SSD failures

[Qqmike]

SSDs do die, as Linus Torvalds just discovered
http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...4&pageNumber=1

In the article are more links:

Tom's review
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rate,2923.html
and
Hard disk drives vs. solid-state drives: Are SSDs finally worth the money?
https://www.computerworld.com/s/arti..._?pageNumber=1

[tek_heretik]

I don't quite understand the point of this thread. As far as I am concerned, I knew the risks going in (check out my sig') but I still store anything/backup to a platter drive, but I'll tell you one thing, it sure sped things up a lot and a lot less heat (and noise) inside the case from my old 4 HDD RAID 0 + 1 HDD storage drive set up. By the time I am ready for a new build, my two SSDs will probably be given away with this machine, I'm betting there will be SATA 4.0 by then, etc.

[dmeyer]

In all honesty, I am fairly sure that in something like a laptop an SSD would be more reliable. Moving parts don't like shock. I will admit early SSDs were notoriously unreliable, but the newer ones I feel are as reliable if not more so than platter drives.

I can give anecdotal evidence at best but I am sure Linus is harder on his SSD that most and if I'm not mistaken his SSD is like 5 years old already. Plus, even if it is one of the high quality early Intel SSDs (which I think it is) it is still one of the first on the market. Remember when 2TB drives come out? Those things were as reliable as politicians at keeping promises.

I just wish some real SSD reliability data would become available but unfortunately manufacturers are tight lipped or outright misleading.

[oshunluvr]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2319966

[dmeyer]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2319966

I've seen those numbers before and I found them to be fairly useless. Return rate != failure rate. Don't forget buyer's remorse - it's a far bigger factor than you'd imagine. This is also a single retailer so the sample size is limited. This in no way accounts for SSDs preinstalled in machines which is becoming much more common and I would hazard to say it's probably how the majority of SSDs are sold nowadays.

No manufacturer would ever sell a product with 40,57% failure rate, never mind the three other worse drives. One product like that would ruin a manufacturers reputation within a few months and would just cost them a fortune.

Thanks nonetheless.

[tek_heretik]

5 year warranty/1,200,000 hours, I'm not that worried...

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/...ification.html

[oshunluvr]

We've had this discussion before. The bottom line has not changed. For a home user, the failure rates of HD vs. SSD are so close as to be irrelevant. The reason to use an SSD is speed. The reason to use an HD is capacity. There are other, less important differences - heat, wattage, etc. - but speed vs. capacity is the primary decision point. Obviously these factors are changed if you remove the cost factor - but AFAIK, none of us are lotto winners (at least not yet! ). If you want a TB or more of storage, SSD's are too expensive. If you want the fastest possible experience, HD's are too slow.

In my home, I have many of both devices. I put SSD's in laptops for added battery life along with the speed increase. For my desktop, the boot and primary data device is an SSD, backups and storage on HD's. My server has HD's only. Most of the charts I've seen and studies I've read show very little difference in failure rates after the first year (SSD's having a slightly higher initial failure rate) and failure rates for both increasing dramatically after 5-7 years.

Over the last decade, I have had one (out of 5) SSD failure and it occured in the first 2 months of use. The replacement is still in use (although not daily) after three years. I have had 4 HD (out of 12) failures, all of which were in the 4th year of life (after the warranty period, of course ). I currently have 3 HD's in the 5-7 age range and 2 more in the 3-5 year range. Most of my SSD's are <1 year old. In the distant past, I have discarded many HD's because they out-lived their usefulness.

My point to all the above anecdotal data is: I would never suggest deciding to buy or not buy an SSD vs. HD based on reliabilty. It simply isn't the primary factor.

The only way to have reliable data storage is to back it up - regardless of the medium.

[dmeyer]

We've had this discussion before. The bottom line has not changed. For a home user, the failure rates of HD vs. SSD are so close as to be irrelevant. The reason to use an SSD is speed. The reason to use an HD is capacity. There are other, less important differences - heat, wattage, etc. - but speed vs. capacity is the primary decision point. Obviously these factors are changed if you remove the cost factor - but AFAIK, none of us are lotto winners (at least not yet! ). If you want a TB or more of storage, SSD's are too expensive. If you want the fastest possible experience, HD's are too slow.

In my home, I have many of both devices. I put SSD's in laptops for added battery life along with the speed increase. For my desktop, the boot and primary data device is an SSD, backups and storage on HD's. My server has HD's only. Most of the charts I've seen and studies I've read show very little difference in failure rates after the first year (SSD's having a slightly higher initial failure rate) and failure rates for both increasing dramatically after 5-7 years.

Over the last decade, I have had one (out of 5) SSD failure and it occured in the first 2 months of use. The replacement is still in use (although not daily) after three years. I have had 4 HD (out of 12) failures, all of which were in the 4th year of life (after the warranty period, of course ). I currently have 3 HD's in the 5-7 age range and 2 more in the 3-5 year range. Most of my SSD's are <1 year old. In the distant past, I have discarded many HD's because they out-lived their usefulness.

My point to all the above anecdotal data is: I would never suggest deciding to buy or not buy an SSD vs. HD based on reliabilty. It simply isn't the primary factor.

The only way to have reliable data storage is to back it up - regardless of the medium.

I would genuinely hazard to say SSDs are more reliable in laptops because they are much more resistant to shock and have no moving parts. In something like a laptop where it can experience shocks while operating the SSD might be a safer bet.

Nothing beats backing up though! People: do not forget to back-up! It's super duper important because no hardware or software is ever perfect.

[tek_heretik]

super duper

Yeah, and don't try to reset an HDD's geometry because you think you can reset the SMART data...like I did a few years back, dumb, real dumb, lol, love the "super duper", that's good.

[SteveRiley]

Nothing beats backing up though! People: do not forget to back-up! It's super duper important because no hardware or software is ever perfect.

Amazon Glacier, part of Amazon Web Services. Definitely the way to go. No charge for uploads, a penny per gigabyte per month. With a variety of command line tools, you can automate your backup via cron.

[SteveRiley]

Yeah, and don't try to reset an HDD's geometry

"Attention, hard drive: you are now a square!"

[dmeyer]

Amazon Glacier, part of Amazon Web Services. Definitely the way to go. No charge for uploads, a penny per gigabyte per month. With a variety of command line tools, you can automate your backup via cron.

While not personally a fan of online back-ups (terrible speeds and data caps). I agree back-ups should be distant from the PC. For example, my friend had his laptop bag stolen, alright, let's restore the back-up... Can't because the back-up was on the external HDD that was in his laptop bag. Also, have multiple back-ups!

[SteveRiley]

Most of those online backup companies use AWS for storage anyway, so why not go directly there yourself? Glacier is super cheap, will suck data as fast as your Internet connection can feed, and has no storage maximum. The service offers the same reliability and durability as Amazon S3, because it is S3: objects are stored multiple times in separate physical locations; objects are continually checked for degradation and new copies are made when necessary.

[tek_heretik]

"Attention, hard drive: you are now a square!"

Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh, that's a knee slapper Steve, pah ha ha, yeah, really dumb rookie move on my part, lost some valuable pictures.