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Reliability of PC Flash SSDs?
An anonymous reader writes "SATA and IDE flash solid-state disks are all the rage these days — faster and, allegedly, more reliable than traditional spinning-rust disks. My organization dipped its toe in the flash-disk waters, buying a handful for some PC and Linux boxes. Out of 8 drives from various manufacturers, 3 have failed in the space of four months! Some are reporting bad blocks, others just crapped out and stopped responding entirely. (And no, this isn't a wear-leveling issue, nor were these machines in particularly harsh environmental conditions, nor were all failed drives from the same manufacturer.) So I ask you, the readers of Slashdot: what has your experience been like with basic, consumer-grade SATA or IDE flash drives? Are they failing for you too, or are we just unlucky? It's starting to remind me of the claims about long-lifetime compact fluorescent light bulbs that, in reality, have turned out to be BS!"
Make sure you turn of the scheduler for defragging in Windows or whatever OS you are using. Defragging those types of drives will effectively kill them.
Hi, I was the guy that posted the original question. Thanks for your response. I didn't give details simply due to space constraints. The drives were:
1. FHM16GF25H = Super Talent MasterDrive 16GB under linux
2. Transcend TS32GSSD25-M under Windows/XP
3. Patriot Warp v2 32GB under Ubuntu 8.04 with ext3
The machines were not super heavily loaded (i.e., no compiles 24/7), and we did the "obvious" things like turning off atime updates to the filesystems, etc.
you mean the real world support for TRIM in Windows 7 and supported in Indilinx and Intel controllers?
the one that has been recently tested out on Anandtech and shown to have very positive results?
oh yeah, that one.
Hi, I was the guy that posted the original question. Thanks for your response. I didn't give details simply due to space constraints. The drives were:
1. FHM16GF25H = Super Talent MasterDrive 16GB under linux
2. Transcend TS32GSSD25-M under Windows/XP
3. Patriot Warp v2 32GB under Ubuntu 8.04 with ext3
The machines were not super heavily loaded (i.e., no compiles 24/7), and we did the "obvious" things like turning off atime updates to the filesystems, etc.
I'd be more looking at the fact that all of those are JMicron based controller drives and are shitty examples of SSD's in the first place.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=17
Linus updated his SSD post 5 months later and in the follow-up mentioned, among other things, an AnandTech article he liked at least parts of.
I come here for the love
Thank you. The brands/models were the critical piece of information.
You're probably aware that SSD's have been in the server space, at a very different price point, for a few years now, without any extraordinary reliability debacles. To some extent, this is a case of getting what you pay for. I did a moderate amount of research on SSD drives, relying especially on the independent review sites, and quickly eliminated all of the brands you described.
As is frequent in fairly new markets, there are a few smaller and less well-run companies trying to dive in, and their first customers get to beta test their v0.* and v1.* offerings.
The prevailing wisdom seemed to me (and to people like i.e. Torvalds) that Intel was far and away the top of the heap in terms of performance and reliability, and some drives based on a newer Samsung controller (i.e. OCZ Summit) were a perhaps credible alternative. Other brands were clearly struggling to even be in the game, with frequent firmware updates and outright debacles (i.e. Indilinux, Micron) and we're in the process of shaking out who will make it and who will not.
I have only fielded a few consumer-grade SSDs over about the same amount of time as you, but going with Intel's G1 and G2 MLC products has so far yielded zero failures.
If you are already in the market for an SSD, and you are ready to spend premium money for premium performance, you should go the whole distance and go with Intel, the current market leader. See also the latest news on these models.
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While nothing is ever a certaintly -- a tool for your OS that inspects SMART data from your drives' electronics would answer that question, at least from a trend perspective. I like smartmontools, but you may prefer something else, or it may not be applicable for your OS.
See Wikipedia for some background information on SMART, and what it can tell you.
I only use them on the outside garage fixtures that our neighborhood covenant requires that I leave on all night. (They're on a light-sensing switch.) Despite the promises, they manage to only last about a year or two.
There's your problem, light sensing switches (and dimmers) will absolutely destroy most CFLs. I'm surprised they lasted over a year. Your typical light sensing switch isn't equivalent to a regular light switch that flips on and off based on the amount of light.
There's a couple of problems with photosensor switches. First, around dusk and dawn it may flicker on and off, which shortens the life of CFLs (but not cold-cathode CFLs, which are ok with rapid cycling). Second, even when completely "off", many photosensor switches will leak a bit of current, which may mess with your CFL's electronics, anything less than full-on / full-off is bad. Third, some photosensors and dimmers may have built-in "bulb saver" features meant to extend the life of incandescents -- they may pass the current through a diode or negativetemperature coefficient (NTC) thermistor (which again will kill CFLs).
There's a reason incandescents didn't have a problem there: they operate using hot and neutral. They pay no attention to ground. Neither does the dimmer switch deal with ground. Ground is a safety issue for humans.
And CFLs operate exactly the same way. There is no ground connection on a CFL, just hot and neutral. They can't break due to a "bad ground" because they never touch ground.
It's like saying your car gets bad gas milage because the diesel fuel in the truck parked next to it was contaminated.
CFL fail miserably when using X10 controllers. They seem to have some current pulse that occurs after turnoff that makes the X10 controller think you are trying to turn the light back on using the local switch. Press X10 off -- click -- light off -- click -- light on! Press off again -- click off -- click on! It's like a video game, how many times do you have to press "off" to get them to stay off, and how short can you get the 'on' times to be?
That, and the extremely short lives they have compared to simple incandescents, make them a pain in the ass and poor replacements. I like the european guy who talks about us americans and our "extravagant lifestyles" because we use incandescents. Using a 50 cent light bulb for ten years compared to ten (mercury containing) CFLs in the same place is extravagant?