How long do disk drives really last?
Well, the data isn't quite ready. It turns out that Backblaze – of open source storagepod fame - are only five years old and don't have enough failed drives to give us a definitive answer, yet.
But the answers they do have are worth considering. 75 PB is a large sample.
Backblaze has currently a total population of approximately 27,000 drives. Five years ago that number was about 3000. However, they've kept track of all the drives and found some interesting things that at least partly contradict earlier research done with Google by Carnegie Mellon university. (See Everything you know about disks is wrong.)
