HDD Metrics And Why Mean Time To Failure Is Not Terribly Useful
ComputerWeekly, Tuesday, November 4th, 2025
In this podcast, we talk to Rainer Kaese of Toshiba about hard drive metrics, why MTTF is less useful than annualised failure rate, and why big systems need to use enterprise drives
In this podcast, we talk to Rainer Kaese, senior manager of business development for hard disk drives at Toshiba Electronics Europe, about hard disk drive (HDD) metrics.
In particular, he takes apart mean time to failure (MTTF) and shows why it's not a very useful measure. In its place, he suggests annualised failure rate (AFR) as more useful, and shows why with reference to human lifespans.
He also talks about why mean time between failure is not applicable to hard drives, and why enterprise storage systems need enterprise drives.