Backblaze is likely one of the largest cloud storage firms on the earth and the writer of an annual HDD stats report it has been offering since 2013. The corporate just lately revealed its 2025 report, so let’s dive into the info and see which drives have been probably the most dependable, and which earned the doubtful honor of being the least dependable.
General, Western Digital had probably the most dependable HDDs in 2025
Technically, WD was additionally the least dependable vendor
Taking a look at the overall numbers, Western Digital (WDC) had probably the most dependable HDDs of 2025. Of the 5 fashions present in Backblaze’s knowledge facilities, just one had a failure fee above 1%: the WUH721816ALE6L0 16TB, at 1.97%. General, WDC drives had a failure fee of simply 0.86%, which is spectacular contemplating they make up almost 1 / 4 of Backblaze’s fleet.
WDC was adopted by Toshiba, with a mean failure fee of 1.86%; HGST, at 2.26%; and Seagate, at 2.41%. Whereas these numbers are wonderful throughout the board, Toshiba was palms down the most effective of the remaining when accounting for scale, because it provides greater than a 3rd of the drives utilized by Backblaze. Seagate’s drives make up an analogous share of the fleet (33.59% vs. Toshiba’s 33.46%), making HGST the worst performer of 2025, because it barely edges out Seagate regardless of accounting for simply 8.04% of Backblaze’s complete drive rely. Since HGST (previously Hitachi) is owned by Western Digital, lets say that Western Digital was each the most effective and worst performer in Backblaze’s knowledge facilities in 2025.
No drive achieved a zero failure fee
Solely 12 fashions had a failure fee decrease than 1%
When wanting on the yearly stats, not a single HDD mannequin managed to snag the 0% failure fee crowning achievement. Some have been very shut, however each single one had at the least one failure.
Trying on the absolute variety of failures, just one out of 466 Seagate ST16000NM002J 16TB drives failed all through 2025. Nevertheless, given the minuscule pattern dimension, I do not suppose this warrants any accolades. The identical might be stated for the WDC WUH722626ALE6L4 26TB, which additionally had only one failure, however only one,201 drives are in operation, and the mannequin has been in use for only one quarter.
Solely 12 fashions in complete managed to remain under a 1% failure fee, with WDC popping out on high once more. 4 of its 5 fashions stayed beneath 1%, which is spectacular contemplating there are 31 fashions in complete, and that WDC drives accounted for 1 / 4 of all fashions within the “under 1%” group.
The doubtful honor of the least dependable drive of 2025 goes to the Toshiba MG08ACA16TEY 16TB, which posted a failure fee of 6.30%, the one drive to interrupt the 6% threshold. Nevertheless, this end result comes with a serious caveat: the drive recorded an obvious failure fee of 16.95% in Q3 2025. This spike was as a consequence of Backblaze working with Toshiba to deploy firmware updates to this mannequin, which required many drives to be taken offline, which confirmed up within the knowledge as failures. As proven under, reliability stabilized within the following quarter, and the drive has been pretty dependable traditionally. So, let’s check out the second-worst performer.
That will be the Seagate ST10000NM0086 10TB, which had a yearly failure fee of 5.66%. This time, it is possible as a consequence of its age: it is greater than seven years outdated and has a comparatively small variety of items in operation (1,044), with each failure contributing considerably to the full fee. In different phrases, the drive is not unhealthy, it is simply outdated, but still useful.
Essentially the most dependable HDD mannequin of 2025 was additionally made by Western Digital
Carefully adopted by a Seagate mannequin
When factoring in each the variety of drives in use and their failure charges, probably the most dependable drive of 2025 was the WDC WUH722222ALE6L4 22TB. There are 44,577 items in operation in Backblaze’s knowledge facilities, with an annual failure fee of simply 0.47%. Speak about reliability.
The WDC mannequin is carefully adopted by the Seagate ST16000NM001G 16TB, which has a 0.54% failure fee throughout a large pattern of 34,563 items at present in operation.
HDDs have been extra dependable in 2025 than in the last few years
The annual failure fee (AFR) for 2025 was simply 1.36%, a notable enchancment over the previous few years. For instance, AFR stood at 1.57% in 2024 and a comparatively steep 1.70% in 2023. That stated, when historic developments, the 2025 determine is roughly consistent with the lifetime AFR of 1.30%.
What this tells us is that enterprise storage drives are extremely reliable. Certain, some fashions carry out worse than others, and sure distributors have fairly excessive failure charges (HGST, for instance), comparatively talking, however if you take a look at the larger image, the general degree of reliability is placing.
The most important winner of 2025, at the least based on Backblaze’s knowledge, was Western Digital. Not solely was it topped probably the most dependable vendor total, however it additionally produced probably the most dependable HDD of the 12 months. A clear sweep.
- Storage Capability
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2 – 26TB
- Workload
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550TB/yr
Western Digital’s Pink Professional NAS arduous drives are available in sizes from 2TB to 26TB.
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