Latest news with #harddrives
Tahawul Tech
5 days ago
- Tahawul Tech
Toshiba outlines how best to revitalise your hard drive for a long lifespan
Rainer W. Kaese, Senior Manager Business Development Storage Products Toshiba Electronics Europe, outlines optimal operating conditions for hard drives and the best practices to help avoid device failure. Modern enterprise hard drives are highly reliable and may generally be used beyond their warranty period without any issues and no significant increase in failure rates. However, this is dependent on the drives being well-maintained and operated under optimal conditions. If not, the likelihood of failure rises considerably. But what constitutes optimal operating conditions, and what should companies be mindful of if they wish to maximise the lifespan of their hard drives? Firstly, hard drives require a stable and consistent operation, as they contain moving parts that can be damaged by movements or shocks. Systems equipped with hard drives are therefore best housed securely in a rack. Tower-format devices, which cannot be accommodated in a rack, should be placed in a location where they are not at risk of being accidentally knocked or kicked, and certainly not on a desk, where the tabletop can act as a sounding board, transmitting any vibrations directly to the devices. Furthermore, the hard drives must be securely fastened within the device. Merely placing them inside the casing can lead to minor movements of the drive due to the rapidly spinning disks inside, which may cause damage. Particularly in more affordable systems, manufacturers often use plastic clamps or bays that allow for some 'give' in the hard drives or are themselves not completely secure within the casing. In such cases, it is advisable to properly secure the hard drives and bays, for example, with small rubber pieces or use additional screws, if possible. High Temperatures Shorten Lifespan Enterprise hard drives are designed to operate at temperatures between 5°C and 60°C. However, this only means that they will function correctly within this range – at higher temperatures, the electronic and mechanical components, such as the spindle bearings, wear out more quickly. Operating at the upper end of the specified range is not ideal either, as it can lead to a higher probability of failure. The Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) listed in the datasheets refers to an average operating temperature of no more than 40°C. For most enterprise hard drives, this is 2.5 million hours, corresponding to an Annualised Failure Rate (AFR) of 0.35%. This means that out of 1,000 drives, three to four are expected to fail over the course of a year. At temperatures above 40°C, the failure rate increases – typically by about 30% for every 5°C rise in temperature. Therefore, continuous operation of hard drives at 55°C can raise the average failure rate (AFR) to 0.76%, leading to the expected failure of seven to eight drives within a year. Overloading Increases Wear and Tear Furthermore, usage also affects the lifespan of hard drives, as they are designed for a specific operational duration and workload. In the case of desktop drives, this is typically 16 hours per day and 55 TB per year – these models are unsuitable for network-attached storage (NAS) systems and servers, where they run 24/7 and are subjected to higher workloads. On the other hand, NAS and enterprise hard drives can handle round-the-clock operation and manage 180 TB and 550 TB, respectively. It doesn't matter whether the data is being written or read. Suppose companies want to maximise the lifespan of their hard drives. In that case, they should ensure not to exceed the specified workloads, protect the drives from shocks and vibrations, and operate them consistently at no more than 40°C on average over their lifetime. Then, using them beyond the warranty period is usually not an issue – however, regular data backup becomes even more important. Image Credit: Toshiba
National Post
23-05-2025
- Business
- National Post
Backblaze Publishes Q1 2025 Drive Stats Report Highlighting Hard Drive Reliability Trends
Article content Over 317,000 drives analyzed; four models recorded zero failures; high-capacity drives (20TB+) outperform average. Article content Article content SAN MATEO, Calif. — Backblaze, Inc. (Nasdaq: BLZE), the cloud storage innovator providing a modern alternative to traditional cloud providers, last week published its Q1 2025 Drive Stats report, offering detailed analysis on the performance and reliability of 317,833 hard drives which underpin its cloud storage offerings and are deployed in its global data centers and represent over four exabytes of data under management. Article content Trusted by IT leaders and storage professionals since 2013, this latest installment in Backblaze's long-running cloud infrastructure quarterly series reveals key reliability insights across manufacturers, models, and drive capacities. Significant findings include the four drive models with zero failures this quarter, notable patterns in high-capacity drive reliability, and important failure trend data for drives reaching the five-year operational milestone. Article content Leveraging our own Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage solution in conjunction with data analysis tools, Snowflake and Trino, we were able to implement a new process of optimizing data collection and analytics. That allowed us to run lightweight queries against cached, structured tables—showcasing a great use-case for the combination of those three services. Article content 'As a leading cloud storage company, Backblaze has over 300,000 hard drives supporting over four exabytes of customer data. We aim to help companies and individuals worldwide with their storage needs, and I'm proud of our team for sharing insights we've learned over nearly two decades of managing data,' said Gleb Budman, CEO at Backblaze. Article content The latest report includes detailed annualized failure rate (AFR) statistics for 26 drive models, with the overall quarterly failure rate increasing slightly from 1.35% to 1.42%. Notable findings include four models achieving zero failures this quarter, including a 4TB HGST drive and three Seagate models (8TB, 12TB, and 14TB). Meanwhile, higher-capacity drives (20TB+) are performing well with a combined AFR of 0.72%, lower than the overall fleet average—though all drives in that population are well under a year old. Article content All data featured in the report is freely available for download as raw files on the Backblaze Hard Drive Test Data page, allowing other cloud storage and IT professionals and researchers to perform their own analyses. Since beginning these quarterly reports in 2013, Backblaze has established the industry's largest publicly accessible dataset on hard drive reliability, covering over 450 billion drive days of operation. Article content Article content Article content Article content Article content Contacts Article content Article content Article content
