SSD Annual Failure Rates Around 1.5%, HDDs About 5%

Lucas123 writes "On the news that Linus Torvalds's SSD went belly up while he was coding the 3.12 kernel, Computerworld took a closer look at SSDs and their failure rates. While Torvalds didn't specify the SSD manufacturer in his blog, he did write in a 2008 blog that he'd purchased an 80GB Intel SSD — likely the X25, which has become something of an industry standard for SSD reliability. While they may have no mechanical parts, making them preferable for mobile use, there are many factors that go into an SSD being reliable. For example, a NAND die, the SSD controller, capacitors, or other passive components can — and do — slowly wear out or fail entirely. As an investigation into SSD reliability performed by Tom's Hardware noted: 'We know that SSDs still fail.... All it takes is 10 minutes of flipping through customer reviews on Newegg's listings.' Yet, according to IHS, client SSD annual failure rates under warranty tend to be around 1.5%, while HDDs are near 5%. So SSDs not only outperform, but on average outlast spinning disks."

Comments

Recoverable Failure rate: 99.9% HDD, 1% SSD

[citizenr]

Wrong stat.

Yes, things to break, but its important HOW they break. HDDs have very 'nice' failure modes. You can recover bits from the platters as long as you do not put one in MRI machine or a fire. SSDs just DISAPPEAR from the system with data and encryption keys to that data and NO ONE including manufacturer can do recovery (they can put flash chips in reader and read encrypted bytes, but encryption keys were in the controller that just died).

How about another one: Warning before failure rate? Again 90% HDD, 1% SSD.

Do you know how many SSDs survive running out of spare sectors? Again about 1% :) 99% just die without going into read only mode.