Data loss from solid state disk (SSD) technology increases with wider adoption

According to a recent solid state disk (SSD) technology use survey by KLDiscovery, the leading provider of data recovery and ediscovery, 92 per cent of nearly 2,000 global respondents are using SSD technology, but a growing number reported experiencing a failure. Of those who experienced failure, nearly two-thirds lost data.

Robin England, senior research and development engineer at KLDiscovery, said: “Businesses and consumers continue to move toward SSD technology. Aside from the sheer speed and reliability of solid state drives, prices have decreased to become more competitive with traditional storage. Nevertheless, as our research shows, failures do occur.”

Over one-third of survey respondents (38 per cent) indicated they experienced a failure with SSD, and of those, two-thirds lost data. SSD recoveries at KLDiscovery have also become a larger percentage of the full mix of media types on which data recovery is performed.

Robin England added, “While adoption of SSD is up and failure rates between SSD and HDD are consistent, the types of failure are generally different. With hard drives, a bad motor or scratch in the platter can cause failure. Because there are no moving parts in SSDs, general electric failure or wear leveling failure are more common. When failure leads to data loss, it’s not uncommon for IT admins and consumers to utilise data recovery software to attempt recovery, as demonstrated by nearly three-quarters of respondents who took that approach.”

Growing trend

As SSD technology proliferates, there is a burgeoning market for other advanced storage technologies like solid state hybrid disk (SSHD), helium drives and heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) hard drives. In all cases, use of these advanced storage technologies is up slightly from last year's survey: SSHD and helium drives grew two percentage points and respondents indicate integration of HAMR hard drives into their enterprise. (HAMR hard drives were not measured in the 2015 SSD survey.) Global adoption of SSHD stands at nearly a quarter of all users (23 per cent), helium drives at three per cent and HAMR hard drives at two per cent.

Todd Johnson, vice president, data and storage technologies at KLDiscovery, explained: “Advanced storage technologies are certainly expanding at the enterprise level, but SSD growth continues to dominate the current market. In fact, 80 per cent of survey respondents indicated SSD use in laptops and mobile devices, nearly two-thirds in desktops, and 23 per cent in servers. Only five per cent do not currently leverage SSD technology in some capacity, with over half citing cost as the most common barrier. Given the known performance benefits and decreasing costs, we expect continued rise in adoption.”

Find more information about KLDiscovery and its SSD recovery solutions here.

About KLDiscovery

KLDiscovery provides technology-driven services and software to help legal, corporate and government entities as well as consumers manage, recover, search, analyse, and produce data efficiently and cost-effectively. In addition to its award-winning suite of software, KLDiscovery provides data recovery, data destruction, electronic discovery and document review services. For more information about KLDiscovery and its offerings please subscribe to the KLDiscovery Data Blog.

Share Print Page

By Device

By Solution

By Industry

Data Recovery

Tape Services

Data Destruction

Other Services

Ontrack EasyRecovery

Ontrack PowerControls

Data Erasure Software

Data Erasure Hardware

Ontrack Partners

Technology Partners

Technology Partners