Backblaze is again once more with a brand new SSD report for Q2 2022 (opens in new tab), showcasing the lifespan of its SSD boot drives powering its backup servers since 2018. However this time, Backblaze’s new replace confirms that SSDs are extra dependable than onerous drives.
Backblaze started recording SSD lifespans when it began switching from HDD boot drives to SSD boot drives in its backup servers. Nevertheless, because of the newness of the drives, it has taken 5 years for the corporate to actually being seeing any noteworthy variations in general common SSD lifespan habits in comparison with its HDD boot drive lifespans with the identical age.
2018 all the best way to 2021 sees common SSD lifespan information which are practically equivalent to onerous drive failure charges. 12 months 1 by far reveals us the bottom failure charges of all, with below a 0.66% failure price for HDDs and no failure price in any respect for SSDs. 12 months two steps issues up in an virtually completely linear vogue, with HDDs and SSDs seeing a roughly 0.85% improve in failure charges.
This linear improve in failures duplicates itself in 12 months 3 and 12 months 4 as effectively, with each SSDs and HDDs exhibiting comparable failure price curves — although with SSD’s being decrease general. At 12 months 4, HDDs are hovering across the 1.8% mark whereas SSDs have barely handed the 1% mark. After which issues seem to diverge.
The charts begin to change drastically in favor of SSDs at 12 months 5. HDD boot drive lifespan outcomes take a drastic uptick in failure charges, leaping from slightly below 2% to three.6% inside a 12 months. In the meantime, Backblaze’s SSDs head within the compete other way, declining from 1.05% to a formidable 0.92% common. That interprets right into a 3x reliability enchancment for SSDs over onerous drives.
Whereas this is not that shocking, given SSDs haven’t any shifting components, it’s good to lastly have some onerous particulars based mostly on 1000’s of drives exhibiting that common SSD life expectancy will far outweigh onerous drives, particularly as soon as storage begins to get previous. It is nonetheless potential for different elements like extreme writes or poorly designed firmware and controllers to trigger earlier SSD deaths. Nevertheless, such exceptions solely have an effect on a small variety of folks.
Backblaze concludes its report by stating, “At this level we are able to fairly declare that SSDs are extra dependable than HDDs, at the very least when used as boot drives in our surroundings. This helps the anecdotal tales and educated guesses made by our readers over the previous 12 months or so. Properly finished.” With 5 years of knowledge, SSDs are doing very effectively general. It will likely be fascinating to see what occurs because the drives transfer into the six, seven, and eight years previous vary.