Backblaze is a cloud storage/backup company that has done some interesting things with its storage.  They innovated the Backblaze Storage Pod:

“Offering both an unlimited online backup service and the world’s least expensive cloud storage service takes a lot of data storage. When Backblaze started out we needed a way to store our customer’s data inexpensively and safely. We developed the Backblaze Storage Pod as the key building block of our cloud storage. Later we grouped 20 Storage Pods into a Backblaze Vault to optimize the reliability and durability of the entire system.”

Backblaze doesn’t sell Storage Pods but the design is open and anyone can make one.  However, Backblaze certainly uses storage pods.  Many, many, many storage pods, and this gives them great visibility on hard drive failure rates, which they helpfully provide in a quarterly report.

As of June 30, 2022, with over 215,000 drives in operation, they see an average failure rate of 1.39%.  However some drives experience failure rates as high as 6.26%.

You can’t point to a specific manufacturer as better or worse.  Backblaze is presenting data on everything from 4TB to 16TB, and there’s no correlation between size and failures.  It’s really on a drive-by-drive basis and their database is invaluable.

If you’re looking to buy a hard drive, why not take advantage of all the research Backblaze has done and consult their report.  You can also download the raw data set going back to 2013.

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raindog308

Dread Lord of LowEnd Content at LowEndBox

I'm raindog308, techno polymath and long-time LowEndTalk community Administrator. My technical interests include all things Unix, perl, python, golang, shell scripting, vintage operating systems such as MVS, and relational database systems such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.

I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308

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