DiskGradeWestern Digital WUH722222ALE6L4 22 TB failure rate and reliability
A Grade A: Excellent
Backblaze logged 85,125 drive-years on the Western Digital WUH722222ALE6L4 from Q1 2023 to Q3 2026, with 50,132 in service at the end of that period. In that time 456 drives failed, an annualised failure rate of 0.54%.
That is 65% lower than the 1.52% average across every drive in the same data, which earns it grade A (excellent).
Failures have fallen: 0.44% over the latest 7 quarters against 1.06% before.
- Failure rate / year
- 0.54%
- Average, all drives
- 1.52%
- Drives in use
- 50,132
- Drive-years
- 85,125
- Failures
- 456
- Capacity
- 22 TB
- Type
- HDD
- Model number
- WUH722222ALE6L4
Failure rate by quarter
| Quarter | Drive-days | Failures | Failure rate / year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q2 2023 | 328 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Q3 2023 | 1,564 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Q4 2023 | 122,755 | 2 | 0.59% |
| Q1 2024 | 281,150 | 7 | 0.91% |
| Q2 2024 | 878,867 | 33 | 1.37% |
| Q3 2024 | 1,441,914 | 52 | 1.32% |
| Q4 2024 | 2,139,651 | 47 | 0.80% |
| Q1 2025 | 2,870,372 | 56 | 0.71% |
| Q2 2025 | 3,241,771 | 46 | 0.52% |
| Q3 2025 | 3,555,491 | 50 | 0.51% |
| Q4 2025 | 3,945,245 | 25 | 0.23% |
| Q1 2026 | 3,992,942 | 42 | 0.38% |
| Q2 2026 | 4,146,339 | 63 | 0.55% |
| Q3 2026 | 4,452,162 | 33 | 0.27% |
Single quarters with few drive-days swing widely; the overall figure above is the dependable one.