Who makes the most reliable hard drives?

A few months ago we asked and answered one of computing’s oldest questions: How long do hard drives actually last? That story missed one vital piece of information, though — who makes the most reliable hard drives? Well, we can now answer that question too.
Just like last time, this information comes from Backblaze, an all-you-can-eat online backup company. Backblaze currently has around 28,000 hard drives powered up and constantly spinning, storing a total of around 80,000 terabytes (80 petabytes) of user data. As you can imagine, it is very much in Backblaze’s interests to ensure that it buys reliable hard drives. Every time a drive fails, it takes considerable time and effort to pull the drive, slot in a new one, and rebuild the RAID array.

Which hard drive manufacturer is the most reliable?

Backblaze breaks down its data in two ways — by manufacturer, and by specific drive. The data is fairly complex, but we’ll try to break it down into morsels of easy-to-digest, actionable information. (Read: How a hard drive works.)
As of the end of December 2013, Backblaze had 12,765  Seagate drives, 12,956 Hitachi drives, and 2,838 Western Digital drives. These drives are not all the same age — some are almost four years old, while many were installed in the past year. The odd numbers are because Backblaze basically buys whatever drive offers the most competitive dollar-per-gigabyte ratio, with reliability being a secondary factor. For most of the last four years, Seagate and Hitachi have offered the best price-per-gig, with Western Digital Red drives only now becoming a viable option for Backblaze.

Hard drive annual failure rate, broken down by maker (Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital) and size

As you can see from the graph above, Hitachi drives are by far the most reliable. Even though most of Backblaze’s Hitachi drives are now older than two years, they only have an annual failure rate of around 1%. The “annual failure rate” is the chance of a drive dying within a 12-month period. After three years of being powered up 24/7, 96.9% of Hitachi drives are still running.
Western Digital is slightly worse, but still impressive: After three years of operation, 94.8% of Western Digital drives are still running. Backblaze lists the annual failure rate of the WD drives at around 3% (I don’t think the numbers quite add up, but I could be wrong).
Seagate drives are not very reliable at all. As you can see in the second graph below, Seagate drives are fine for the first year, but failures quickly start building up after 18 months. By the end of the third year, just 73.5% of Backblaze’s Seagate drives are still running. This equates to an annual failure rate of 8-9%.

Hard drive failure rate, plotted by month

In Backblaze’s words: “If the price were right, we would be buying nothing but Hitachi drives. They have been rock solid, and have had a remarkably low failure rate.”

Which single hard drive is the most reliable? (And which is the least?)

In general, then, if you want a reliable hard drive you should go for a Hitachi or Western Digital. If you’re looking for a specific drive model that has good longevity, the numbers break down interestingly.
The two best drives, with 0.9% annual failure rate over more than two years, are the Hitachi GST Deskstar 5K3000, and Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000. Get one of these drives and you’re almost guaranteed (97-98%) to make it through three years without a dead drive. If you want a 4TB drive, the Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000 is your best bet — it has a slightly higher failure rate, but still below WD and Seagate’s offerings.
As far as poor reliability goes, Seagate has some nasty offenders. The 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 (an old drive now) has a very high chance of failing after three or four years. Even the newer 3TB Seagate Barracuda has a pretty high failure rate, at 9.8% per year.
Backblaze also notes that some drives (the Western Digital Green 3TB and Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB) start producing errors as soon as they’re slotted into a storage pod. They think this is due to the large amounts of vibration caused by thousands of other hard drives. (They also think that their aggressive spin-down setting, which is ostensibly to save power, causes a lot of wear to the drive.)
Hit up Backblaze’s website for a full list of hard drives and their statistics.

Samsung and Toshiba

Unfortunately, Backblaze doesn’t have a statistically significant number of Samsung or Toshiba drives installed. Even so, because Samsung’s hard drive division was acquired by Seagate in 2011, it’s hard to say if an older, pre-acquisition Samsung drive would be more or less reliable than a post-acquisition drive. Toshiba/Fujitsu still have a reasonable wedge (~10%) of the market share pie, but unfortunately we’ll have to wait for another study to see how they compare to Seagate, Western Digital, and Hitachi.
On the topic of acquisitions, you may also remember that Western Digital acquired Hitachi GST almost two years ago. If we compare Hitachi drives from before and after the acquisition, the annual failure rate seems to stay the same (around 1%). It would seem that Western Digital and Hitachi have the reliable hard drive business sewn up — and this is before we’ve had a chance to see what WD/HGST’s helium-filled hard drive can do!

Samsung Galaxy S5 might have iris scanning tech and a radical redesign, will be released in March and April.

One thing is guaranteed in the mobile industry: The annual release of flagship smartphones. According to a loose-lipped Samsung executive at CES 2014, the Galaxy S5 will arrive in either March or April, and may include an advanced iris scanner (one better than the iPhone’s fingerprint scanner), and a radical redesign.
Samsung has been releasing new variants of its flagship Galaxy S line annually for the last four years, but each time the excitement (and spectacle) seems to get bigger. Last year’s announcement of the Galaxy S4 took the form of a huge stage production with actors, choreography, and sets (along with a bit of misogyny thrown in for good measure). The point is, Galaxy S announcements are a huge deal now — Samsung’s flagship is the only Android phone that can, by itself, rival the iPhone in terms of popularity.

Samsung has hung its hat on packing in features to make its phones distinct in the crowded mobile market. According to the Samsung exec with the loose lips, the Korean phone maker is working on iris recognition technology. This would presumably allow you to unlock the phone with your unique eye imprint rather than a PIN or your face. Samsung might be trying to one-up Apple, which just added a fingerprint scanner to the iPhone 5S. There is no guarantee the tech will be ready for the GS5, though.
For iris scanning to be feasible, the device would need a super-high resolution front-facing camera. Lending credence to this approach is the existence of Samsung’s Smart Stay feature, which uses the camera to tell if your eyes are open and looking at the screen. So you could maybe take some really nice selfies too.

hopes up on this one.
Samsung is also planning a more radical redesign for the GS5. The Galaxy S4 was a little on the boring side because it looked very similar to the Galaxy S3. This time the company is apparently looking to improve the display and the feel of the casing. Samsung is famous for using slippery, unpleasant plastic, so maybe it’s finally looking into a more premium material. As for the screen, a 5.25-inch 2560×1440 AMOLED has been rumored. That would be about 560 pixels per inch, over 100 more than the Galaxy S4 and 200 more than the iPhone 5S. PenTile doesn’t really matter at that point.

Alongside the Galaxy S5, Samsung is expected to announce a new version of the Galaxy Gear smartwatch with a sleeker design. By all accounts, uptake of Samsung’s $300 wrist computer has been poor. It has only been a few months since that device was released, so perhaps a do-over signals a change in direction — maybe even a reasonable price. Keep an eye out for Samsung to send out invites to an Unpacked event in March or April.

Sony’s new VR headset squares off with the Oculus Rift

The Oculus Rift is still in development kit form, but for a dev kit that aims to offer virtual reality in the living room for a relatively affordable $300 price tag, the device actually delivers. Your less tech savvy friends may not have heard of the Rift yet — and it doesn’t exactly have an impressive catalog of officially supported software — but the buzz surrounding the device is strong and loud. In fact, that buzz is so strong and loud that Sony has taken to developing a Rift competitor of its own.

Sony’s headset, the HMZ-T3Q, is actually the newest iteration in a line of theater virtualization headsets. Last year, Sony offered the HMZ-T3W headset at $1,000 per unit. Both units have similar specs and capabilities — personal headsets that simulate watching a screen that measures 700 to 750 inches in size from around 65 feet away. With the previous model, Sony aimed for the market of customers that would like a theater-sized experience when watching media, but didn’t have theater-sized space to set up the appropriate hardware. The headset allows you to have that giant screen and crisp 7.1 surround sound sitting on your face, so you can conceivably live in a tiny New York City-style shoe box of a room, but not miss out on an extravagant in-home media experience. The new model shown at CES 2014 this week takes somewhat of an aim at the Oculus Rift, as Sony touted the head-tracking capabilities of the HMZ-T3Q, and noted that it’s not only compatible with movies and TV, but video games as well.