The End Of The Disk Drive Bathtub Curve
Blocks & Files, Monday, October 20th, 2025
Backblaze disk drive failure stats suggest the 'bathtub curve' effect may be imaginary.
The idea is that disk drives fail either early on in their life or after many years, and a plot of failure rate over time shows a U-shaped curve with higher rates at the start and end of working life and few or no failures between these points. However, a Backblaze blog shows that the bathtub curve effect is absent as the company builds up more lifetime failure data.