encountered. It should also be noted that these are old drives that are already seven and a half years old, which is significant in a cloud storage environment. In fact, according to the company, they are being retired.
Finally, Toshiba has a model with a high return rate, the 16TB MG08ACA16TEY, with a failure rate of 4.14%. However, this failure rate is falling significantly. In the previous quarter, it was 16.95%, a decrease made possible by a firmware update.
In broad terms?
Broadly speaking, developments in hard drives have led to increased capacity and reliability. However, prices are tending to rise, driven by higher memory prices. There has been talk of a price increase of around 50% since September. Despite this, this type of storage remains more affordable than SSDs.
