A peer-reviewed study analyzing 443,000 hard drives deployed at Backblaze’s data centers has found that HGST drives are the most reliable in the industry, while Toshiba drives record the highest failure rates.
The research, which covers approximately 1.66 million drive-years of operational data, provides the largest publicly available dataset on hard disk drive reliability. The findings were reported by Tom’s Hardware and echo patterns from Backblaze’s own Q1 2026 Drive Stats report.
Reliability Varies Dramatically by Manufacturer
The study found that failure rates differ significantly across the four major hard drive manufacturers. HGST, which is owned by Western Digital, consistently delivers the lowest annualized failure rates across multiple capacity tiers. Western Digital drives also performed well, while Seagate and Toshiba drives fail at approximately twice the rate of their competitors, according to the analysis.
One of the most striking findings involved older 8TB HGST models (HUH728080ALE600), which recorded a 10.29% failure rate. However, researchers attributed this to the drives being in operation for more than 7.5 years and subject to vibration stress in densely packed racks, rather than a fundamental quality issue. These drives are now being phased out.
In contrast, newer high-capacity drives showed impressive reliability. The Toshiba MG11ACA24TE (24TB) achieved a fleet-best 0.22% annualized failure rate in early deployment, and the Western Digital WUH722222ALE6L4 (22TB) maintained just 0.38% AFR across more than 45,000 units. Backblaze’s Q1 2026 report noted that 92% of newly deployed drives now exceed 20TB capacity, reflecting growing demand for AI workloads.
AI Workloads Driving Storage Evolution
The findings arrive as data centers face unprecedented storage demands from AI training and inference. Backblaze CEO Gleb Budman noted that infrastructure teams running intensive AI workloads are performing rigorous due diligence on reliability, performance, and operational transparency. The company monitors 345,662 drives across its global storage cloud, making its dataset one of the most comprehensive in the industry.
The fleet’s overall annualized failure rate for Q1 2026 improved to 1.24%, down from 1.42% in Q1 2025, indicating that drive reliability continues to improve even as capacities increase. Notably, one 16TB Toshiba model experienced a spike to 16.95% AFR in a single quarter, but after a firmware update the rate dropped to 4.14%, demonstrating the impact of timely software maintenance.
Sources: Backblaze; Tom’s Hardware; PC Gamer; Yahoo Finance
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