More on hard disk failures

I’ve been trying to get more stats on hard disk failure rates. I came across this report: Disk failures in the real world: what does an MTTF of 1,000,000 hours mean to you.

It reports that manufacturers quote mean time to failure of around 1-1.5m hours, or on average a 0.88% chance of failing in any given year.  However, the writers find that results in the real world “typically exceed 1%, with 2-4% common and up to 13% observed in some systems.” 

Unlike the Google report (blogged here earlier), the writers also find that disks are more likely to fail as they get older and that there is not a significant infant mortality effect.

All this is really a long and technical way of saying hard disks are neither fault-proof or immortal. They can and do go wrong and surprisingly often.

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