Cloud storage company releases its 2025 hard drive reliability report — overall Annualized Failure Rate drops to 1.36%, 21 percentage points lower than last year

Backblaze's 2025 hard drive reliability report shows an overall Annualized Failure Rate of 1.36%, a significant improvement from previous years. The report covers 344,196 drives and 4,317 failures, providing a robust dataset for analysis. Some standout drives with low failure rates include the Seagate ST16000NM002J 16TB and the Western Digital WUH722626ALE6L4 26TB. However, models like the HGST HUH728080ALE600 8TB and the Seagate ST10000NM0086 10TB had notably higher failure rates in the fourth quarter. Backblaze attributes some failures to factors like vibration and firmware issues, highlighting ongoing improvements in drive technology despite recent price surges.