Cloud Backup Firm Report Shows The Importance Of Data Backup

Yes, your data should be backed up. It’s very important that all your computer files are backed up. If they’re not, you could lose them forever, whether you're talking about a Windows, or a Mac system.

Here’s another thing to consider when it comes to data backup. Just because all your data are safely backed up to a hard drive doesn’t mean they’re safe. You need to factor in hard drive failures that can eventually compromise your data. If you’re not factoring in hard drive failures, then your backups are in danger.

Here’s the reason why. Based on a report from a leading cloud backup firm, hard drive failures are on the rise.

The latest hard drive reliability report from Backblaze, a cloud backup company that routinely publicizes failure rates among the drives in its employ, noted some interesting trends in the first quarter. For one, HDD failures as a whole have gone up. At the same time, the reports shows that larger capacity HDDs in the range of 8TB to 14TB are no more prone to failure than smaller capacity drives.

(Via: https://www.pcgamer.com/this-hard-drive-reliability-report-highlights-why-its-important-to-back-up-your-data/)

The report shows the failure rates of the various models of Toshiba, HGST, Seagate, and WDC.

A cursory glance shows that Toshiba manufactures the two drive models (4TB and 5TB) with zero failures in the first quarter, but "neither has a large enough number of drive bays to be statistically significant." Nevertheless, you have to go back to the second quarter of 2016 to find the last Toshiba 5TB drive to have failed, for whatever that is worth.

What's of more interest is the data for drive models that are used in higher numbers. The two most widely used drives belong to Seagate and include a 12TB model with a 2.22 percent failure rate (out of 34,708 drives), and a 4TB model with a 1.96 percent failure rate (out of 19,786 drives).

Those are actually some of the highest failure rates of the bunch, though not thehighest—that distinction belongs to a 12TB model from HGST (HUH721212ALE600), with a 2.6 percent failure rate.

(Via: https://www.pcgamer.com/this-hard-drive-reliability-report-highlights-why-its-important-to-back-up-your-data/)

The report shows a low failure rate but then the sample size is small. Needless to say, it’s still pretty obvious that hard drives fail.

That's still a relatively low failure rate, though it's a bit concerning, given the small sample size. Overall, the 15 drive models used in the first quarter collectively averaged a 1.56 failure rate.

(Via: https://www.pcgamer.com/this-hard-drive-reliability-report-highlights-why-its-important-to-back-up-your-data/)

While the failure rates of the various hard drive models are quite low, the report still emphasizes the importance to back up data.

Continue to back up your data, and make multiple back ups of anything that is mission critical or otherwise too precious to lose. For that kind of data, it's also a good idea to keep at least one of those backups off site, in case of a fire, flood, or some other catastrophe.

Provided you do that, it's generally safe to use a larger capacity HDD, if that's where you are leaning, based on Backblaze's data. For the most part, HDD's that are 8TB or higher appear only slightly more failure prone than lower capacity drives.

(Via: https://www.pcgamer.com/this-hard-drive-reliability-report-highlights-why-its-important-to-back-up-your-data/)

The whole point of backing up your data is to get them back immediately when the need arises. Unfortunately, you can never tell when that need is going to arise.

Considering the fact that branded HDDs still fail, you can’t be totally sure of getting back your files when you need them most. What you need is a reliable solution to a hard drive failure.

For Seagate data recovery, hover over to https://www.harddriverecovery.org/seagate-data-recovery.html to learn more about it. For Western Digital data recovery, visit https://www.harddriverecovery.org/western-digital-data-recovery.html. Both are useful resources for hard drive data recovery.

The following blog article Cloud Backup Firm Report Shows The Importance Of Data Backup was initially published on www.harddriverecovery.org

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