BackBlaze end of the year results...

[Elixer]

No Time For Failure

In 2016, three drives models ended the year with zero failures, albeit with a small number of drives. Both the 4 TB Toshiba and the 8 TB HGST models went the entire year without a drive failure. The 8 TB Seagate (ST8000NM0055) drives, which were deployed in November 2016, also recorded no failures.

The total number of failed drives was 1,225 for the year. That’s 3.36 drive failures per day or about 5 drives per workday, a very manageable workload. Of course, that’s easy for me to say, since I am not the one swapping out drives.

The overall hard drive failure rate for 2016 was 1.95%. That’s down from 2.47% in 2015 and well below the 6.39% failure rate for 2014.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-benchmark-stats-2016/
For the last Q

For the whole year:

 

[Exterous]

I always like their reports but its not all that impressive that Toshiba's didn't fail given their low drive count. Anecdotal to be sure but I'm avoiding them for the moment as as I've had 2 toshiba drives fail and then both of their refurbished replacements fail before my more numerous WD drives

 

[Charlie98]

I know Toshiba is the darling of the HDD world at the moment... but both of mine run 5C+ hotter than their corresponding Seagate or WD drives.

I don't see any data for the Seagate 3TB drives...

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Pretty much why I only use HGST drives (in any size), WD 4TB Red/Green/Blue, and Toshiba 3TB (basically HGST 7K3000.B).
That and some old Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TBs are still going strong 7+ years later.

 

[twelfth]

Pretty much why I only use HGST drives (in any size), WD 4TB Red/Green/Blue, and Toshiba 3TB (basically HGST 7K3000.B).
That and some old Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TBs are still going strong 7+ years later.

The Spinpoint were amazing drives. I was really disappointed that Samsung decided to exit hard drive manufacturing because I don't think I had drives that ever worked as reliably as those. And they had to sell their hard drive division to SEAGATE, of all companies... ugh.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

To be fair, Samsung buggered up the 2TB SpinPoint F4 (with the silent data corruption firmware), though I have several 1TB F1s and F3s still in service 24/7/365 for the better part of a decade with nary a SMART realloc / pending realloc.

Their 2.5" is pretty good too.

 

[Shmee]

Pretty much why I only use HGST drives (in any size), WD 4TB Red/Green/Blue, and Toshiba 3TB (basically HGST 7K3000.B).
That and some old Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TBs are still going strong 7+ years later.

Why not WD blacks? They are like the only good HDDs these days other than enterprise.

Ok, so HGST drives may be decent, though I am not sure on their warranty and performance...not really sure on their status, how are they? Also, The 1TB WD blue HDD is decent for 7200RPM, but only 2 year warranty IIRC.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

^ I do like WD Blacks, but they're usually not available in external shuckable form.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

So... the designs of those pods don't look like they're hot-swappable - anybody know how they do the replacements?

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Why not WD blacks? They are like the only good HDDs these days other than enterprise.

Ok, so HGST drives may be decent, though I am not sure on their warranty and performance...not really sure on their status, how are they? Also, The 1TB WD blue HDD is decent for 7200RPM, but only 2 year warranty IIRC.

HGST hard drives are of stellar quality, and can easily be considered on par with Western Digital (not to mention WD owns them now). The drives have a 3 year warranty. WD Blacks are in a strange place, because in their price range you are really close to simply being able to buy an HGST Ultrastar and get an actual enterprise drive like the WD Gold.

So... the designs of those pods don't look like they're hot-swappable - anybody know how they do the replacements?

The drives are top-loaded without carriers and are indeed hot-swappable.

Very similar to Supermicro and other's implementations, but from a cost-cutting viewpoint, the Backblaze units do not get the luxury of front-mounted pull handles.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Ah, ok, never mind then.