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Ask Slashdot: How Do SSDs Die?
First time accepted submitter kfsone writes "I've experienced, first-hand, some of the ways in which spindle disks die, but either I've yet to see an SSD die or I'm not looking in the right places. Most of my admin-type friends have theories on how an SSD dies but admit none of them has actually seen commercial grade drives die or deteriorate. In particular, the failure process seems like it should be more clinical than spindle drives. If you have X many of the same SSD drive and none of them suffer manufacturing defects, if you repeat the same series of operations on them they should all die around the same time. If that's correct, then what happens to SSDs in RAID? Either all your drives will start to fail together or at some point, your drives will become out of sync in-terms of volume sizing. So, have you had to deliberately EOL corporate grade SSDs? Do they die with dignity or go out with a bang?"
Which is why he's asking.
Fuck people who ask questions when they don't know something, right?
I've seen two instances where a drive failed. Each time there were no handy replacement drives. Within a week a second drive died the same way as the first! back to backup tapes! Better to have replacement drives in boxes waiting.
ipv6 is my vpn
I've seen two instances where a drive failed. Each time there were no handy replacement drives. Within a week a second drive died the same way as the first! back to backup tapes! Better to have replacement drives in boxes waiting.
This. Your spares closet is your best friend in the enterprise. Ensure you keep it stocked.
And locked. And don't label them "spares". Label them "cold swap fallback device" or something that management won't see as something "extra" that can be "repurposed" (i.e. stolen)
I am running (6) OCZ Vertex2 256GB drives under heavy use 24/7. Almost 2 years on have only had one fail and it still works, just started kicking random errors.
Your failure rate of > 8% per year isn't very reassurring.