Survival analysis of hard disk drive failure data. Ross Lazarus, February 2016 Executive Summary: Using a well established, objective analysis and data presentation method designed for right censored hard disk drive failure data provides insights which are not provided by simple descriptive statistics or charts. The Kaplan-Meier statistics and plots are recommended for routine use with hard drive failure data and their use is illustrated with 30M data points from the BackBlaze public data. Introduction: Hard disk drives are widely used for mass storage in servers, network attached storeage devices, laptops and desktop computers. Familiar and convenient as they are, these complex electro-mechanical devices are prone to sudden catastrophic failure, which can lead to very unpleasant consequences such as loss of data which was not securely backed up elsewhere. Selecting drive manufacturers and models for home or for commercial applications is complicated by the problem t...