SSDs with lower failure rates than HDDs
In a new study, cloud provider Blackblaze draws positive conclusions about the use of SSDs, which generally have a lower failure rate in the long run.
The cloud provider Blackblaze is known for its regular statistics on hard drive failure rates in continuous operation. It was only in 2018 that Blackblaze started to increasingly use SSD drives. Since then, the storage provider has put various solid state drives under the microscope, including normal desktop drives like the Crucial MX500 and Seagate Barracuda. Furthermore, server SSDs like the Micron 500 were also examined under continuous operation. Most of the drives had 250 to 500 GB of storage capacity on board, but only about 20 SSDs with two terabytes of storage. Thus, only about seven failures resulted in the second quarter of 2022. One Micron SSD and six Seagate SSDs said goodbye.
The failure rates of SSDs in the second quarter amounted to 1.15 percent, in the first quarter this was still a bit higher with 1.23 percent. The number of early failures is interesting, which even tends to zero in most cases in the first year. This makes it clear that SSDs have benefited from a significantly better manufacturing technology in the last few years. Age-related failures are also low in continuous operation compared to conventional hard disks. Hard disks can usually already be characterized by higher failure rates after four to five years, whereas SSDs are still affected by significantly fewer downtimes in the statistics.
Source: Blackblaze/Editorial
