Backblaze's new SSD report for Q2 2022 shows the lifespan of its SSD boot disks powering its backup servers since 2018. Backblaze's latest upgrade proves SSDs' reliability over hard disks.

Backblaze started tracking SSD lifespans when it switched from HDD to SSD backup servers. Due to the newness of the drives, it took five years for the company to notice any notable changes in SSD lifespan behavior compared to HDD boot drive lifespans with the same age.

2018-2021 SSD lifespan records are similar to hard drive failure rates. Year 1 had the lowest HDD and SSD failure rates, both around 0.6%. Year two increases HDD and SSD failure rates by 0.85%. Both SSDs and HDDs show comparable failure rate curves in years 3 and 4, while SSDs are lower overall. HDDs linger at 1.8% while SSDs have barely passed 1%. Things diverge.

In year 5, SSDs start to overwhelm. HDD boot drive failure rates grow from 2% to 3.6% within a year. Backblaze's SSDs drop from 1.05% to 0.92%. SSDs are 3x more reliable than HDDs. SSDs have no moving parts, so this isn't surprising. Still, it's excellent to have actual data based on thousands of drives indicating that SSD life expectancy will much outperform traditional drives, especially once storage gets old. Excessive writes or poorly designed firmware and controllers can still cause SSD failure. 

SSDs Are More Reliable Than Hard Drives, According to Data from Backblaze