It makes most sense when you're chasing terabytes per pound and the NAS sits somewhere noise doesn't matter. Think garage, or a rack in the cupboard under the stairs. Five years of warranty is the other draw, and on a drive you'll leave spinning for most of a decade that's worth having. CMR, thankfully. SMR and parity rebuilds don't get on.
!Watch out for
At 7,200 rpm it's from the louder, warmer class. Fine in a cupboard, less fun on a desk.
Lifetime AFR in Backblaze's fleet is 1.29% over 465 drive-years. The interval overlaps the 1.38% median, which makes it an average drive by their data. Power draw is 4.16 W idle and 8.35 W working on Toshiba's figures, or 36 kWh a year if it spends the whole year idling. A 4-bay box full of these gives 48 TB after one drive's worth of parity.
Specifications
Each value links to the Toshiba page or datasheet it came from.
Backblaze runs 893 of these (TOSHIBA MG09ACA16TE) in its data centres, and over 465 drive-years 6 have failed, an annualised failure rate of 1.29%. The 95% interval runs from 0.47% to 2.81%, a range wide enough to include the 1.38% median.
Annualised failure rate and 95% interval, lifetime and the last 4 quarters (the wider the bar, the thinner the data)
AFR %
0246810
Lifetime465 drive-yrs1.29%0.47–2.81
Q3 2025241 drives0.00%0.00–7.54
Q4 2025348 drives2.59%0.31–9.35
Q1 2026503 drives0.99%0.03–5.50
Q2 2026893 drives1.07%0.13–3.85
Median lifetime AFR across Backblaze drive models: 1.38%
Source: Backblaze Drive Stats, lifetime to Q2 2026. Bear in mind that's data-centre use, which is a lot harder on a drive than a home NAS will ever be.