When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works .
Backblaze just released its annual drive reliability report, with the company calculating an overall annualized failure rate (AFR) of 1.36% for 2025. According to the company page , its drives ran for a total of 115,638,676 cumulative days, with 4,317 units failing. This data comes from a total of 344,196 drives, meaning it has a good sample size that can give us a relatively accurate view of the reliability of the drives that it uses. The 1.36% AFR is the company’s best result since 2022, improving on 2025’s 1.57% AFR and the 1.70% AFR from the year before that.
Unfortunately, all the drive models that the company used suffered from failures. Two units stood out with only one failure each for the entire year — the Seagate ST16000NM002J 16TB and the Western Digital WUH722626ALE6L4 26TB, although the latter has only been used for one quarter. The Toshiba MGO9ACA16TE 16TB takes the third place with only three failures, followed by the Seagate ST12000NM000J 12TB and the HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 4TB, which had four and five failures, respectively.
We also don’t have a list of red-flagged drives for the entire year, but Backblaze reported three notable models that had high failure rates for the fourth quarter of 2025 — the HGST HUH728080ALE600 8TB (10.29%), the Seagate ST10000NM0086 10TB (5.23%), and the Toshiba MG08ACA16TEY 16TB (4.14%).
Hard drive prices have surged by an average of 46% since September — iconic 24TB Seagate BarraCuda now $500 as AI claims another victim
Seagate achieves a whopping 6.9TB storage capacity per platter in its lab
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/cloud-storage-company-releases-its-2025-hard-drive-reliability-report-overall-annualized-failure-rate-drops-to-1-36-percent-21-percentage-points-lower-than-last-year#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
- Google reports that state hackers from China, Russia and Iran are using Gemini in 'all stages' of attacks — phishing lures, coding and vulnerability testing get
- Sony-led program offers PS5 rentals starting at $13.50 a month in the UK across 12, 24, or 36-month leases — console has to be returned at the end of the contra
- U.S., Taiwan ink trade deal after months of talks — agreement cuts tariffs on Taiwanese goods to 15% in exchange for direct investments on U.S. tech sector, sem
- Accelerating Science: A Blueprint for a Renewed National Quantum Initiative
- Linux kernel 7.0 finally abandons the 28-year-old Intel 440BX chipset — driver removal marks goodbye to the legendary motherboard chipset
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.