Cloud backup and storage provider Backblaze has published its latest batch of drive reliability data. The release covers failure information for the 67,642 disks that the company uses to store nearly 300PB of data.
This is actually fewer disks than the company had last quarter, even though the total capacity has gone up. That’s because Backblaze has been upgrading, replacing 2TB disks from HGST and Western Digital with new Seagate 8TB ones. While this upgrade offers size and energy savings, it’s only worthwhile if the failure rate is contained; any more than 2-3 times the failure rate and Backblaze says the migration won’t be worth it.
