How Reliable Are 8TB and 10TB Hard Drives?
We’re now living in the era of “Big Data”. Even people who have computers for personal use only will quickly find that their hard drive fills up with photos, music, games, and videos. Professional photographers, videographers, and other people who work with large files on a daily basis will need even more disk space.
Businesses also need high capacity file storage for backup purposes – a need which can quickly run into several terabytes for even small companies with just a few employees.
Luckily, data storage has become much more affordable in recent years. While not that long ago the idea of a 1TB (that’s 1,000GB) hard drive was almost unthinkable, these days high capacity multi-terabyte drives are becoming more commonplace.
Seagate shipped the first 8TB hard drive back in 2014, and since then all the major hard drive manufacturers have followed suit. What’s more, 8TB is no longer the largest capacity available.
Hard Drive Reliability Rates
If you want to get an accurate idea of which hard drives are the most reliable, you’ll want to take the advice of an organisation that uses a lot of them.
That’s why so many people turn to the hard drive reliability reports published by backup company Backblaze every quarter.
Backblaze uses over 100,000 hard drives to provide cloud backup storage for their customers. These hard drives cover a wide range of models and capacities from manufacturers including Toshiba, HGST (owned by Western Digital), and Seagate.
Also worth noting is that Backblaze doesn’t just use enterprise-class drives. It also uses consumer drives that are affordable and available to everyone.
The latest lifetime hard drive failure data published by Backblaze, which covers the period from April 2013 until June 2019, showed that their 8TB and 10TB hard drives had an average annualised failure rate of 0.895%. The lower capacity 6TB and 4TB drives had a higher average failure rate of 1.114%.
In an earlier report covering data from Q3 2018, Backblaze made a point of highlighting the reliability of the larger capacity drives: “The failure rates of all of the larger drives (8, 10, and 12 TB) are very good: 1.21% AFR (Annualized Failure Rate) or less. In particular, the Seagate 10TB drives, which have been in operation for over 1 year now, are performing very nicely with a failure rate of 0.48%.”
Backblaze’s full data set for 2018 and previous years also shows that annual hard drive failure rates have fallen year on year as smaller capacity hard drives have been replaced with 8TB and 10TB+ models.
Their total average AFR across all hard drives was 1.95% in 2016, 1.77% in 2017, and 1.25% in 2018.
Backblaze plans to phase out their 4TB drives over the next couple of years and replace them with larger capacity drives.
What Affects Hard Drive Reliability?
Hard drive reliability is a measure of how likely a particular hard drive model is to fail at any given time. Hard drive failure occurs when there’s a malfunction and the data on the drive can’t be accessed.
External factors such as fire or water damage, being exposed to magnetic fields, or suffering an impact can cause a hard drive to fail. Failures can also happen randomly due to wear and tear on the physical components of the drive, or faulty parts.
A hard drive can fail suddenly and without warning, or the failure may happen more slowly and gradually. In the case of gradual failure, there are normally a number of warning signs in the run-up to the failure such as unusual clicking or whirring noises from the drive, or repeated error messages and program crashes.
How Long Do Hard Drives Last?
Most hard drives should last for three to five years without failure. After this time, it’s a good idea to replace your hard drive, as the risk of failure dramatically increases. However there’s always the chance that you can suffer a random disk failure, even if your hard drive is brand new.
All hard drives eventually fail, so you can’t expect to buy a hard drive once and have it last you a lifetime. Hard drives from reputable brands tend to last longer because they use higher quality hardware.
There are several factors that can affect the lifespan of your hard drive including the stability of the electrical supply, the cleanliness of the environment, and how frequently you read from and write data to the disk.
You can reduce your risk of hard drive failure by buying a model from a brand with a low annual failure rate. You should also consider using an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) to protect against power surges, and keep the environment protected from dust, potential liquid spills, and excessive heat.
Check the warranty when you buy a new hard drive. If your drive fails within this time, it will be replaced free of charge.
And of course, it goes without saying that you should never rely on a single hard drive to store your data. As we just mentioned, eventual hard drive failure is inevitable, so the only way to prevent it completely is by having a reliable backup.
Reliable 8TB and 10TB Hard Drives
At Shopping Express we stock a variety of 8TB and 10TB hard drives including internal, external, and portable models from high quality brands such as Western Digital, Seagate, LaCie, and Toshiba. We also stock enterprise-level hard drives suitable for cloud storage.
If you have any questions or need any further advice before choosing your next hard drive, contact our customer services team, who will be happy to help.
