For 2022, Backblaze says that seven of the 13 drive models had no failure at all. The reasons behind failing drives aren't known, as only an SSD manufacturer would have the equipment needed to make a reliable diagnose. The fact that the difference in reliability level isn't exactly staggering (0.66% AFR) is rather surprising, however, as SSDs are essentially just moving electrons through memory chips while hard drives have to deal with a complex (and failure-prone) mechanism employing spinning platters and extremely sensitive read/write magnetic heads. SSDs are more reliable than HDDs, Backblaze says, as they show a lower AFR rate (0.98%) compared to HDDs (1.64%). The 2022 Drive States review is based on data recorded from 2,906 SSD boot units, Backblaze states, and it is essentially confirming what the company was saying in its 2022 mid-year report. Backblaze uses consumer-grade drives, providing Annualized Failure Rate (AFR) information about 13 different models from five different manufacturers. The company started using SSDs in the fourth quarter of 2018, employing the NAND Flash-based units as boot drives rather than data-storing drives.

Every year, the organization provides some interesting reliability data about the large fleet of storage units employed in its five data centers around the world.įor the first time, Backblaze's latest report on storage drive reliability is focusing on Solid State Drives (SSD) rather than HDD units alone. In context: Backblaze is a California-based company dealing with cloud storage and data backup services.

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