Backblaze Publishes 2025 Drive Stats Report: 13 Years Of Data Show Growing, Healthier Drive Fleet
StorageNewsletter.com, Wednesday, February 18th, 2026
Annual failure rate drops to 1.36% across 344,000+ drives; high-capacity models on the rise as first 26TB drives enter service
The report analyzes the performance of 344,196 hard drives across 30 models.
The 2025 yearly annualized failure rate (AFR) was 1.36%, down from 1.55% in 2024. Q4 2025 posted an even stronger quarterly AFR of 1.13%. Lifetime AFR held steady at 1.30%, a figure that has remained consistent quarter over quarter, reflecting both drive quality and active fleet management practices.
The fleet's composition continued to shift toward higher-capacity storage. Drives in the 14-16TB range now account for 52% of active drives, while 20TB+ models account for nearly 23%. Backblaze deployed its first 26TB drive this quarter, the WDC WUH722626ALE6L4, which recorded one failure in its initial period of service. This shift toward high-capacity models has been driven by three key trends across the hard drive industry: cost per gigabyte has declined steadily over the years, storage capacities continue to grow, but the availability of smaller drives for enterprises has declined.