Cloud storage service provider Backblaze released the first quarter of 2023 and the second quarter of the solid state hard disk (SSD) failure statistics, data to see more reliable than mechanical hard disk (HDD).
Backblaze officials said that the sample size is not enough to reflect the real situation, the relevant conclusions are only based on the existing data.
Backblaze began using SSDs in its repositories in Q4 2018 and ended 2021 with 2,200; 2022 with 2,558; and June 30, 2023 with 3,144 SSDs on its servers.
Backblaze says that in real-world usage scenarios, the hard disks are not just loaded with storage services, but also store log files and temporary storage server files. Depending on server activity, the boot disk reads, writes, and deletes files every day, among other things.
The data also excludes certain outliers, such as Seagate’s 240GB model SSDSCKKB240GZR, which has an average annual failure rate (AFR) of 829.55%, with two units of this model at the beginning of the year, but one failed shortly after installation. The other models continue to run at full power, which means they have an AFR of 0%, which doesn’t make any sense either.
The company says that representative statistics will be based on a sample of at least 100 SSDs running for 10,000 days. However, you’ll notice that SSDs have an annual failure rate of about 1%, while HDDs have an annual failure rate of over 2%.
