One of the worst lessons every computer user must learn is that hard drives break. Keeping a good backup policy is essential, and many have adopted SSDs to leave mechanical pains behind, but they aren't immortal either. However, the latest data shared by Backblaze suggests that the failure rate of SSDs is well below the average recorded for hard drives.
The folks at Backblaze have done an extraordinary job documenting the failures of their hard drives over the years. Their data is especially useful because they've always applied a “design for failure” strategy, using consumer-grade drives with enough redundancy to handle any major incident.
But in the last months of 2018, Backblaze started a technology replacement process for all boot drives and new storage servers, moving from hard drives to SSDs. That means Backblaze has accumulated nearly five years of telemetry on its SSDs, and the numbers are quite clear so far: they are failing less than hard drives.
SSDs fail less than hard drives, according to Backblaze
The first table of annualized failure rates for SSDs is one of the most interesting. Between October 1, 2018, and June 30, 2022, Backblaze added a total of 2,558 SSDs to its configuration, combining eleven different models in M.2 and 2.5-inch formats. That table confirms that 35 SSDs failed, bringing the AFR percentage for the second quarter of 2022 to 0.92%. Some brands aren't even represented in Backblaze's hardware, but the idea isn't to pit manufacturers against each other, but to compare SSDs with hard drives doing the same job.
That brings us to the second and third tables. When Backblaze published the same study last year, asked whether SSDs were safer and more durable than hard drives, all it could say was “maybe.” SSDs were following the same trend, but with a lower annualized rate. Backblaze expected to find a significant increase in SSD failures, a general normalization, or something in between, but with an extra year of data, what the company detected was a reduction.
Of course, Backblaze's data collection will continue, and it is estimated that SSD failure incidents will increase. There is also the possibility that some drives will reach a definitive end once they surpass their natural wear limits. If that happens, Backblaze will take SMART statistics to verify the relationship between those parameters and the failures themselves.
Finally, we must mention that a hard drive usually sends different signals and warnings before a catastrophic failure, whereas SSDs tend to die suddenly. Some models grant the grace of a read-only mode to extract data, but the best defense will always be a proactive backup.
Access the study: click here.
