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Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Yes—brand differences showed up in a large adjusted analysis of hard drives, but the results are not a forecast for your individual drive. In a peer-reviewed study of 442,992 Backblaze drive observations through Q2 2025, HGST had the lowest estimated failure rate, Western Digital (WD) ranked next, and Toshiba was slightly above Seagate after accounting for drive age, capacity, form factor and average temperature.
What did the 442,992-drive study find?
Christoph Siemroth and Yeomyung Park’s 2026 paper, “Are There Manufacturer Differences in Hard-Drive Reliability?”, analyzes Backblaze records through Q2 2025. The study reports 442,992 observations and compares HGST, Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital. Its duration-regression models control for installation year (a proxy for age), capacity, form factor and average operating temperature.
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Using Seagate as the reference, the authors report these adjusted hazard ratios:
| Manufacturer | Cox model | Weibull model | Interpretation relative to Seagate |
|---|---|---|---|
| HGST | 0.395 | 0.411 | Estimated hazard was about 41% of Seagate’s; significantly lower. |
| Western Digital | 0.514 | 0.520 | Estimated hazard was about 52% of Seagate’s; significantly lower. |
| Toshiba | 1.070 | 1.073 | Estimated hazard was about 107% of Seagate’s; slightly higher. |
| Seagate | 1.000 | 1.000 | Reference manufacturer for these comparisons. |
A hazard ratio is a comparison of estimated failure rates over time, not the percentage chance that any one drive will fail. The paper found HGST’s estimate significantly lower than WD’s as well as significantly lower than Seagate’s; it did not establish a meaningful Toshiba-versus-Seagate difference in the figures summarized here. The authors’ abstract describes HGST as having “the lowest failure rate; about 41% of the failure rate of Seagate HDDs.”
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Does HDD brand affect reliability?
In this dataset and model, manufacturer label remained associated with failure rates after the listed statistical controls. That is evidence of a brand-level difference in the analyzed fleet, not proof that the logo itself caused the difference. The paper also considers drive location, but it does not establish the reasons behind the manufacturer differences or adjust for comparable workload data across brands.
The outcome is most useful as a broad historical comparison under Backblaze’s data-center conditions. The authors characterize the estimates as short- to medium-term: only a small share of sampled HDDs had been installed for more than ten years. The findings therefore do not establish a long-term lifespan ranking for every model or workload.
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Which hard drive brand lasts longest?
Among the four manufacturer labels in this study, HGST had the lowest adjusted estimated failure rate, followed by WD. That does not mean an HGST-branded drive is the best new purchase today: HGST was acquired by WD in 2012 and later stopped making its own HDDs. Nor does the result mean every WD model shares the historic HGST estimate.
Brand averages can conceal large differences among models. Backblaze’s Drive Stats team has noted that “even drive models from the same manufacturer have variable reliability.” Its 2024 report said two 12TB HGST models drove the brand’s higher result that year; excluding those models, HGST’s 2024 annualized failure rate (AFR) would have been 0.55%. Backblaze also requires a model to meet minimum drive-count and drive-day thresholds before including it in annual model tables, so those tables describe qualifying samples rather than every model on sale.
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How do Backblaze’s latest failure-rate figures fit in?
Backblaze publishes statistics from operational drives in its own data centers, taking daily snapshots that include drive details and SMART information such as hours running, temperature and bad sectors. It says it has collected, curated and published drive statistics since 2013. The figures below describe different time windows and should not be treated as competing estimates:
| Period and source | Drives or exposure | Annualized failure rate |
|---|---|---|
| Q2 2026 snapshot, Backblaze Drive Stats page | 354,415 drives; 1,498 failures; 31,553,350 drive days | 1.73% quarterly AFR |
| Calendar year 2025, Backblaze report | 115,638,676 drive days; 4,317 failures | 1.36% annual AFR |
| Calendar year 2024, Backblaze report | 298,954 qualifying drives across 27 models | 1.57% annual AFR |
| Calendar year 2023, Backblaze report | Not stated in the cited 2025 report | 1.70% annual AFR |
The Q2 2026 figure is an annualized rate calculated from one quarter, while 2025’s figure covers a full year. The brand study, meanwhile, compares manufacturers using statistical controls. Overall fleet AFRs mix models, ages and fleet composition, so they answer a different question from an adjusted brand comparison.
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What should you do with an old HDD?
Do not use a population-level ranking to decide whether a particular old drive is safe. The study does not predict when an individual drive will fail, and even a relatively low estimated fleet rate cannot protect the only copy of your files. Backblaze’s 2024 report warns that a single drive’s failure can mean total data loss.
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- Keep another copy of important data. Maintain a backup on a separate drive or storage system; do not treat a healthy status reading as a backup.
- Consider the actual drive. For an existing HDD, model, capacity, age and operating history are more informative than manufacturer name alone.
- Match any replacement to its use. Consider the model and capacity, intended workload, form factor, operating temperature, warranty and price. This study does not identify a currently sold consumer or NAS drive as the winner.
- Use brand evidence as context, not a guarantee. A fleet-level result can inform broad comparisons, but it cannot certify a specific used or new drive.
What the evidence can—and cannot—tell you
- It can: show that manufacturer differences remained in this large Backblaze sample after adjustments for age, capacity, form factor and average temperature.
- It can: give a relative ranking for the four labels in the paper’s analyzed fleet: HGST lowest, WD next, and Toshiba slightly above Seagate.
- It cannot: estimate the remaining life of your own old HDD or guarantee the reliability of a specific model.
- It cannot: establish a winner among current retail drives or show that brand alone caused the observed gap.
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