SSD vs HDD | Which Tech Lasts Longer? | Ontrack Blog

Many comparisons can be made between a Solid State Drive and a Hard Disk Drive (SSD vs HDD): cost, speed, data storage capacity.  However, in this post, we’ll be looking specifically at the durability of HDDs and SSDs to assess if there is any difference in life expectancy between the two data storage types.

Durability - SSD vs HDD

It’s important to firstly note that any life expectancy figures for HDDs and SSDs alike cannot always be 100% certain. These estimates assume manufacturer’s recommended environmental conditions and do not take into consideration extremes of temperature, humidity and physical mishandling. In fact, out of almost 2000 devices surveyed between January and March 2016, at least 30% had sustained some form of physical damage to cause the media to stop working and/or cause data loss.

HDDs are electromechanical devices – they have moving parts – which generally makes them more susceptible to damage from a physical shock. However, many modern hard drives, particularly those for the mobile device market, can handle extremely large physical shock when the heads are parked and incorporate shock-proofing technology such as free-fall “drop” sensors which are used to protect the heads and media even when the drive is running. Although SSDs have no moving parts and are more robust in this respect, the use of NAND flash memory as a storage medium brings with it a whole host of new complexities and therefore the possibility of data loss for reasons other than physical shock. It is therefore a myth that SSDs cannot suffer from a type of physical failure.

Power Loss?

So what would happen if you just left the devices… to their own devices? Many of us would assume that if you simply were to do nothing and leave a drive in average storage conditions (temperature, humidity, etc.) then there would be no data loss, right? Well this is actually not the case; data stored on a HDD will gradually degrade as the magnetic domains representing the bits of the data change polarity, increasing the number of ‘bit errors’.

If we assume normal storage conditions, data stored on a HDD will degrade far more slowly than data stored on a SSD that uses NAND flash memory. Why? NAND flash stores data as electrical charges, which leak away relatively quickly in comparison with changes in magnetic domain polarity.  This is due to the imperfect insulation within the structure of the memory itself. However, with SSDs, data degradation (that is sufficient enough to prevent the correction of stored data with ‘Error Correction Algorithms’) should not occur for at least 10 years if the drive is left powered down in optimum storage conditions. This time frame does however depend on the type of NAND flash memory used.  For example, ‘Triple-Level Cell’ (TLC) memory can actually lose data far more quickly – even as soon as a few months.

In fact, data loss from NAND memory can still occur even when the memory has power. Good SSDs use a background refresh technique to restore the charge in cells that identify as marginally retaining the data.

How does this compare to HDDs? Well, every 10 years or so some of our engineers have been successfully booting up and reading data from HDD systems that are well over 30 years old - error free!

Storage Conditions - SSD vs HDD

Can factors such as temperature and humidity affect the retention lifetime of stored data on HDD and SSD? In short – yes – no storage media will last forever. High humidity for example can be a significant problem for both SSD and HDD as it can lead to the oxidization and corrosion of metals. However high storage temperatures have a significant effect on SSD data retention; the rate of data degradation in NAND flash memory accelerates considerably with increased temperature.

For the average use of a laptop or mobile device, this area probably isn’t going to be an issue, but when you start looking at servers and data centres' media storage conditions, it is a required to protect against drive failure (and potentially data loss) as a result of overheating or high humidity.

Should I Worry?

The reality is for normal day-to-day usage in a laptop or PC, for example, you needn’t lose sleep over the life expectancy of your storage media. Aside from an incredibly small proportion of manufacturer defects, your HDD or SSD shouldn’t give up on you easily if you’re taking care of it and keeping it away from physical hazards. If you’d like to investigate more there are many different ways to monitor the logical health of your devices; there’s ‘SMART’ tools to predict drive failures and software to check the wear and tear of SSDs in detail, including how much usable life it has left.

With mobile devices, there is obviously a higher risk of physical damage (dropping a phone on the floor, iPads taking a bath, etc.), but with normal everyday usage you would be highly unlikely to encounter issues in the longevity of the storage media itself. If you’re looking to store data longer-term then it might be best to go HDD over SSD, or better yet - look into the wonderful world of magnetic tape storage (yes, they still exist!).

If you are looking for further guidance on which storage type is best for your business, it’s worth also checking out this article, which talks about  HDD, SSD and the more recent ‘hybrid’ drive.

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