“Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2025”
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2025/
“As of June 30, 2025, we had 332,915 drives under management. Of that total, there were 3,970 boot drives and 328,348 data drives. Let’s dig into our stats, then talk about the meaning of failure.”
“The failure rate has increased: The failure rate has changed, and by quite a bit. As a reminder, last quarter’s AFR was 1.36% compared with this quarter’s 1.55%. (Interestingly, the 2024 yearly AFR was 1.57%.)”
“That new drive energy: Say hello to the 24TB Toshiba MG11ACA24TE, joining the drive pool with 2,400 drives and 24,148 drive days. That means that we’ve hit the thresholds for the quarterly stats, but not the lifetime.”
“Toshiba MG08ACA16TEY (16TB) - Finally, our Toshiba model is the most interesting of all. It’s less than four years old (44.61 months), and has 5,145 drives in the pool. And, this quarter is clearly a change from its normal, decent, AFRs.”
“What that means for this drive is that it’s actually not a bad drive model; and, given the ways we and Toshiba have worked together on a fix, we should see failure rates normalizing in the near future. And, this also goes back to our conversation of defining a failure—in this case, while the drives “failed,” the failure wasn’t mechanical and was based on something that we’ll be able to fix without replacing the drives. In short, don’t sweat the spike and pay attention to the long arc of performance on this population. We expect to see those drives happy and spinning for years to come (and with better performance, too). ”
*******
Wait, they had a software failure on some Toshiba hard drives that is being fixed by flashing the drive firmware ? Scary stuff that is.
Lynn
On Tue, 11/11/2025 10:51 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
“Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2025”
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2025/
“As of June 30, 2025, we had 332,915 drives under management. Of that total, there were 3,970 boot drives and 328,348 data drives. Let’s dig into our stats, then talk about the meaning of failure.”
“The failure rate has increased: The failure rate has changed, and by quite a bit. As a reminder, last quarter’s AFR was 1.36% compared with this quarter’s 1.55%. (Interestingly, the 2024 yearly AFR was 1.57%.)”
“That new drive energy: Say hello to the 24TB Toshiba MG11ACA24TE, joining the drive pool with 2,400 drives and 24,148 drive days. That means that we’ve hit the thresholds for the quarterly stats, but not the lifetime.”
“Toshiba MG08ACA16TEY (16TB) - Finally, our Toshiba model is the most interesting of all. It’s less than four years old (44.61 months), and has 5,145 drives in the pool. And, this quarter is clearly a change from its normal, decent, AFRs.”
“What that means for this drive is that it’s actually not a bad drive model; and, given the ways we and Toshiba have worked together on a fix, we should see failure rates normalizing in the near future. And, this also goes back to our conversation of defining a failure—in this case, while the drives “failed,” the failure wasn’t mechanical and was based on something that we’ll be able to fix without replacing the drives. In short, don’t sweat the spike and pay attention to the long arc of performance on this population. We expect to see those drives happy and spinning for years to come (and with better performance, too). ”
*******
Wait, they had a software failure on some Toshiba hard drives that is being fixed by flashing the drive firmware ? Scary stuff that is.
Lynn
That's normal.
Not every drive gets new firmware, but some of them do.
Paul
On 11/12/2025 4:06 AM, Paul wrote:
On Tue, 11/11/2025 10:51 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
“Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2025”
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2025/ >>>
“As of June 30, 2025, we had 332,915 drives under management. Of that total, there were 3,970 boot drives and 328,348 data drives. Let’s dig into our stats, then talk about the meaning of failure.”
“The failure rate has increased: The failure rate has changed, and by quite a bit. As a reminder, last quarter’s AFR was 1.36% compared with this quarter’s 1.55%. (Interestingly, the 2024 yearly AFR was 1.57%.)”
“That new drive energy: Say hello to the 24TB Toshiba MG11ACA24TE, joining the drive pool with 2,400 drives and 24,148 drive days. That means that we’ve hit the thresholds for the quarterly stats, but not the lifetime.”
“Toshiba MG08ACA16TEY (16TB) - Finally, our Toshiba model is the most interesting of all. It’s less than four years old (44.61 months), and has 5,145 drives in the pool. And, this quarter is clearly a change from its normal, decent, AFRs.”
“What that means for this drive is that it’s actually not a bad drive model; and, given the ways we and Toshiba have worked together on a fix, we should see failure rates normalizing in the near future. And, this also goes back to our conversation of defining a failure—in this case, while the drives “failed,” the failure wasn’t mechanical and was based on something that we’ll be able to fix without replacing the drives. In short, don’t sweat the spike and pay attention to the long arc of performance on this population. We expect to see those drives happy and spinning for years to come (and with better performance, too). ”
*******
Wait, they had a software failure on some Toshiba hard drives that is being fixed by flashing the drive firmware ? Scary stuff that is.
Lynn
That's normal.
Not every drive gets new firmware, but some of them do.
Paul
Flashing any firmware in the field is dangerous and non-trivial to find the correct patch.
Lynn
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