SSD's slightly less reliable than Standard drives?

This is where WikkiLeaks really needs to go...

Solid State Drives No Better Than Others, Survey Says - PCWorld Business Center

 

Hahahahaha right

Perhaps they should think twice about comparing 2 technologies that have more than a decade of age difference?

Lets compare the rate of failure on hard drives that came out a few years after hard drives existed and were commercially available, then maybe we can have a real discussion here.

 

working on delivery is usually not taken to be the same as MTBF, where the comparison again favors SSDs.

 

tenchar...

 

"retured as non-functioning"...

Dead on arrival is different than failed after a year of use. Its the SSDs that are installed successfully, and run for more than a few weeks that really indicate the difference in reliability. DOAs are a fact of life.

 

Lol. I think you're barking up the wrong tree. They are comparing products one can buy in 2010. What is wrong with that?

What do you expect? You want them to use a time machine to find out this sort of data without having to actually wait to be able to collect it? It seems like you are getting overly upset over this data.

True, but we don't know how long these people used the products before they returned them or what the return policy of the retailer was.

 

So they even say in the article that it isn't the most reliable data, yet they still publish that garbage? What crack pipe were they smoking when they published that?

Plus half the morons who return stuff yet again couldn't tell a hotdog from a bottle of motor oil.

 

SSDs have a finite lifespan by design. Not just "when it breaks" like a mechanical HDD, but it will stop working after you use it a certain amount. I still have hard drives from 2002, when it's confirmed that SSDs will last that long then I'll think about using them.

 

Easy there At least the author published the disclaimer Define reliable data, lol.

No, WE will never know..eh?

 

The problem is already solved in the lab, but whether they will start selling SSDs that last as long as they could is a different matter. So of the very first light bulbs ever made are still functioning, and cars could easily be made to achieve 1million mile average lifespan, but none of the companies want to commit suicide and make them that way.

Current MLC technology is physically similar to SLC tech, but how they are utilized is different .. as SLC tech improves, so will MLC. Current SLCs are rated for 100,000 erase-rewrite cycles, and in MLC technology that comes out to 4 year averages (and maybe only two years if you use the disk to cache temporary volitile data). A few years ago they came up with a different SLC NAND that was rated for 10 times that lifespan, so MLCs could be made today that should last upwards of 40 years. Whether they will do that or not is a different issue.

 

Oh, i'm not upset, I just think its really funny when people go through such efforts to present "accurate" statistical data. in this case its so irrelevant that its almost like false logic.

what I'm saying is that is similar to comparing a widely used product to a the next version in prototype stages.

Of course hard drives are more reliable, they have been used in large quantities for almost 50 years! If manufacturers hadn't figured out how to make them as reliable as possible over that time, we would be pretty screwed wouldn't we?

Whereas with consumer grade solid state drives...? They are almost a niche thing right now, I doubt the manufacturers even care that they are failing because they know the only demand for them is people like us.

 

Go shake a traditional mechanical drive while it is reading/writing data and then talk to me about reliablity vs an SSD.

 

Yeah thats a totally different thing too! I was just talking about reliability in terms of manufacturing defect.

 

Well my anecdotal evidence doesn't mean anything but I'm 2/2 for my SSDs and I am planning to buy a G3 Intel SSD for my Latitude 13.

And I have seen people shake portable hard drives while it is read/writing so it is a valid reason.

 

more like 25 years, the worlds FIRST hard drive was 54 years ago and did not become extremly common in home computers until the early/mid 80's. we had other methods of mass storage before then. My first HDD was a 5MB MFM type drive in 1982 and was the size of 2 DVD drives stacked on top of each other and had its own controller board.

drive history and sizes from wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive#Form_factors

 

It seems that the only thing this study is comparing is out of the box under warranty failure return rates, not Hard drive failure rates which is different.

As far as defective electronics go 10% is considered the standard and those numbers while inaccurate are much lower than that, so whats their problem.

A dropped hard drive isnt the same as a defective return and an SSD is more likely to survive that.

 

The rated Reliability/MTBF of SSD's is equal to a 3.5" enterprise drive, which is about twice as much as a notebook hard drive.

The way MTBF is calculated is by running a large batch (thousands) of drives in a set amount of hours and counting the number of failed drives. So 15000 drives tested for 1000 hours and lets say 12 failed during the test.

15000 x 1000 / 12 = 1.2mill~ hours MTBF

Now if you plan to run it for 10 years non stop (87,600 hours), theres a 73% probability that it will operate without failure during that period.

Im not sure if that takes in account the cycle wear on SSD's when they do the testing.

 

MTBF does not give you any indication of how long a single drive should last. Its lifespan will always be far less than the rated MTBF. MTBF is only accurate for determining losses with a large (statistically) number of drives. When you have a large number of drives, the drives are still going to be fairly new with low amounts of use when the MTBF is reached. It would be very unlikely for the average lifespan of the single drive to be the same as the aggregate age of the large number of drives when it experiences a loss.

 

This is why I really like having my SSD in my M11x. I no longer feel concerned when I don't place it down on a hard surface gently.

It's a good point although it's more durability than reliability, which should still definitely be considered depending on what type of machine it will be used in. I still have a 500GB 5400RPM mechanical in my M15x, but that machine isn't moved around as much as the M11x.

 

Of course not thats why its called mean time, but theres no way for manufacturers to rate how each single drive will last thats why it has to be done as a mass statistic. A single drive could last a decade before it bites the dust.

Btw the 1000 hours i gave is just an example, some manufacturers do it for longer than that.

 

Well you shouldn't be slamming your notebook down, BUT accidents do happen sometimes. That could cost you your 50 page college thesis you spent 3 months writing..

 

Yes, but you used the MTBF to estimate the lifespan of a single drive, but MTBF cannot be used for that at all. The true average lifespan of a single drive will always be far, far less than the MTBF.

That's why you back stuff up and are not a complete idiot about invaluable files.

 

Dude I can tell you 80% of customers I deal with have no/do not know how to backup data. Now we here on forums are power users, and I don't backup data because 90% of my computers are for gaming.

 

MTBF isnt used to calculate lifespan, its used to calculate failure. No drive is gonna last 1.2million hours.

The calculation i did wasnt meant for a single drive. The 73% probability is for that batch of drives tested. A rough idea at most for a single drive.

80% of people think RAID1 is a backup, but its not.

 

Well sure, people use software RAID and it gives a false sense of security. If you are serious about RAID you get a 250-300 dollar RAID card.

Personally I would buy like 2-3 additional hard drives and keep sensitive data on them and store it until I absolutely need them.

 

Nope, RAID1 is not backup, its a mirror/redundancy for a drive failure.

If Disk1 gets demolished by virus, deletion or whatever. Say goodbye to the Disk2 mirror as well.

If you keep it on an external drive instead, then you have a backup

 

Backup does not require a power user. Windows (well Vista and 7 at least) have a decent backup utility included. As cheap as external hard drives and flash drives are these days there's no reason for anyone not to have their critical files backed up. Heck, even copy/paste is better than nothing, and any user knows how to do that.

I mean there are certain instances where it's somewhat unavoidable. Like my niece who spent two hours typing a term paper on school computers, saved to her USB thumb drive and yanked it out before it was done, and all was lost, but didn't find out until she got home.

But even then, I email my stuff to myself, use dropbox, or some other duplicate means if its critical data.

 

I never said RAID 1 was backup. In a sense if EVERYTHING is perfectly fine with Drive 1 but suddenly it fails, then you have a mirror image of the exact drive, not exactly a backup but in a sense a backup. I like Apple's idea of Time Machine in case you screw something up, only problem is I've seen Time Machine having backups of corrupt data/files when the HDD is starting to fail..

For me a backup is using Unstoppable Copier and copying everything onto an external or another internal drive, verifying data integrity and storing it away for safe keeping, and only using it to update certain files or using it if a disaster happens.

 

hm i take your laptop, and throw it onto the floor while booting.

you still say they're the same?

all devices can fail, all have expected lifetimes. but there's a difference: ssds have less physical attack vectors: moving doesn't bother them.

so far all hdds that died on me died because of movement. none of my soon 10 ssds died at all. even while shaking them around while running.

 

Dave!

I have a feeling that you will find a way to kill anything?

WHO said the same? Yea, kill the messenger