IEEE Study Ranks HGST Most Reliable in 443,156-Drive Analysis, With Toshiba at 107% of Seagate Failures
Updated
Updated · Tom's Hardware · Aug 16
IEEE Study Ranks HGST Most Reliable in 443,156-Drive Analysis, With Toshiba at 107% of Seagate Failures
3 articles · Updated · Tom's Hardware · Aug 16
Summary
443,156 drives across 1.66 million drive-years showed HGST failing at 41% of Seagate’s rate after researchers matched drives by age, capacity, form factor and temperature; WD came in at 52%, while Toshiba ranked last at 107%.
The IEEE paper argues Backblaze’s usual quarterly comparisons skew results because each brand’s fleet comes from different installation eras, often pitting older Seagate and HGST drives against newer Toshiba and WD units.
Toshiba’s weakness appeared after 60 months in service, when its monthly failure rate more than quadrupled to 5–6 per 1,000 drives; other brands generally stayed at or below 2.5 in the 50-100 month range.
Temperature and design also mattered: each 1°C increase raised failure rates 2.1%, while each extra terabyte cut them about 3.4%, which the authors link partly to newer helium-filled, higher-capacity designs.
The ranking is limited to enterprise drives in Backblaze data centers, with no comparable workload data and very few drives older than 10 years, so it mainly reflects short- to medium-term reliability.