How reliable are SSDs?

My brother works for a company and says he is constantly replacing these and they he often sees brand new SSD on PCs/Servers/Laptops etc fail often within 6 months. What do you guys think?

He deals with all manufactures and companies and has said he is constantly replacing them because they are failing or wearing themselves out.

What do you guys think?

 

heavily depends on the SSD model. some are very unreliable. others are much more reliable then most HDD's.

wearing has nothing to do with reliability. people should be aware of the MTBF of the SSD they use.
it's like you buy a car and drive 500.000miles and expect it to be as reliable as it was when it was new.

 

SSDs are at the very least just as reliable as mechanical HDDs, but typically are more so than the older technology. Some of the most reliable drives (like Intel) have extremely low failure rates (~0.5%), whereas one of the most unreliable SSD makers (OCZ) has a failure rate of nearly 4%. IIRC, mechanical drives sit at around 2.5% to 3%.

As _-_-_-_ said, buyers should be aware of the MTBF, as well as the controller type (Sandforce doesn't have a stellar history, for example).

Some reading:

Investigation: Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive? : SSD Reliability: Is Your Data Really Safe?

 

Posted this in another thread:
I know it's in French, but there's the return rates from e-tailers in France concerning SSDs.Note that Samsung isn't in the bunch. Note that return does not equal failure rates, but it should be pretty close.

SSD - Les taux de retour des composants (6) - HardWare.fr

HDDs:

So um yeah it depends on the manufacturer, but not worse at failures than most HDDs.

 

Well, not sure what type or brand. On HP website i was going to get the envy 15T 3200 and i chose the options for ssd but gave no brand. My brother was sharply against it.

Not sure what brand but was hoping somebody new? Whats the benefit beside speed of ssd? How do you notice the performence from it?

 

it's night and day. go see some videos about the differences on youtube.
imo don't get the SSD as an option specially if you don't known what model it is.
also you would probably pay much more then buying it somewhere else.
get a samsung 830 or crucial m4 or an intel one.

 

I need to stop reading this section as its making me more and more worried about my OCZ nocti purchase...

 

OCZ has higher failure rates, but that doesn't mean that they are sky high. See my above posts, those are return rates, not failure rates. You can assume failure rates are close to that though. Even with OCZ, your chances of getting a bad drive aren't that high. Also remember that not all OCZ drives are prone to high failure rates, but they do have models that tend to give problems. I haven't seen anything devastating about the Nocti though.

By the way, those stats are from May 2012, i would say the increase in returns to Intel is due to the small minority still getting SandForce induced BSODs. Too bad we have the rates for only 4 manufacturers though. It's the most recent data i could find on short notice.

 

Oh thanks guys.
I am not sure what the Evny 15T 3200 SSD model is. I don't want junk so I'll stick to the mechanical side for now. Thanks again.

 

the envys usually have the newer intel ones. i forget specific models tho. i would recommend u do an aftermarket upgrade tho cause hp is over charging quite a bit

 

The only reason your brother has to worry is because it's the miscellaneous unknown SSD's which you need to look out for. It's always better (and ALWAYS cheaper) to just get the smallest HDD & RAM options when purchasing a laptop then upgrading them aftermarket yourself. That way you know exactly what you're getting, you have quality parts, and sometimes you can save over 50%.

Samsung and Crucial SSD's are extremely fast and reliable, but if he's in a business environment he should only be using Intel.

 

I used to agree with you on that but it seems HDD done by Dell would have been cheaper, but sadly I went full tilt on other stuff instead. I actually could be spending a lot more on a 750gb drive as I could have gotten one for $100 from Dell.

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the only reason why it seams cheaper is because they don«'t sell it without an hdd. you are already buying it. ofc the upgrade to other HDD is cheap but it would be much cheaper if you could buy it without an HDD and buy one somewhere else.
ofc if you don't have that option it's sometimes better to buy it as an upgrade from dell.
same with other components like cpu gpu ram etc.

 

Yeah I'm not terribly worried.

Hindsight, but then again 9/10 times the HDD and ram are easily cheaper after market. I know the ram was much cheaper from newegg vs Dell. Oh well I was well past my cap when I bought it and it runs great so no complaints.

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