Backblaze

12 years of HDD analysis brings insight to the bathtub curve’s reliability

Backblaze, hard disk drive, hard drive, hard drives, hdd, hdds, Tech / Kris Guyer / October 17, 2025

But as seen in Backblaze’s graph above, the company’s HDDs aren’t adhering to that principle. The blog’s authors noted that in 2021 and 2025, Backblaze’s drives had a “pretty even failure rate through the significant majority of the drives’ lives, then a fairly steep spike once we get into drive failure territory.”

The blog continues:

What does that mean? Well, drives are getting better, and lasting longer. And, given that our trendlines are about the same shape from 2021 to 2025, we should likely check back in when 2029 rolls around to see if our failure peak has pushed out even further.

Speaking with Ars Technica, Doyle said that Backblaze’s analysis is good news for individuals shopping for larger hard drives because the devices are “going to last longer.”

She added:

In many ways, you can think of a datacenter’s use of hard drives as the ultimate test for a hard drive—you’re keeping a hard drive on and spinning for the max amount of hours, and often the amount of times you read/write files is well over what you’d ever see as a consumer. Industry trend-wise, drives are getting bigger, which means that oftentimes, folks are buying fewer of them. Reporting on how these drives perform in a data center environment, then, can give you more confidence that whatever drive you’re buying is a good investment.

The longevity of HDDs is also another reason for shoppers to still consider HDDs over faster, more expensive SSDs.

“It’s a good idea to decide how justified the improvement in latency is,” Doyle said.

Questioning the bathtub curve

Doyle and Paterson aren’t looking to toss the bathtub curve out with the bathwater. They’re not suggesting that the bathtub curve doesn’t apply to HDDs, but rather that it overlooks additional factors affecting HDD failure rates, including “workload, manufacturing variation, firmware updates, and operational churn.” The principle also makes the assumptions that, per the authors:

Devices are identical and operate under the same conditions

Failures happen independently, driven mostly by time

The environment stays constant across a product’s life

While these conditions can largely be met in datacenter environments, “conditions can’t ever be perfect,” Doyle and Patterson noted. When considering an HDD’s failure rates over time, it’s wise to consider both the bathtub curve and how you use the component.

12 years of HDD analysis brings insight to the bathtub curve’s reliability Read More »

Backblaze responds to claims of “sham accounting,” customer backups at risk

Backblaze went public in November 2021 and raised $100 million. Morpheus noted that since then, “Backblaze has reported losses every quarter, its outstanding share count has grown by 80 percent, and its share price has declined by 71 percent.”

Following Morpheus’ report, Investing reported on Thursday that Backblaze shares fell 8.3 percent.

Beyond the financial implications for stockholders, Morpheus’ report has sparked some concern for the primarily small businesses and individuals relying on Backblaze for data backup. Today, for example, How-To Geek reported that “Backblaze backups might be in trouble,” in reference to Morpheus’ report. The publication said that if Morpheus’ reporting was accurate, Backblaze doesn’t appear to be heading toward profitability. In its Q4 2024 earnings report [PDF], Backblaze reported a net loss of $48.5 million. In 2023, it reported a net loss of $59.7 million.

“If Backblaze suddenly shuts down, customers might lose access to existing backups,” How-To Geek said.

Backblaze responds

Ars Technica reached out to Backblaze about its response to concerns about the company’s financials resulting in lost backups. Patrick Thomas, Backblaze’s VP of marketing, called Morpheus’ claims “baseless.” He added:

The report is inaccurate and misleading, based largely on litigation of the same nature, and a clear attempt by short sellers to manipulate our stock price for financial gain.

Thomas also claimed that “independent, third-party reviews” have already found that there have been “no wrongdoing or issues” with Backblaze’s public financial results.

“Our storage cloud continues to deliver reliable, high-performance services that Backblaze customers rely on, and we remain fully focused on driving innovation and creating long-term value for our customers, employees, and investors,” Thomas said.

Backblaze will announce its Q1 2025 results on May 7. Regardless of what lies ahead for the company’s finances and litigation, commitment to the 3-2-1 backup rule remains prudent.