Backblaze: SSDs are far more reliable than hard disks (HDDs)

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https://www.backblaze.com/blog/ssd-drive-stats-mid-2022-review/

Welcome to the midyear SSD edition of the Backblaze Drive Stats report. This report builds on the 2021 SSD report published previously and is based on data from the SSDs we use as storage server boot drives in our Backblaze Cloud Storage platform…we will also compare the performance of these SSDs to hard drives we also use as boot drives. ..

SSD Versus HDD Annualized Failure Rates

Last year we compared SSD and HDD failure rates when we asked: Are SSDs really more reliable than Hard Drives? At that time the answer was maybe. We now have a year’s worth of data available to help answer that question..

And the Winner Is…

At this point we can reasonably claim that SSDs are more reliable than HDDs, at least when used as boot drives in our environment. This supports the anecdotal stories and educated guesses made by our readers over the past year or so. Well done…

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Given the AFR is very similar SSD to HDD and they are attempting to produced annualized rates from monthly data, I would consider the year 5 data suspect.

What it does say is that SSDs are at least as reliable as HDDs in the short term.

cheers, Paul

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Alex5723

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I’d be aware that they are indeed more reliable.

That is to say you need to be aware that they have a “lifetime” accounted by an internal algorithm, which once expired triggers the SMART error system. That can be a bit of a pain if you intend to actually use your machine significantly as it leaves you with a pinch point as to if you back up and replace or just turn off the message as we know this will happen just when that is simply not convenient..

It’s not a scam though – we ran several of the early 30GB (SV300?) Kingston drives to that point, the strange thing is the noticeable temperature rise at end of life seemed to be coming from the chipset, not the memory.. We had to autopsy having replaced it just to see, of course.. then tried to kill them. There must have been a fair amount of life left at 100% as we used one as a gash image drive and it took some hammering before it died.

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