Long term reliability of SSDs

Ok so SSDs are the 'latest thing' as far as harddrives are concerned.

But it is said that SSDs have limited write rewrite cycles. How reliable are SSDs in the long term. How long can they last (years wise) before they screw up

Does that mean we shouldn't be 'installing and uninstalling' programs as much cause it basically keeps writing and rewriting memory until the performance degrades.

 

yes, they have limited cycles however that should be "too many."

Some SSD manufacturers give a MTBF of 3 million hours.

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as in its negligible?

I cant find anyone slapping a time on how long they are estimated to survive on normal or extesive computer usage and not stated in a conservative manner like battery life also. in terms of years how long are we looking at.

I hear they can only do maybe 1000 cycle rewrites. that sounds very low to me. Of ocurs they have stuff where they don't rewrite unnecessarily but still.

 

The problem with Solid-State Drives, their low long-term reliability.

I hope that newer technologies fix that issue.

 

how bad are we talking about. cause lets face it, HDD is pretty bad in itself sometimes.

 

Worse than Mechanical Hard Drives.

 

Which is what?

Ive known and had HDDs fail in less than 2 years. What are we talking about here for the SDD.

also is there good practices to maximize the life of SDDs

 

Well, it depends on the use that you give to the disk, for example, if you are using programs that access to the hard drive all the time, the cycles will stack up and end your drive's life shorterly.

Disabling Cache on Web Browsers, Games, etc... is a good practice.

 

They have some clever load-balancing algorithms in the firmware of SSDs. For example if you read/modify/write a certain piece of data several times, the firmware moves the location of the data so that it will cause a balanced delete/write cycles all over the SSD.

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Even still, the Solid-State Drive will give up soon or late.

 

yea. im interested in knowing the intrinsic limit.

thats like moving an untrained dog into another room of the house so they shh- there instead of in the same place and room but sooner or later all the carpet in the entire house is full of dog shh- if you dont clean up. and here you can't for the ssd.

i cant find a figure on this. all i've read so far is - note: 'marketing manager' from samsung saying its reliable and then conveniently moves 'on to other news.. we're releasing...'. I wana know like are we talking 2 years or what?

 

I've heard 10,000 rewrite cycles for current generation MLC memory, and 100,000 for current generation SLC memory.

 

Thanks for the info, TehSuigi.

 

what does that mean for time though. cause the software can be doing many cycles of rewrites so while 100k cycles is better than 10k, it doesnt put into perspective much. as a consumer i'm wondering how long this drive can survive in terms of years. everyone admits they are worse than HDD in LT reliability. I've seen some HDD die out in less than 2 years. This sounds like it can be bad news for SSD?

 

I am not sure, sorry, man.

Bad News, indeed.

 

i need to know if i want ssd or not cause i intend to use it for computational calculations for simulations which will unquestionably involve many computation calculations and likely many many rewrite cycles. If SSD is not reliable i cant get it.

anyone know more about this?

also, how good are the samsung drives, are the MLC or SLC

 

I'd recommend you to buy 2-3 7,200 RPM Hard Drives, and do RAID-1 or RAID-5 on them, the performance will be higher than if no RAID was present, and the mirroring of those both RAID States will prove useful in case of System Failure.

 

I've heard that SSDs, even with the read-write cycle limitations (which is present on all flash memory), will last longer than a conventional hard drive, with typical usage.

The problem is, not enough people have had SSDs long enough to know the average lifespan of them as compared to mechanical HDDs.

Most laptops do not support multiple hard drives, and most that do, do not support RAID. On a desktop though, that is a good idea to keep data safe.

 

cant do permanent RAID with a laptop? they usually only have 1 long term slot for HDs.

 

Is there a source?

The only reaffriming talk given on SSDs are from company note: _marketing_ staff saying they are reliable.

Also even if its true in terms of years they may be able to (a big maybe) last longer than normal HDD for normal tasks, that probably doesnt count in people who do computational intensive simulations and stuff. cause those apps basically do matrix crunching all day and its just all repetitive data write rewrite. while, your normal user probably just surfs the web, writes a few papers. in such a way maybe the mechanical wear of HDD dies first before your SSD write rewrite limit. So it seems maybe ppl who do simulation work is to the contrary for benefits in terms of SSD and HDD?

 

My laptop does, I have three 7,200 RPM 200 GB hard drives in RAID-0. I could do 0, 1 or 5.

You can, I have ran off this RAID Array for 7 months already. 8% Fragmentation in 7 Months.

 

well then it depends what laptop you have.

most laptops only have one slot for a perm HD. some offer the option of you sacrificing the optical bay for a 2nd HD. But thats very unproductive also.

is it possible to do RAID with a SSD and HDD?

also if say the SSD dies, can you boot the comp with the HDD

 

True.

No, sadly, not even with different brand / and / or model Solid-State Drives, the drivers have to be exactly the same for RAID to work.

 

hmm that sucks, seems like unless they fix the SSD reliability at the intrinsic level no fancy setup scheme will fix the main problem..

but didt they say server comps should be using SSDs. if they are so unreliable then its stupid cause a server computer basically sits there crunching data

 

Exactly, the problem lies within the first principles of Flash Memory.

I will explain it easily:

Company Switches To SSD's -> Drives Suffer An Early Death -> Company Has To Buy More SSD's -> SSD Maker gets more profit.

It is business, my friend.

 

well if they can last more than say 6 years of moderate to highly intensive writes and rewrites then I can accept it.

but flash used to be just those memory sticks or maybe put into mp3 players and stuff. that kinda stuff is cheaper, hold less important data and frankly don't require as many write and rewrite operatings a proper computer will.

how long has SSDs been used in the computer scene and have anyone ever had a dead harddrive? but its still redundant to my ultimate question of how reliable they are for computationally intensive tasts or very repetitive tasks like what servers sit there doing all day long

 

If only manufacturers would reveal actual data on how long they last... I wonder, why are they so hideous about it?

Exactly, it is not made to store sensitive, long-term data, but someone thought that it was a snappy idea to make it into a hard drive.

They have worked for long, but, depending on the task, they will fail, eventually.

 

so far no one has own an SSD long enough for to see if it lasts for years. At best maybe 2 years and counting, up to this point. My SSDs (old Jmicron crap) are still going strong even with constant writes as a scratch disk for my photoshop work. I remember seeing someone posting about it in the SSD thread about it able to last about 5 years, which most people would be changing their HDDs as well. Just think of it as a lot faster and more expensive HDDs.

 

Thanks for the feedback data, TMC, only time will tell, I guess.

 

More like: company switches to SSD's (will not happen now as it is cost prohibitive anyway) --> drives die --> company will not use that brand of SSD any longer.

To a certain point, that is true - replacement brings more business. But, if a customer has to keep replacing any item, say, a car, that customer will not buy that product any more, and will turn to more reliable alternatives. That is exactly what was happening with American automobiles in the 70's and 80's, and is part of the reason why reliable Japanese automobiles are increasingly dominant in the U.S. Even now, when certain American automobiles may even be more reliable than foriegn counterparts, consumers avoid them like the plague because of their past reputation.

In short, that somewhat cynical viewpoint is true only to a very limited extent, and overall, it is in a company's best interest to make reliable products.

But back on topic:

Memory sticks are far easier to make, because
1.- they do not sustain as many read write cycles, as you mentioned
2.- are far slower than SSDs
3.- are in much smaller capacities than most SSDs

SSD technology is still in the infant stages of adoption, so until prices fall and more consumers buy these drives, we will not know exactly how reliable they are.

But keep in mind that hard drives are not that reliable either, it's common for them to fail after 5 years of good use. The only thing they have going for them is that they are cheap to replace.

 

You are right.

My grandfather used to say that things are made to break up eventually because, if no T.V ever broke, then T.V Technicians would have no jobs, for example, hehe.

Anyway, I agree that SSD's price should go down by a large margin, otherwise, they won't earn enough money and much less customers will have SSD's.

 

ok, although you can never trust this stuff but i did find this article:

http://www.e-disk.com/article_misconceptions_ssd_longevity.html

but then the calculations were based on assumptions of very good quality flash memory. theyre assuming 2 million cycles endurance. As someone pointed out and i've also checked, most SSDs being sold right now on laptops (like the samsung) run at 100k cycles. theres also a calculation based on a lower quality flash memory with lower life, but its all crap anyway. Realistically one should be expecting worst case scenario.

Also, what would happen then when you put this very moderate reliable HD into very computationally intensive tasks that involve many writes and rewrites like matrix crunching.

 

Thanks for posting.

Exactly, havoc and disaster would happen, eventually, SSD technology still has a long way to go before it becomes reliable and cheap enough to mainstream.

 

yea true. I've personally owned some horrendous desktop HDDs that have died after 2 years of usage. On the whole most last around 5-6 years like you said. I can understandably accept say 5-6 years of reliability (for todays standard. It is acceptable up until the point of at least when people will naturally be replacing their computers. I cannot accept it if it will die before such time as when the consumer naturally decides to replace their computers. Effectively that becomes the bottleneck of that entire computer in terms of reliability.

 

yea. effectively i guess these new products are being field tested as we speak like all new products

 

That explains it, I hope that the newer SSD's have better reliability, and someday, surpass the Mechanical Hard Drives on Price, Reliability and Density.

 

Man, lot of funny posts in this thread. Here's my experience with SSD's.

1. HDD failure is common and cases of HDD failure can be found at any forum.
2. I've used SSD's for 8 years on a government computers and have never seen or heard of a single failure.
3. The difference in reliability is night and day between HHD's and SSD's. HDD failure is not uncommon where SSD failure is very uncommon.

 

Thanks for clarifying on that, two user feedback posts, this thread is progressing.

 

where did you pull this blind data out of? I can equally find sites stating the contrary to what you stated, specifically of consumer grade SSDs dieing after 1 year of usage. its basically like all things on the net. its your word versus his. both are online without facts to prove.

anyway if it is true what you are saying the SSDs you used were probably higher quality SLC variant. most cosnumer SSDs in laptops being sold today such as the popular samsung SSDs are MLCs.

anyway like the article i quoted before, they quoted papers that calculated a theoretical lifetime of 50 yearsish. again it depends on how you use it. Im not worried for storing the odd word document. I'm worried about running simulations and matrix crunching that demand multiple continuous writes and rewrites on consumer grade SSDs. Just imagine the horror of potential damage to the SSD lifetime under an inefficient gaussian elimination algorithm of a large matrix. On a normal HD you can get away with inefficient programming. It just takes more time to solve. Now you'd have to worry youre killing your hardware

 

That is true, the major-scale feedback and users say that the mainstream SSD's will suffer an early death.

Very nice, SLC and MLC are pretty much different when it comes to reliability, nice find.

I can only imagine... that must be very, very hard drive heavy.

 

is it a wise move to turn off windows system retore on a comp using SSDs to hopefully squeeze an extra drop of life from it

 

That is right, System Restore uses a lot of resources and hard drive space to make its backups, and does it continuously and thoroughly.

 

This is correct. SSDs are more reliable than HDDs by an order of magnitude or more.

One thing to always keep in mind is that a hard drive is at heart a mechanical device: it consists of a spinning disk and an arm which can move across this disk (newer ones have more platters, but the basics remain the same). As such, it suffers from all of the problems typically associated with precise mechanical devices: friction between parts and the associated wear and tear, misalignment, sensitivity to acceleration, etc. The days of all such devices are numbered and not only that, but it is often not possible to accurately predict exactly when it will die. There exist some metrics for doing so (e.g. S.M.A.R.T.), but these only work some of the time and if your drive fails unexpectedly, good luck getting your data back (it is possible, but extremely expensive).

SSDs are an entirely different animal -- they're electronic and do not care about acceleration (see why the military likes them and has been using them for years?). They do have the issue of limited numbers of writes per, but this has largely been worked around by spreading the writes between various cells. Furthermore, unlike an HDD, an SSD can say "You have exceeded the number of writes I am rated for. It's time to replace me." Thus, you won't unexpectedly lose your data (which is generally a whole lot more valuable than the hardware) because of the write issue.

There are some problems with consumer SSDs -- the price per GB is still quite high and the cheaper stuff still has lousy controllers -- but reliability is not one of them.

I don't think you understand how this works. Whether with HDD or SSD, calculations of that nature are done in RAM and only the result is written to storage at the end. Remember, RAM access time is measured in nanoseconds (less than 100ns with modern RAM) while HDD access time is measured milliseconds. You do not want to be accessing storage while doing serious computing -- the hit in performance this causes is usually at least a factor of 10,000 and can range up into the millions.

 

If you buy an ssd now, by the time it dies, cheaper/better ones will be out. And don't forget when an ssd "dies", no data is destroyed, unlike mechanical drives. There are so many benefits to ssd, the only reason to pick a regular hard drive is for price/storage.

 

I keep seeing the number of write cycles and eventual death of SSD's repeated again and again as a major drawback to SSD's.

Sorry, I just don't see it. I've used ssd's for years and have never seen or heard of a failure from anyone first hand.

Has anyone here ever had a SSD fail? They've been on the consumer market for several years now and in military applications for years longer. Has anyone here ever had a HDD fail?

Do HDD's last forever, and are they immune to failure? Nope. In fact, HDD issues/failures are one of the greatest sources of laptop problems.

With SSD's, a laoptop enjoys a much higher level of reliability. I've used them in military applications for many years and a higher degree of reliability is why they are used.

 

^^^ Soulja Boy Tell Um'

 

Check out the SSD thread, very rarely do you hear someone talking about a failed ssd

 

I think there is a huge misconception about general reliability of mechanical versus solid state devices. The former always considered as 'less' reliable. This goes across the board for memory, lasers, etc. I don't know if this blanket statement is valid. Solid state devices can have limited reliability themselves. For example they suffer from diffusion of dopants which leads to degradation of function over time. They are also temperature sensitive and sensitive to environmental electromagnetic fields.

Also your statement is not true. Depending on how you program simulations and in others simulation environments of a program, they may create a bunch of temp files in your hard drive space to store data temporarily. If you are say solving a huge matrix, they can just opt to update the array in the hard drive by directly writing on it instead of storing it in the physical memory of the RAM. Plus they need the RAM to do any intermittent solver operations that require memory and processing power. So they would store the solutions of a large matrix in harddrive and update it with write and rewrite.

 

you cant compare them to civilian grade products.

and that's because their concern for reliability is likely related to mechanical issues like shock. so the specifications is one that is good for this, and in this case SSDs are good.

There are other measures of reliability also. its dependent on what the user defines as their most important function.

If use of SSD is intended for say a static server or workstation doing repetitive tasks that keeps on writing and rewriting on memory, then the issues of mechanical shock etc is of little to no concern. the major concern for an ideal storage device here becomes focused on reliability for extended long term use with continuous write/rewrite. if thats the case, and being that SSDs have intrinsic limit before device degradation, it would be an area of concern. Magnetic storage suffers less long term reliability issues of extended write/rewrites

 

SSDs last long enough. long term reliability gets proven once "the time is over". they're too new to "prove they will survive". but from theory, all is fine. and so far, we don't get reports from the older ssd's (now 1.5years old) that they "stopped working" and quite some of them are used in hard server environments (database server). should give sign to the prove.

i've switched to all ssds half a year a go. no troubles so far.