"The HGST 12TB drive, the Seagate 6TB drive, the Toshiba 4TB drive, the Toshiba 14TB drive, and the WDC 16TB drive are the best-performing drives for the third quarter of 2021. With the exception of the HGST drive, all of these drives experienced only one drive failure..." Thats incorrect or misleading at best. The no. of drive failures has to be relative to the no. of drives used. The Toshiba 4tb had only 1 drive fail, but had a tiny sampling of only 97 drives. It has a poor AFR (annualized failure rate) as a result. Same with the other drives in that their AFR rates are OK, but not the best.

HGST (and now their owners WDC) Helium drives are my go to's for home use. I wish they had info on some none Helium WDC drives. Curious, the commentary on SSDs says they are around the same reliability as hard drives, yet the figures show for the same age they are certainly more reliable - in the shorter terms they have been used so far. I agree this should worsen as they further age, in the early years though they are the better bet.

alanm:

"The HGST 12TB drive, the Seagate 6TB drive, the Toshiba 4TB drive, the Toshiba 14TB drive, and the WDC 16TB drive are the best-performing drives for the third quarter of 2021. With the exception of the HGST drive, all of these drives experienced only one drive failure..." Thats incorrect or misleading at best. The no. of drive failures has to be relative to the no. of drives used. The Toshiba 4tb had only 1 drive fail, but had a tiny sampling of only 97 drives. It has a poor AFR (annualized failure rate) as a result. Same with the other drives in that their AFR rates are OK, but not the best.

I agree, the charts have to be looked at with much greater scrutiny. Everyone should compare the quarterly charts going back in time to when any drive on this chart was first introduced to see if the failures accelerated as time past, also to see when clusters of the same drives are added over time.

rflair:

I agree, the charts have to be looked at with much greater scrutiny. Everyone should compare the quarterly charts going back in time to when any drive on this chart was first introduced to see if the failures accelerated as time past, also to see when clusters of the same drives are added over time.

Blazblaze has posted in the past that there is no correlation between drive age and an acceleration in failures.