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HGST drives show lowest failure rate, Toshiba highest in Backblaze-backed study
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An IEEE peer-reviewed study re-analyzed over a decade of Backblaze hard-drive telemetry, ranking HGST as the most reliable brand and Toshiba as the least reliable, with Seagate positioned between them.
The ranking gives engineers a data-driven basis for choosing drive models when building storage systems that prioritize longevity. Because the analysis controls for age, capacity, form factor and temperature, the results isolate brand-related failure tendencies. Engineers should note that the data come from enterprise drives in Backblaze’s data centers, so the findings may not directly transfer to consumer-grade products.
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HGST drives failed at roughly 41 % of Seagate’s rate when matched for age, capacity, form factor and operating temperature.
Toshiba drives exhibited a failure rate about 107 % of Seagate’s, making them the least reliable in the dataset.
The study notes that failure rates rise with temperature and fall with capacity, estimating a 2.1 % increase per °C and a 3.4 % decrease per extra terabyte.
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The study re-analyzed 12 years of Backblaze hard-drive telemetry, matching drives by age, capacity, form factor and operating temperature before comparing brands. This normalization removes the bias introduced by differing fleet ages, which previously made raw annualized figures favor newer models. After adjustment, HGST drives exhibited the lowest failure rate, Toshiba the highest, and Seagate fell between them. Consequently, the perceived reliability ranking of the three manufacturers shifts when age-related effects are accounted for.
Engineers who wish to use the lowest-failure-rate option (HGST) must consider that the brand is no longer sold new after Western Digital’s acquisition in 2012. Deploying HGST therefore requires validation of existing stock or refurbished units, which adds qualification and compatibility testing to the procurement process. This extra validation step represents the primary cost of adopting the HGST-based approach compared with simply ordering currently manufactured Seagate or Toshiba drives.
The dataset consists exclusively of enterprise-class drives operated in Backblaze’s data-center pods, so the results may not generalize to consumer-grade hard drives. Backblaze does not record workload characteristics per manufacturer, meaning differences in vibration, power-cycling or I/O patterns are not accounted for. Only 0.52 % of the sampled drives exceeded ten years of service, limiting confidence in long-term reliability predictions beyond a decade. Therefore, engineers should treat the failure-rate rankings as indicative of medium-term enterprise performance rather than a universal guarantee across all environments.
The authors note that each extra degree Celsius of average drive temperature raises failure rates by about 2.1 %, and each additional terabyte of capacity lowers them by roughly 3.4 %. These temperature and capacity sensitivities suggest that environmental controls and drive-size selection can materially influence observed reliability. The similarity between WD and HGST failure rates is attributed to shared technology following WD’s ownership of HGST, hinting that future brand-level trends may converge.
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