Backblaze just published its Q2 2026 Drive Stats report, and the headline number is not a happy one: the quarterly annualized failure rate (AFR) hit 1.73%, the highest it has been in quite a while. The company monitors hundreds of thousands of hard drives used to store data, and this quarter’s results show a fleet under pressure.
The Numbers Behind the Report
Backblaze tracked 359,101 drives throughout the quarter. It removed 3,881 boot drives and 705 hard drives from the analysis, leaving 354,415 drives to measure. The report focuses on models with over 100 drives and over 10,000 drive days, as of June 30, 2026.
The company has been tracking drives at 20TB and above as a group, and this quarter’s report also compares its current CMR HDDs to newer models. The report rounds up the honor roll of drives with zero failures, then moves on to the outliers — those with AFRs above 6.95%, which the report calls “high-end outliers.”
The Honor Roll Is All Seagate
Seagate cleaned up this quarter. Three Seagate models had zero failures: the ST8000NM000A (8TB), the ST12000NM000J (12TB), and the ST14000NM000J (14TB). The fourth Seagate model on the list, the ST16000NM000J (16TB), had one failure.
No typos here, folks: that’s a clean sweep by Seagate.
That is a remarkable result for a company that has spent years testing drives at scale. The zero-failure list is a small group, and having all four spots occupied by the same manufacturer is unusual.
The Outliers Are Old and Small
Three drives qualified as outliers this quarter. They are:
- HGST HUH721212ALN604 (12TB) — 7.63% AFR
- Seagate ST10000NM0086 (10TB) — 9.33% AFR
- Seagate ST14000NM0138 (14TB) — 8.26% AFR
All three have clear reasons for their high failure rates. The HGST drive is nearly seven years old, and the 10TB Seagate was nearly 8.5 years old. Both Seagate models also have very low drive counts — the 10TB drive has only 965 units, while the 14TB has 1,235. That means the 22 and 25 failures each recorded pushed their AFRs well above average.
The Lifetime Picture Holds Steady
The lifetime AFR is consistent across the entire fleet. This quarter showed a slight uptick to 1.41%, but the overall trend remains steady. Four models did not make the lifetime table: the ST8000NM000A (8TB), ST14000NM000J (14TB), ST16000NM000J (16TB), and ST16000NM002J (16TB).
Interestingly, the first three of those four models also appeared on the zero-failure list for the quarter.
What the High End Means
Deployment is concentrating at the larger end of the range. Backblaze is watching how these drives hold up over time, since higher-capacity models are becoming more central to the fleet.
The report notes that manufacturers are increasing density by changing how tracks are arranged on disk, which has implications for how data centers read and write data. That shift is part of why the report spends time on the 20TB+ group.
The Big Picture
The report raises more questions than it answers. Why did the quarterly AFR rise this quarter? What explains the concentration of failures in older, lower-count models? Will the trend toward 20TB+ continue to reshape the fleet?
For now, Backblaze’s approach holds. It watches the materials, puts them to work, and returns to check on the structure. The inspection continues, and the report ends on a note of watchfulness rather than alarm.
Key Facts Box
- Reporting period: April 1, 2026–June 30, 2026
- Total drives monitored: 359,101
- Drives removed: 3,881 boot drives + 705 hard drives
- Remaining drives analyzed: 354,415
- Quarterly AFR: 1.73%, highest in quite a while
- Zero-failure models: ST8000NM000A (8TB), ST12000NM000J (12TB), ST14000NM000J (14TB)
- One-failure model: ST16000NM000J (16TB)
- Lifetime AFR: 1.41%, slight uptick
- Outliers: 7.63%, 9.33%, 8.26%
The report is a snapshot of a fleet in transition, and Backblaze will be back next quarter with more data to measure against.
Source material: “Backblaze drive stats for Q2 2026,” backblaze.com.
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