Let’s take a look at the different sections (i.e. Here’s a simple example below using three fictitious models of 14TB drives, Model 1, Model 2, and Model 3. Understanding the relationship between cost and drive failure is one of those learnings. Second, by studying data like drive stats and such, we work hard to understand our environment from the inside out. Two primary reasons: First, we are able to do so as our cloud storage Backblaze Vault architecture is designed for drive failure. One question that comes up is why we would continue to buy a drive model that has a higher annualized failure rate versus a comparably sized, but more expensive, model. Hard Drive Failure Versus Hard Drive Cost As these drives are used to replace the aging 4TB drives, the quarterly AFR should decrease. A possible harbinger of what is to come can be seen in the 16TB models which as a group had an 0.80% AFR in Q3 2022. As noted previously, this is related to the aging of the entire drive fleet and we would expect this number to go down as older drives are retired and replaced over the next year. The Quarterly AFR continues to rise: The AFR for Q3 2022 was 1.64%, increasing from 1.46% in Q2 2022 and from 1.10% a year ago. For all three, it seems their spindles, actuators, and media are starting to wear out after seven years or so of constant spinning. The high AFR (8.25%) is due to the limited number of drive days in the quarter (8,849) from only 95 drives. Note that the 4TB Toshiba only had two failures in Q3 2022. The old guard is feeling old: All three of the oldest drives we currently use are showing signs of their age as each experienced an increase in AFR from Q2 to Q3 2022 as shown below.
The chart below shows, by manufacturer, how our drive fleet has changed over the past six years. The 29 models break down by manufacturer as: These additions give us 29 different models we are tracking, up from 27 in the previous quarter. Neither has enough data to be interesting yet, but as noted above, the 8TB Seagate had zero failures in its first quarter in operation. The new disks in town: There are two new models in this quarter’s data: the 8TB Seagate (model: ST8000NM000A) and the 16TB Seagate (model: ST16000NM002J). As we will see later in this review, this 14TB WDC model has a lifetime AFR of 0.11% with the confidence interval range of just 0.30 at a 95% confidence level. Of the three, only the WDC model has enough lifetime data (drive days) to be comfortable with the calculated annualized failure rate (AFR). For the 8TB HGST, that was the second quarter in a row with zero failures. Zero failures for Q3: Three drives had zero failures this quarter: the 8TB HGST (model: HUH728080ALE604), the 8TB Seagate (model: ST8000NM000A), and the 16TB WDC (model: WUH721816ALE6L0). Notes and Observations on the Q2 2022 Stats
This leaves us with 226,309 hard drives grouped into 29 different models to analyze. For our evaluation, we removed 388 drives from consideration as they were used for testing purposes or drive models which did not have at least 60 drives. In that quarter, we tracked 226,697 hard drives used to store data. Let’s start with reviewing our data for the Q3 2022 period.
Along the way, we’ll 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. We’ll also take a look at the relationship between hard drive failure rates and hard drive cost. Today, we’ll focus on the 226,697 data drives under management as we review their quarterly and lifetime failure rates as of the end of Q3 2022.
The SSDs were previously covered in our recently published Midyear SSD Report. Of that number, 4,200 are boot drives, with 2,778 SSDs and 1,422 HDDs. Post Syndicated from Andy Klein original Īs of the end of Q3 2022, Backblaze was monitoring 230,897 hard drives and SSDs in our data centers around the world.
0 kommentar(er)
