Which is safer and more reliable, a solid-state drive or a mechanical hard drive?

SSD solid-state hardware is replacing traditional mechanical hard disks as the mainstream storage medium. It has fast access speeds, increasing capacity, and its compact size makes it the first choice for ultra-thin computer devices. However, the service life of SSDs has always been a concern. A common misconception is that "SSDs are not as durable as mechanical hard disks", but this is not actually the case.

Bianca Schroeder, a professor at the University of Toronto in Canada, and Google engineers Raghav Lagisetty and Arif Merchant spent six years studying a large number of brands of SSD hard drives, including enterprise-level and consumer-level products, and finally came to some conclusions about the service life of SSDs. Let's take a look together.

Read errors are more common Lifespan depends more on drive age

First, Schroeder divides errors into two categories: transparent and non-transparent. Transparent errors are those that do not alert the user, while non-transparent errors are those that show error code prompts and require the user to deal with them. Usually, transparent errors are non-critical, so the system and hard disk firmware can often repair and adjust themselves without affecting use; while non-transparent errors are often unsolvable by the firmware and system.

Among them, non-transparent errors are mainly read errors, which occur in 20 to 63% of the tested hard drives, while write non-transparent errors are only 1.5 to 2.5%. In addition, an interesting result is that the service life of an SSD hard drive depends more on its age than on the frequency of use. In other words, an SSD that has been idle for two years actually has a shorter lifespan than an SSD that is used frequently for one year.

SSDs are more reliable than mechanical hard drives

In addition, the test also shows that SSD solid state drives are more reliable than HDD mechanical hard drives and do not have a specific usage limit. In the test, no problems occurred even when written up to 3,000 times.

Among SSD flash memory types, SLI is the most advanced, but in fact it is not necessarily more reliable than low-end products; MLC is the current mainstream, with moderate performance and lifespan; while TLC is relatively the cheapest, but theoretically has the worst performance and lifespan. It should be pointed out that the actual performance and lifespan of SSDs often depend on the controller and firmware, and this is why products from big brands often perform better.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.