"How Reliable are SSDs?"
 

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-reliable-are-ssds/

"What’s not to love about solid state drives (SSDs)? They are faster
than conventional hard disk drives (HDDs), more compact, have no moving
parts, are immune to magnetic fields, and can withstand more shocks and
vibration than conventional magnetic platter disks. And, they are
becoming available in larger and larger capacities while their cost
comes down."

"We’re now seeing SSDs with capacities that used to be reserved for HDDs
and at prices that no longer make our eyes water. 500 GB SSDs are now
affordable (under $100), and 1 TB drives are reasonably priced ($100 to
$150). Even 2 TB SSDs fall into a budget range for putting together a
good performance desktop system ($300 to $400)."

"The bottom line question is: do SSD drives fail? Of course they do, as
do all drives eventually. The important questions we really need to be
asking are 1) do they fail faster than HDDs, and 2) how long can we
reasonably expect them to last?"

Lynn

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
 

On 2/21/19 3:19 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
1) do they fail faster than HDDs,

It depends on the workload.

SSDs are write sensitive. So anything that writes a lot of data will
cause them to fail faster.

Most SSDs are rated in how many times a day they can have the entire
drive capacity written. Some drives are a fraction, some are single
digit multiples. I don't think I've seen any that are two digit multiples.

2) how long can we reasonably expect them to last?"

Again, it depends on the workload.

You should also be aware of the failure mode. Some drives fail such
that they become read only. Others fail and become a brick. The former
allows you to copy data off. The latter … well I hope you had good backups.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
 

On Thu, 21 Feb 2019 16:19:12 -0600, Lynn McGuire
wrote:

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-reliable-are-ssds/

"What’s not to love about solid state drives (SSDs)? They are faster
than conventional hard disk drives (HDDs), more compact, have no moving
parts, are immune to magnetic fields, and can withstand more shocks and
vibration than conventional magnetic platter disks. And, they are
becoming available in larger and larger capacities while their cost
comes down."

"We’re now seeing SSDs with capacities that used to be reserved for HDDs
and at prices that no longer make our eyes water. 500 GB SSDs are now
affordable (under $100), and 1 TB drives are reasonably priced ($100 to
$150). Even 2 TB SSDs fall into a budget range for putting together a
good performance desktop system ($300 to $400)."

"The bottom line question is: do SSD drives fail? Of course they do, as
do all drives eventually. The important questions we really need to be
asking are 1) do they fail faster than HDDs, and 2) how long can we
reasonably expect them to last?"

Good article, but they could have added one more paragraph to deal with
the questions and differences around:
2.5" SATA SSDs
SATA m.2
NVMe/PCIe m.2

Maybe there will be a follow-up article at some point.

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
 

On Thu, 21 Feb 2019 18:31:00 -0700, Grant Taylor
wrote:

On 2/21/19 3:19 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
1) do they fail faster than HDDs,

It depends on the workload.

SSDs are write sensitive. So anything that writes a lot of data will
cause them to fail faster.

Most SSDs are rated in how many times a day they can have the entire
drive capacity written. Some drives are a fraction, some are single
digit multiples. I don't think I've seen any that are two digit multiples.

I've never seen an SSD rated that way. I've seen TBW and "years" (the
latter for warranty purposes), but never what you described. Is there a
specific brand that describes 'life' that way? You said 'most', but I
assume it's only one brand.

2) how long can we reasonably expect them to last?"

Again, it depends on the workload.

Well, everyone agrees that writing is more destructive than reading, so
that's why SSD manufacturers provide a TBW rating, total terabytes
written. The actual warranty can be written in such a way as to say that
the drive is warranted until you reach the TBW or the years, whichever
comes first.

You should also be aware of the failure mode. Some drives fail such
that they become read only. Others fail and become a brick. The former
allows you to copy data off. The latter … well I hope you had good backups.

Backups are always a good idea. That didn't go away with SSDs.

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
 

On 2/21/19 8:59 PM, Mark Perkins wrote:
I've never seen an SSD rated that way. I've seen TBW and "years" (the
latter for warranty purposes), but never what you described. Is there
a specific brand that describes 'life' that way? You said 'most', but
I assume it's only one brand.

Drive Writes Per Day.

Link - Speeds, Feeds and Needs – Understanding SSD Endurance
- https://blog.westerndigital.com/ssd-...s-feeds-needs/

§ The SSD Endurance Equation



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
 

On Thu, 21 Feb 2019 21:08:48 -0700, Grant Taylor
wrote:

On 2/21/19 8:59 PM, Mark Perkins wrote:
I've never seen an SSD rated that way. I've seen TBW and "years" (the
latter for warranty purposes), but never what you described. Is there
a specific brand that describes 'life' that way? You said 'most', but
I assume it's only one brand.

Drive Writes Per Day.

Link - Speeds, Feeds and Needs – Understanding SSD Endurance
- https://blog.westerndigital.com/ssd-...s-feeds-needs/

§ The SSD Endurance Equation

Ugh! So it's a [WD] blog where the guy cautions *against* using 'drive
writes per day' because it's *not* a good metric for measuring drive
endurance, due to the fact that it doesn't give apples to apples
comparisons across drive capacities. He then goes on to say that TBW is
a better metric, with which I (and virtually everyone else) agree.

The question remains: is there an SSD manufacturer that uses 'drive
writes per day' in their marketing materials to help customers figure
out the endurance properties of their product? So far, no.

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
 

On 2/21/19 10:50 PM, Mark Perkins wrote:
Ugh! So it's a [WD] blog where the guy cautions *against* using 'drive
writes per day' because it's *not* a good metric for measuring drive
endurance, due to the fact that it doesn't give apples to apples
comparisons across drive capacities. He then goes on to say that TBW is
a better metric, with which I (and virtually everyone else) agree.

That's just the first thing I came across in a quick search while tired
brain dead.

The question remains: is there an SSD manufacturer that uses 'drive
writes per day' in their marketing materials to help customers figure
out the endurance properties of their product? So far, no.

I don't know about drive manufactures. But I do know that writes per
day is the unit of measure that all of my colleagues and all of the
vendors that we've been talking to for enterprise drives over the last
18 months. Vendors such as:

· Cisco
· HP
· Dell
· Supermicro
· Other white box vendors

As I write that list I wonder if maybe it's server manufacturers /
vendors / OEMs that use drive writes per day and not actual drive
manufacturers.

I'm not saying that drive writes per day is proper, just that I've seen
it used a LOT more than total bytes written.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
 

My 1st Transcend 370s 64gb lasted fr 11-15 to 3-17, 2nd unit ( warranty claim ) lasted fr 4-17 to 3-19, even with a big heatsink below its aluminium base plate.
Every installation of Windows ( on different parts of storage area ) lasted fr 3 days to 4 mth maximum.

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
 

My Apacer AS340 120 gb is lousy too : bought in 3-17, longest usable time for Win 8 installed ( @ front of storage*area ) was just 6 mth. I had to install Win 8 on different parts of * to try find a more durable location : some parts lasted just 5 days, now I use a location 82 gb from front ( = left side of Win 8 Disc Management chart ), I had to repair this partition 20x since 15-6-18 but it's still usable.
6 data files stored turned bad, & I had to re-enter data, wasted ~4 hr.
I put silver paste on its base plate & a ( AMD, Barton ) hsink ( with a fan ) below plate : hsink will warm up a bit if no fan cools hsink, this fact proves that heat can be extracted from a plastic plate too.

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
 

Since Oct'19 I notice my Apacer SSD has fewer troubles ( unbootable unless repaired by either DVD or another SSD's Windows ), after I added cooling to mboard components : (i) fit a 3mm thick hsink onto cpu socket's resistors (ii) fit a 7mm long hsink to bottom of north bridge (iii) fit a AM2 hsink ( 2ndary ) onto north bridge's primary hsink ( silicone @ contact area ) (iv) reduce voltage to (AM3) cpu by 0.175 v ( cpu was too hot for this voltage without this 3mm hsink fitted ), north bridge by 0.175 v too, Adata DDR3 ram ( with hsink added ) to 1.36 v ( @ CL11, no tighter @ this voltage ). I presume south bridge too became cooler ( ; gets less heat fr cpu & n-bridge & ram ).
Now the same space holding Win 8 ( used to last 6 mth max, since 4-18 ) has lasted 8 mth already !

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
 

On 21/02/2019 5:19 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
"How Reliable are SSDs?"
Â*Â*Â* https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-reliable-are-ssds/

I used to also think SSD's are more reliable than HDD's, but recently
I've had nothing but trouble with a particular brand of SSD, the Adata
SU630 series is absolutely crap. I've already had to return 3 of them,
and I'm getting ready to return my 4th. Thank god I got good backups!
They are good about exchanging their products, but I doubt that they've
even noticed that I've returned 4 of their products already under
warranty. They don't even ask questions, just take your RMA order. They
must be using the worst Flashram in the world, from the reject pile of
every manufacturer around. I've had enough, and I'm going to replace
with a WD SSD now, but I will get the latest replacement and probably
put it into an external case for occasional large storage requirements
that don't need to be on all of the time.

Yousuf Khan

--
Sent from Giganews on Thunderbird on my Toshiba laptop

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
 

Yousuf Khan wrote:

Lynn McGuire wrote:

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-reliable-are-ssds/

I used to also think SSD's are more reliable than HDD's, but recently
I've had nothing but trouble with a particular brand of SSD, the Adata
SU630 series is absolutely crap. I've already had to return 3 of them,
and I'm getting ready to return my 4th. Thank god I got good backups!
They are good about exchanging their products, but I doubt that they've
even noticed that I've returned 4 of their products already under
warranty. They don't even ask questions, just take your RMA order. They
must be using the worst Flashram in the world, from the reject pile of
every manufacturer around. I've had enough, and I'm going to replace
with a WD SSD now, but I will get the latest replacement and probably
put it into an external case for occasional large storage requirements
that don't need to be on all of the time.

I was expecting the article to provide some actual statistics,
especially since the author was Backblaze. Instead it was just a bunch
of general information with no statistics at all. Pretty useless since
it never does address how reliable are SSDs as experienced from actual
use in their data centers.

However, Backblaze doesn't use SSDs for storage of customer data, just
for a few boot drives or as frontend servers, like database servers.
They don't have many to provide any statistics, so they won't have any
statistics to report. Yet that article is just generalized fluff about
SSDs versus HDDs. You cannot draw many conclusions from it, and nothing
substantial regarding reliability.

If you want to increase the lifespan (aka endurance) of an SSD, increase
its overprovisioning. That allocates more reserved space to accomodate
failed memory blocks that will happen eventually. You lose some
capacity for the unallocated space on the SSD for more (well, any)
overprovisioning, but if you're getting tight on space (and aren't
collecting tons of garbage files or data that could be stored elsewhere
like on a cheaper HDD) then you really should get higher or more drives.

Most consumers look at the marketing data, like capacity. Important is
the read and write speed (with writes being slower than reads because of
the procedure to do writes). I see the same for most buyers of USB
thumb flash drives: they go for capacity without ever investigating how
fast (or how slow) they are, but then many makers don't publish those
specs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q15wN8JC2L4
https://www.seagate.com/tech-insight...its-master-ti/
https://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/overprovisioning

I think the typical overprovisioning is 10% of the rated capacity of the
SSD, but I think the amount varies by capacity with 10% used for all
consumer-grade drives over some threshold in capacity. The server-grade
SSDs usually have 20% overprovisioning, and that's what I use, too,
although my SSDs don't get anywhere the volume of writes that business
use would encounter.

I've stuck with Samsung for SSDs: both as encased drives for internal
use connected to power and SATA cables from the motherboard (Samsung 850
EVO 2.5" 250 GB SATA-3, bought April 2016) used in my prior Win7 box,
and for m.2 drives into sockets on the mobo (Samsung 970 Pro M.2/2280 1
TB Gen3 NVMe PCI 2-bit MLC, bought April 2019) used in my latest build
(Win10). Never had any problems with those. I might use Crucial (who
doesn't make anything, but has good specs with the actual plants) or
Crucial (their high end products).

"How Reliable are SSDs?"
 

On 05/04/2020 2:50 AM, VanguardLH wrote:
I was expecting the article to provide some actual statistics,
especially since the author was Backblaze. Instead it was just a bunch
of general information with no statistics at all. Pretty useless since
it never does address how reliable are SSDs as experienced from actual
use in their data centers.

However, Backblaze doesn't use SSDs for storage of customer data, just
for a few boot drives or as frontend servers, like database servers.
They don't have many to provide any statistics, so they won't have any
statistics to report. Yet that article is just generalized fluff about
SSDs versus HDDs. You cannot draw many conclusions from it, and nothing
substantial regarding reliability.

Yeah, I agree, it's just an introductory piece on what an SSD is, and
that's all. Plenty of those articles already.

If you want to increase the lifespan (aka endurance) of an SSD, increase
its overprovisioning. That allocates more reserved space to accomodate
failed memory blocks that will happen eventually. You lose some
capacity for the unallocated space on the SSD for more (well, any)
overprovisioning, but if you're getting tight on space (and aren't
collecting tons of garbage files or data that could be stored elsewhere
like on a cheaper HDD) then you really should get higher or more drives.

What a really useful metric for SSD's would be is what is their proper
operating temperatures? They are much higher than HDD's, but how much
over are they? Each manufacturer seems to have its own ideas, and then
many of them don't even release that info. The aforementioned crap that
I've been having so much trouble with, the Adata SU600-series, seem to
overheat at in their 50's and 60's, and I'm finding that it's regularly
operating at the mid-50's! I don't officially know that their limit is
the 50's/60's, that's just what I've discovered over a couple of years
of returning them over and over again. Adata don't release their own
specs about this, probably because they know that most of their drives
regularly operate above this level, which would result in even more
returns when worried owners see it running that high.

Yousuf Khan

--
Sent from Giganews on Thunderbird on my Toshiba laptop