Do you think the reliability is there for Solid State harddrives yet?

I'm thinking about upgrading my laptop hard drive to a solid state but I wonder if the reliability is there. I have seen a lot of DOA comments at some online stores.

 

SSDs are more reliable than HDDs. It's one of the main advantages of solid state drives.

 

I'd say that the reliability point to them isn't universal and not consistent for every case. For example, if you are lets say jogging with your laptop, of course a solid state drive is going to be more reliable, but in a clean office environment, to me they would be no more reliable than HDD's. Also, you don't throw a data storage device around, i don't understand what people do with their laptops that they need solid state drives.

 

Lets make an important distinction here.

Durability is what SSD's offer - no moving parts after all. No argument here.

Reliability? Despite them being on the market in one form or another for 20 yrs or so, the current crop (less than a year) is all we care about and for those it is too early to tell.

Honestly? The only ones who's technical background has any merit for a 'reliability' award is Intel.

Why? Their DRAM on the controllers don't touch/handle data like (all?) other SSD controllers do. Also, the wear leveling algorithms are obviously a magnitude or greater above other companies. Thirdly, just look how they handle the blunders that they've incurred. They readily admit to their mistakes and offer a solid solution (maybe not a timely solution for some, but eventually and at least so far we've been able to trust the solution(s) offered).

No matter what, we should be backing up our data - but access to our data does us no good if our O/S doesn't boot right?

So, if your work system is mission critical - make sure you have a fully prepped spindle based system to ensure you can keep working.

As a link that was posted in one of the other threads suggests, maybe 2011 will really be the year SSD's take off.

At least by that time, we'll have some real and solid data on the 'reliability' aspect of them - instead of just some marketing BS that PR people spin and most so called 'review' sites spit back up at us.

 

Why is the year so specific? If the price keeps dropping (which it will), more and more laptops will use them as standard and once they do their thing that will convince customers how fantastic they are, people will buy them and HDD's will slowly become more for backup purposes only. As you do not need great disk performance for storage and the fact that HDD's will be dirt cheap, hell, they already are getting very cheap especially with that thread i saw about a 500GB 7200RPM Hitachi for only 80 bucks.

 

yes.

there is a tiny chance that your drive might be faulty, like anything you buy. and there is a tiny chance that a firmware could cripple your drive, like anything you do a firmware update on.

but the drive, if it works today, will work tomorrow just as well. as it has no mechanical movements, it has nothing that is capable of "wearing out".

this of course only, if it's quality hardware.

 

This is not true. If you throw your laptop around (or, much more likely, happen to drop it), the probability of the hard drive being damaged is macroscopically high -- perhaps something like 50% or more if special precautions haven't been taken. However, even if you treat it as nicely as you can, HDDs will fail from time to time.

My workplace has a lot of computers (think hundreds of terabytes of storage and thousands of CPUs). These machines sit in a highly regulated environment: the temperature is maintained at a constant level, the rooms are sealed and human access is kept to a minimum (i.e. no movement and no dust). However, the hard drives still break from time to time and quite often, they do so without warning. Sometimes we can anticipate the problem (e.g. if they start showing bad sectors or whatever), but much of the time, the first sign of trouble is also the last. This is why every user (and there are thousands of them) gets backed up space for their most important data.

The fundamental problem with HDDs is that they're precisely machined mechanical devices that operate at relatively high speeds. They'd work forever if they were perfect, but even small imperfections will doom them after some period of operation and an adverse environment significantly hastens this.

SSDs are different in that there are no moving parts and even though they won't last forever, they can at least tell you that they're reaching the end of their lifetime. The higher quality ones are definitely more reliable than HDDs, regardless of the environment.

 

thinkpad knows best,

the year is so specific in that article because it is predicting thats when the flash process will move to a 20nm size and the cost will finally be in line with what most consumers would want to spend for storage devices.

Althernai,

no moving parts doesn't guarantee anything. When these SSD's fail, it will be at the microscopic level - still physical, but just invisible to us.

 

While nothing is guaranteed, no moving parts means a SSD will be a lot less prone to physical damage. Failure due to physical damage is one aspect that is minimized significantly in comparison to traditional spinning HDD, hence overall failure rate is decreased.

 

sgogeta4,

I already alluded to that point in my previous posts, my point here being that the 'damage' caused to today's SSD's that would impact reliability are not of a physical nature that would be apparent to us - it is mostly up to the wear-leveling algorithms that should keep our SSD's working and how good the manufacturers guesses are that a minimum of 10,000 writes are in fact achievable in real world use.

 

SSDs have been used in the military and government for at least 2 decades now for mission critical usages. It's more the recent development of MLC flash memory that makes it necessary to have better wear-leveling algorithms. Reliability is more a factor of the memory type than the controller, though a good controller will extend the life of a MLC SSD drive.

 

sgogeta4,

I think you proved my point(s)?

I hardly believe we are getting anything close to 'military' grade with these SSDs.

Not to mention (I may be wrong ) that military applications probably depend on 'reading' much more than our consumer focus of 'writing' to SSDs (installing, deleting, moving, etc. all our data and programs over and over again).

Memory type! Thats what I'm thinking. MLC is what's not proven yet - they may have really good guesses, but guesses they'll remain for at least another few years.

 

just to make one thing sure: by replacing a hdd with an ssd, you make the data part essentially as reliable as the whole rest of the system, as it's all just board swith some chips on.

so, from a physical standpoint, they're as reliable as anything else in your computer. and so far, most computers don't just randomly get damages in their chips or such over the years. they just work.



so while yes, it doesn't guarantee anything, it guarantees one thing: the disk is nothing special anymore, just another part of your whole system (like in cellphones since day one, f.e.). if that's not reliable, then what is?


of course, the typical issues still apply: you have to do backups

 

davepermen,

Again, I agree - much, much, much more 'dependable' - reliable? I don't know.

However, speaking of getting random damage - its funny you mention this...

Have you seen this post?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5560473#post5560473

 

no. but that's the typical thing: a lonely happening with maybe billions of processors daily in use world wide.

still, can happen, of course.



how do you define reliable? about long term trust? or about trust in general? i know that a laptop with an ssd in has much less possibilities to fail, much less 'attack vectors'. so yes, they are more reliable, much more.

we don't know yet if they are fabricated right to survive years, but you never know that with anything you buy. if you buy a core i5 now, no one can prove that it will stay alive for years. it's a new product, too. then again, no one would fair that it could fail.


i don't care about firmware issues and possible slowdowns and such overblown stories when talking about reliable. that's a software only thing, which doesn't change anything about the disk per se. (if the bugs get fixed, obviously)

 

Reliability depends on the manufacturer...

And whoever said he doesn't know what we do with out laptops...
I recently used my laptop on a train in the UK... that table vibrates from the diesel engine... a SSD is better here.

But apart from robustness - SSDs are faster than HDDs.