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Western Digital WUH721816ALE6L4 16 TB failure rate and reliability

B Grade B: Good

Backblaze logged 87,781 drive-years on the Western Digital WUH721816ALE6L4 from Q1 2023 to Q3 2026, with 26,751 in service at the end of that period. In that time 529 drives failed, an annualised failure rate of 0.60%.

That is 60% lower than the 1.52% average across every drive in the same data, which earns it grade B (good).

Among the 8 graded 16 TB hard drives it ranks 2 of 8 for reliability.

Failures have risen: 0.77% over the latest 8 quarters against 0.35% before. Rising rates often mean a model is ageing.

Failure rate / year

0.60%

Average, all drives

1.52%

Drives in use

26,751

Drive-years

87,781

Failures

529

Capacity

16 TB

Type

HDD

Model number

WUH721816ALE6L4

Failure rate by quarter

Single quarters with few drive-days swing widely; the overall figure above is the dependable one.

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