Backblaze Hard Drive Failure Rates Rose in Q2 2026
The company's quarterly failure rate reached 1.73% as it continues to manage a massive fleet of storage drives.
Updated on Sept. 29, 2026 in Data Centers
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Backblaze reported an annualized hard drive failure rate of 1.73% for Q2 2026. This figure marks an increase from the 1.24% failure rate recorded in Q1 2026.
Why it matters
Reliability metrics allow data center operators to optimize storage density while managing the hardware risks inherent in scaling infrastructure for AI workloads. Tracking these performance fluctuations is essential for maintaining uptime across hyperscale storage environments.
Backblaze observed a 1.73% annualized failure rate across its fleet of more than 350,000 production hard drives. This result compares to a lifetime annualized failure rate of 1.41% for the company's hardware portfolio.
The players
Backblaze
A cloud storage and data backup provider based in San Mateo that maintains a large-scale production fleet of over 350,000 hard drives.
The details
Backblaze analyzes performance data from its global storage cloud to identify hardware issues. While the company monitors drive capacity improvements, it currently reports zero SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) drives in its fleet; SMR is a technique that overlaps data tracks to increase drive capacity by 10% to 25%. Three specific drive models exceeded the company's 6.95% annualized failure rate threshold during the reporting period.
Timeline
Q1 2026: Annualized failure rate was 1.24%.
Q2 2026: Annualized failure rate increased to 1.73%.
The Tech Race
Backblaze continues to exclude Shingled Magnetic Recording drives from its production environment, maintaining a preference for conventional recording methods to prioritize reliability. The company intends to integrate and monitor SMR failure rates only once those specific models are added to its infrastructure.
Data center operators and enterprise storage managers can use these benchmarks to assess the long-term reliability expectations for drives 20TB and larger, which now make up over 25% of the Backblaze fleet. These performance metrics help technical teams determine hardware procurement strategies for high-capacity storage environments.
The takeaway
Reliability data remains critical for managing the life cycle of dense storage hardware at scale. Readers should monitor future reports to see if the addition of high-capacity SMR models alters the baseline failure thresholds established in the current fleet.
Further reading
For additional context on storage infrastructure, visit our section on Data Centers.
More information
View the full drive stats report on the company's portal.
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