Which drives are most likely to fail? Backblaze's HDD failure rate report for Q3 2025 released



Backblaze , which operates a large number of hard disk drives (HDDs) for its cloud storage and data backup services, publishes a statistical report summarizing the failure rates of its HDDs and SSDs on a quarterly basis. The latest version of the failure rate report, covering the third quarter of 2025 (July 1 to September 30, 2025), was released. The number of HDDs managed during the same period was 332,915, of which 3,970 were used as boot drives and 328,348 were used as data drives.

Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2025
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2025/

The breakdown of HDD failures in the Q3 2025 report is as follows: The report covered 328,348 data drives, of which 1,250 failed, representing a cumulative operating life of 29,431,703 days. By manufacturer, HGST accounted for 8.31% of the failures, followed by Seagate at 34.08%, Toshiba at 33.69%, and Western Digital (WDC) at 23.92%.



The HDD failure rate (AFR) for the third quarter of 2025 is 1.55%. The AFR for 2024 is 1.57%, and the AFR for all data collected since January 2013, when Backblaze began collecting statistics on HDD failure rates, is 1.31%.



The table below summarizes the AFRs of the 328,348 HDDs operated as data drives in the third quarter of 2025, of which 100 units were in operation as of July 1, 2025, and the cumulative number of operating days exceeded 10,000.

Manufacturer Model name Capacity (TB) Number of operations Average operating time (month) Cumulative number of working days Number of malfunctions Failure rate (AFR)
HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 4 187 100.24 17194 0 0%
HGST HUH728080ALE600 8 1079 87.41 98985 6 2.21%
HGST HUH721212ALE600 12 2615 69.57 239677 9 1.37%
HGST HUH721212ALE604 12 13417 50.60 1227006 65 1.93%
HGST HUH721212ALN604 12 9985 74.97 912361 109 4.36%
Seagate ST8000DM002 8 8987 106.89 824787 27 1.19%
Seagate ST8000NM000A 8 247 32.05 22724 0 0%
Seagate ST8000NM0055 8 13351 95.55 1224440 53 1.58%
Seagate ST10000NM0086 10 1018 92.35 91650 20 7.97%
Seagate ST12000NM0007 12 1005 69.87 91835 13 5.17%
Seagate ST12000NM0008 12 18902 64.73 1728706 132 2.79%
Seagate ST12000NM000J 12 1019 14.12 91723 2 0.80%
Seagate ST12000NM001G 12 13277 54.78 1219082 31 0.93%
Seagate ST14000NM000J 14 392 11.85 31852 4 4.58%
Seagate ST14000NM001G 14 10596 54.28 972882 38 1.42%
Seagate ST14000NM0138 14 1286 56.57 117131 twenty two 6.86%
Seagate ST16000NM001G 16 34128 35.98 3125133 57 0.67%
Seagate ST16000NM002J 16 463 33.06 42581 0 0%
Seagate ST24000NM002H twenty four 7245 5.81 601539 46 2.79%
Toshiba MG07ACA14TA 14 37463 58.20 3440051 116 1.23%
Toshiba MG07ACA14TEY 14 970 35.12 85530 8 3.41%
Toshiba MG08ACA16TA 16 40184 24.83 3686376 85 0.84%
Toshiba MG08ACA16TE 16 6177 43.84 553332 16 1.06%
Toshiba MG08ACA16TEY 16 5145 44.61 462943 215 16.95%
Toshiba MG09ACA16TE 16 244 4.86 17852 0 0%
Toshiba MG10ACA20TE 20 18023 7.08 1416127 twenty one 0.54%
Toshiba MG11ACA24TE twenty four 2400 0.33 24148 0 0%
WDC WUH721414ALE6L4 14 8663 55.33 794781 20 0.92%
WDC WUH721816ALE6L0 16 3008 44.46 274775 20 2.66%
WDC WUH721816ALE6L4 16 26601 29.05 2439009 65 0.97%
WDC WUH722222ALE6L4 twenty two 40271 11.84 3555491 50 0.51%


Of the HDDs in operation in the third quarter of 2025, the four models that did not fail were 'HMS5C4040BLE640,' 'ST8000NM000A,' 'MG09ACA16TE,' and 'MG11ACA24TE.'

On the other hand, the three models with particularly high failure rates were 'ST10000NM0086' (7.97%), 'ST14000NM0138' (6.86%), and 'MG08ACA16TEY' (16.95%).

The table below summarizes the failure rates of HDDs with more than 500 units in operation and a cumulative operating period of more than 100,000 days as of the third quarter of 2025.
Manufacturer Model name Capacity (TB) Number of operations Average operating time (month) Cumulative number of working days Number of malfunctions Failure rate (AFR)
HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 4 8723 63.3 16789193 260 0.57%
HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 4 16349 82.8 41156102 448 0.40%
HGST HUH728080ALE600 8 1218 82.8 3069331 98 1.17%
HGST HUH721212ALE600 12 2696 68.8 5641318 92 0.60%
HGST HUH721212ALE604 12 14331 49.6 21613689 943 1.59%
HGST HUH721212ALN604 12 11438 72.3 25143580 1507 2.19%
Seagate ST8000NM002 8 10320 100.9 31658329 1317 1.52%
Seagate ST8000NM0055 8 15680 89.6 42736967 2309 1.97%
Seagate ST10000NM0086 10 1304 85.5 3389398 282 3.04%
Seagate ST12000NM0007 12 38843 31.4 37147796 2277 2.24%
Seagate ST12000NM0008 12 21037 61.9 39632553 2225 2.05%
Seagate ST12000NM000J 12 1043 13.9 439834 20 1.66%
Seagate ST12000NM001G 12 13875 53.8 22706268 615 0.99%
Seagate ST14000NM001G 14 11268 52.8 18113014 701 1.41%
Seagate ST14000NM0138 14 1690 49.4 2540557 413 5.93%
Seagate ST16000NM001G 16 34936 35.6 37817926 741 0.72%
Seagate ST24000NM002H twenty four 7281 5.8 1282596 81 2.31%
Toshiba MG07ACA14TA 14 39387 57 68245826 1,944 1.04%
Toshiba MG07ACA14TEY 14 1015 34.2 1057345 47 1.62%
Toshiba MG08ACA16TA 16 41044 24.6 30687263 943 1.12%
Toshiba MG08ACA16TE 16 6459 42.9 8422214 295 1.28%
Toshiba MG08ACA16TEY 16 5349 44 7151157 442 2.26%
Toshiba MG10ACA20TE 20 18069 7.1 3885513 67 0.63%
WDC WUH721414ALE6L4 14 8859 54.8 14772985 218 0.52%
WDC WUH721816ALE6L0 16 3078 44.2 4123025 98 0.87%
WDC WUH721816ALE6L4 16 26870 28.9 23614641 285 0.44%
WDC WUH722222ALE6L4 twenty two 40521 11.8 14533863 293 0.74%


The overall average AFR was 1.31%, with higher AFRs recorded by 'HUH721212ALE604' (1.59%), 'HUH721212ALN604' (2.19%), 'ST8000NM002' (1.52%), 'ST8000NM0055' (1.97%), 'ST10000NM0086' (3.04%), and 'ST12000NM0007' (2.2%). The 13 models were: 'ST12000NM0008' (2.05%), 'ST12000NM000J' (1.66%), 'ST14000NM001G' (1.41%), 'ST14000NM0138' (5.93%), 'ST24000NM002H' (2.31%), 'MG07ACA14TEY' (1.62%), and 'MG08ACA16TEY' (2.26%).

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in Hardware, Posted by logu_ii