Backblaze has split for the first time a report focusing on the reliability of SSD compared to a Hard disk classic.
For this study, the company specializing in cloud storage and data recovery services compared the annual failure rate (AFR) of the two storage devices.
Higher speed = better reliability?
Now widely adopted, SSDs have conquered the PC market thanks to a significantly higher speed compared to the incorrigible hard drive. However, Backblaze took its time to offer a reliability study of these.
This pitfall has now been fixed, based on data from 2,906 SSDs. If this report is to be believed, their annual failure rate represents an average of 0.98% for all brands combined (except Samsung), compared to 1.64% for hard drives from all walks of life.
A slight difference that can be puzzling, given the difference in operation between the two products. On the one hand, we have SSDs which move electrons through memory chips, and on the other hard drives using a mechanism of magnetic platters more prone to malfunction.
Results to put into perspective
Backblaze thus indicates that, out of the thirteen SSD models tested, seven worked without any errors to report. However, the other six had a lifespan limited to less than 10,000 days. The data presented in the report should therefore not be taken entirely at face value.
Especially since, as mentioned above, no Samsung SSD (yet a reference brand in the field) has been tested. The reason may lie in the fact that Backblaze bought SSDs in bulk for the production of its report, and Samsung’s models turned out to be too expensive for the company.
That being said, there is an interesting analysis in the study vis-à-vis the reports generated by SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) used by HDD and SSD manufacturers. On the latter, this technology seems to present statistics that are, ironically enough, lacking in reliability.
For lack of anything better, we can therefore establish that SSDs are in principle more reliable than hard drives, but the difference clearly does not appear as obvious in this area, unlike performance and read/write speed.
Source : backblaze
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