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SSD Annual Failure Rates Around 1.5%, HDDs About 5%
Lucas123 writes "On the news that Linus Torvalds's SSD went belly up while he was coding the 3.12 kernel, Computerworld took a closer look at SSDs and their failure rates. While Torvalds didn't specify the SSD manufacturer in his blog, he did write in a 2008 blog that he'd purchased an 80GB Intel SSD — likely the X25, which has become something of an industry standard for SSD reliability. While they may have no mechanical parts, making them preferable for mobile use, there are many factors that go into an SSD being reliable. For example, a NAND die, the SSD controller, capacitors, or other passive components can — and do — slowly wear out or fail entirely. As an investigation into SSD reliability performed by Tom's Hardware noted: 'We know that SSDs still fail.... All it takes is 10 minutes of flipping through customer reviews on Newegg's listings.' Yet, according to IHS, client SSD annual failure rates under warranty tend to be around 1.5%, while HDDs are near 5%. So SSDs not only outperform, but on average outlast spinning disks."
OCZ's failure rates are higher than the rest of the industry's by an order of magnitude. Also, earlier SandForce drives have reliability problems because the firmware was written by paranoid loons who were deathly afraid of reverse-engineering and the drive goes into irrecoverable 'panic mode' when any abnormality of any kind is sensed. I think that newer SandForces (post-LSI acquisition), especially Intel's, are less likely to do this, but the original failures still taint the brand with the stigma of flakiness.
If you stick with Samsung, Intel, and SanDisk, you should be fine. Stay away from OCZ at all costs, and be skeptical of any SandForce drive not made by Intel.
Not only that, if you add enough SSDs to store the same amount of bytes as a 4TB hard drive you either need to RAID them or you will have cumulative failure rate far higher than the HD failure rate, which you could mirror (or hell, RAID6 it) for way less money.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I would just add the whole thing ignores that big old rotting elephant in the room which is HDDs? I have found that in damned near every case, not all but most, will give you PLENTY of warning before it goes completely tits up whereas the SSD? One day its working and the next....nothing. No warning, no noise, no indication at all that there was a problem just...poof, buh bye data. This is also ignoring the fact that if the circuit board fails in a HDD you can swap one out for the same model and get it back in most cases, at least long enough to get the data, the SSD? Hope you are good with a soldering iron and a chip reader and I have heard even then its unlikely.
I may be just a little country shop guy but when my gamer customers have all experienced multiple failures when it comes to SSDs, and these guys don't go cheap, sorry but ATM I still don't trust it. I tell folks if they want an SSD don't have anything on it they would feel bad if they lost, now does that mean there aren't still uses for SSDs? Of course not, for one thing if you have a laptop where most if not all of your data is in the cloud? Knock yourself out, just make a weekly disk image so you can re-image when it goes tits up and you are golden. I also have several customers that have bought either hybrid drives or that Sandisk caching drive for Win 7 and in both of those cases they have seen pretty big speed boosts while not having to worry because if it dies all you do is go back to HDD speeds as it is just a cache.
Oh and one final thing....its gonna get worse. its common knowledge that with each shrink the number of writes goes down and the number of failures go up and with all of the major chip companies seeming to only care about how many bits they can stuff per nano-meter? The failure rate WILL get worse, you can count on it. Its too bad that SLC is so insanely high as those seem to have lower failure rates than MLC but as long as all the companies care about is getting that GB number up at all costs its really not gonna be getting better, its gonna be getting worse.
Ironic that they talk about how supposedly high HDD failure rates are when I cleaned out a how drawer of them before moving into the new place, we are talking drives going back to Quantum Fireballs in the 200Mb size, yes Mb not Gb, and they all fired up. granted some of them were noisy as hell but I could still get files off of them while not a single one of my gamer customers have their first SSD, they are all dead. yes i know its an anecdote but I'm not the only one that has seen this, coding horror calls SSDs the hot crazy scale as you trade red hot performance for crazy failure rates. Call me old fashioned but I think I'll just pick upa caching SSD and keep the 5Tb in spinning rust, thanks ever so Intel.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The way I configure SSD's is as a OS/boot drive, and then I write all user data off to a RAID with traditional HDD's.
The simplest way is a SSD for windows/linux and then put your user directories on a RAID1 of 1TB drives, and then backups from there.
Because Linus, who apparently uses SSDs, would never regularly compile a kernel or anything like that.
Really? Odd that I can buy SSD's in a 1.5-3TB flavor these days, they're expensive as all hell, but I can buy them. They come in PCI-e and SATA flavors. And really at that point, you're running with a mirror or shadow backup, or something anyway. Besides, if you're using a single drive like that, you're at a single point of failure at both the consumer level and at the enterprise level. But let's be honest, you can't beat good backup practices into anyone. As much as you try, and all that.
Om, nomnomnom...