Peer-reviewed study of 443,000 Backblaze hard drives over 12 years finds HGST most reliable, Toshiba least—Seagate and Toshiba HDDs fail at roughly twice the rate of WD and HGST in 1.66 million drive-years analysis.

Peer-reviewed study of 443,000 Backblaze hard drives ranks HGST most reliable and Toshiba the least — Analysis of 1.66 million drive-years finds Seagate and Toshiba HDDs fail at roughly twice the rate of WD and HGST

(Image credit: Getty Images) Economists Christoph Siemroth of the University of Essex and Yeomyung Park of Sungkyunkwan University have published a peer-reviewed IEEE study that re-crunches 12 years of Backblaze's public drive data, covering 443,156 hard drives and more than 1.66 million drive-years from 2013 through Q2 2025, and finds that HGST drives fail at roughly 41% of Seagate's rate when drives of matched age, capacity, form factor, and operating temperature are compared. WD comes in at a...