A study of 443,000 Backblaze drives ranks HGST and WD more reliable than Seagate and Toshiba
An IEEE study published in August 2026 analyzes 443,156 Backblaze drives across 1.66 million drive-years and corrects for age bias: under comparable conditions, HGST and WD fail about half as often as Seagate and Toshiba. For a NAS or homelab, the lesson is less about brand than about temperature and capacity.