Under 80% Of All Computer Hard Drives Will Survive With Continuous Use To Fourth Year

From ExtremeTech, "How long do hard drives actually live for?" by Sebastian Anthony:

Source: ExtremeTech

***It seems that hard drives have three distinct failure “phases.” In the first phase, which lasts 1.5 years, hard drives have an annual failure rate of 5.1%. For the next 1.5 years, the annual failure rate drops to 1.4%. After three years, the failure rate explodes to 11.8% per year. In short, this means that around 92% of drives survive the first 18 months, and almost all of those (90%) then go on to reach three years.

Extrapolating from these figures, just under 80% of all hard drives will survive to their fourth anniversary. Backblaze doesn’t have figures beyond that, but its distinguished engineer, Brian Beach, speculates that the failure rate will probably stick to around 12% per year. This means that 50% of hard drives will survive until their sixth birthday.