BackBlaze - HDD reliability stats for Q2 2015

[dalekphalm]

If you want to give more ammo to fanboys then more power to you, I'm just saying that if they aren't out to prove anything what use is it mentioning what these drives are being used for?

 

Either way, you guys are taking this far too seriously and almost come across as damage control to me...

The point is that this, in it's present form with little to no context about drive age, usage, hours on, etc, is already giving massive ammo to the fanboys.

 

By giving it all proper context, you're actually reducing the amount of ammo and fuel that fanboys can use.

 

I use all HDD brands. My server has both HGST, Seagate, and WDC drives in it. I don't like or hate any of them. I buy what's best value, and I realize that, barring the occasional manufacturing defect, most HDD's of similar class/pricing have more or less the same chance of failing.

 

But how many times do you see fanboys saying "All Seagate are shit" or whatever? This just fuels it more.

 

If Blackblaze wanted to give us useful, practical information, they would have given us the missing context. If they didn't want to fuel fanboys, they should have either not bothered to release data at all, or done it properly.

[mr moose]

Let idiots be idiots, that's the way I go. It doesn't take long to figure out that a data centre is going to see far more drive usage than any consumer will. Not to mention that you shouldn't just go by one source when researching parts.       

 

Not everyone is born with a complete understanding of IT and server workloads, nor does everyone have an innate ability to understand how statistical analysis works. Want proof? just look at all the dumb asses who think vaccines are dangerous and cause autism. We all start somewhere, the fact you seem to think those who are new to this and don't understand it are idiots really highlights your lack of understanding of consumers and how these things effect consumers.

[Damir]

Hmm... I am going to run my f150 truck in a Baja type of race environment... instead of a actual Baja truck. Come on, according to this, my Seagate drives, about 6 total in 3 systems, should have eaten dirt long time ago.

As many have pointed out, drives are being used that are not meant for this type of environment.

And I could be wrong, but I thought samsung spinpoint hard drives were Seagate based.

[TheMcSame]

Not everyone is born with a complete understanding of IT and server workloads, nor does everyone have an innate ability to understand how statistical analysis works. Want proof? just look at all the dumb asses who think vaccines are dangerous and cause autism. We all start somewhere, the fact you seem to think those who are new to this and don't understand it are idiots really highlights your lack of understanding of consumers and how these things effect consumers.

It doesn't take an IT wizard to use Google, you could probably find several sources that tell you what's wrong with backblaze just seconds after searching Google... If they aren't willing to do the research when they want to buy something then that's their problem, let them spend extra money just because some random company said "this one failed the least here". We shouldn't need to idiot proof everything.

 

I mean, come on... WD and HGST failure rates were in the single digit percentages or a touch higher while Seagate was over 20%... That alone should raise some flags.

[Sakkura]

And I could be wrong, but I thought samsung spinpoint hard drives were Seagate based.

 

Seagate bought Samsung's HDD division in 2011 as Samsung was turning their focus to SSDs.

[mr moose]

It doesn't take an IT wizard to use Google, you could probably find several sources that tell you what's wrong with backblaze just seconds after searching Google... If they aren't willing to do the research when they want to buy something then that's their problem, let them spend extra money just because some random company said "this one failed the least here". We shouldn't need to idiot proof everything.

 

I mean, come on... WD and HGST failure rates were in the single digit percentages or a touch higher while Seagate was over 20%... That alone should raise some flags.

 

But why would someone do that after reading half a dozen forums posts telling them that seagate suck shit and quoting the BB report.   You don't seem to understand that people don't all have the same technical mindset, reading forums is the extent of their ability to research, that is why we must remain unbiased and objective about all this, why even bother having a troubleshooting or planning sub forum if we are just going to let "idiots be idiots" and suffer their incompetence?

[TheMcSame]

But why would someone do that after reading half a dozen forums posts telling them that seagate suck shit and quoting the BB report.   You don't seem to understand that people don't all have the same technical mindset, reading forums is the extent of their ability to research, that is why we must remain unbiased and objective about all this, why even bother having a troubleshooting or planning sub forum if we are just going to let "idiots be idiots" and suffer their incompetence?

If you're going to take my words out of context then seriously don't bother replying. Someone wanting help to plan a build or wanting help with a problem is not the same as blindly believing some random article.

[mr moose]

If you're going to take my words out of context then seriously don't bother replying. Someone wanting help to plan a build or wanting help with a problem is not the same as blindly believing some random article.

 

I have't taken your words out of context at all, I am pointing out that some people's limits on research is asking on a forum, everything else is beyond them, If you think it is o.k to let "idiots be idiots" then why bother helping at all? surely they can just go and do the research themselves?

[Yoinkerman]

I don't think its much of a stretch to claim that a drive treated like dirt that has an extremely low fail rate will have an even lower fail rate when used normally. The auto industry makes these claims all the time and no one cares.

[XYrZbest]

Im assuming that they didn't use many wd 4tbs becasue they have a higher failure rate while they only used 45 of them while HGST had 11k fail but had a lower failure rate meaning that they used many HGSTs not many WDs. now that this is established doesn't this cause problems because they didn't use equal or any where near the same about of drives which would result in data that is incorrect

[79wjd]

Im assuming that they didn't use many wd 4tbs becasue they have a higher failure rate while they only used 45 of them while HGST had 11k fail but had a lower failure rate meaning that they used many HGSTs not many WDs. now that this is established doesn't this cause problems because they didn't use equal or any where near the same about of drives which would result in data that is incorrect

Unless I'm mistaken they said their results regarding WD are meaningless due to a comparably small sample size. 

[HalGameGuru]

THe 4TB Drive graph confuses me... IS that number of drives with percentage failure rate or number of drives FAILED with percentage of population that represents?

 

EDIT: OK according to their article that is total drives in use. Not sure how they reconcile a sub-50 unit population with a sub-2% failure rate...

[mr moose]

EDIT: OK according to their article that is total drives in use. Not sure how they reconcile a sub-50 unit population with a sub-2% failure rate...

 

That's one of the issues most of us have with this report,  it's fine and dandy to say this model failed at this rate, however while they aren't/can't providing the qualifying data there is no way to reconcile any of the information.

 

So it's fine for us enthusiasts who can at least make an educated guess in spite of this article, but not so much for those who can't and rely on the article and people who point to it as an authority.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

THe 4TB Drive graph confuses me... IS that number of drives with percentage failure rate or number of drives FAILED with percentage of population that represents?

 

EDIT: OK according to their article that is total drives in use. Not sure how they reconcile a sub-50 unit population with a sub-2% failure rate...

 

The trick here is that they're using ANNUAL failure rates.  If you have 50-ish drives with an average age of more than 1 year and one fails, you can get a sub-2% number indeed.

[HalGameGuru]

I could see that, it's ponderous but I can see it.

[Mattr567]

3TB Seagate's of course.