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Power-Loss-Protected SSDs Tested: Only Intel S3500 Passes

Posted by Soulskill on from the 95%-of-everything-is-crud dept.

lkcl writes "After the reports on SSD reliability and after experiencing a costly 50% failure rate on over 200 remote-deployed OCZ Vertex SSDs, a degree of paranoia set in where I work. I was asked to carry out SSD analysis with some very specific criteria: budget below £100, size greater than 16Gbytes and Power-loss protection mandatory. This was almost an impossible task: after months of searching the shortlist was very short indeed. There was only one drive that survived the torturing: the Intel S3500. After more than 6,500 power-cycles over several days of heavy sustained random writes, not a single byte of data was lost. Crucial M4: failed. Toshiba THNSNH060GCS: failed. Innodisk 3MP SATA Slim: failed. OCZ: failed hard. Only the end-of-lifed Intel 320 and its newer replacement, the S3500, survived unscathed. The conclusion: if you care about data even when power could be unreliable, only buy Intel SSDs." Relatedly, don't expect SSDs to become cheaper than HDDs any time soon.

16 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. So make the power reliable... by ssufficool · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and get a UPS. Why blow more money on a slightly more reliable SSD when a UPS is so much cheaper?

    1. Re: So make the power reliable... by iamhassi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your MacBook Air came with a UPS built-in, it's called the battery.

      --
      my karma will be here long after I'm gone
    2. Re:So make the power reliable... by haystd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The "remote-deployed" may have something to do with it. These may be part of some kind of set-and-forget devices that are not maintained by IT types. Think industrial settings.

      If the UPS units were desktop grade, they are a crapshoot for quality and would probably have to be rotated out every 2-3 years and are expensive to ship due to weight. Add in the hassle of recycling the lead-acid batteries.

    3. Re: So make the power reliable... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, why test the (already discontinued) M4, which I don't remember ever being marketed as "power protected" instead of the current m500 models that actually are?
      I started deploying the m500 drives as soon as l heard about that one improvement (though only one of the numerous M4s got corrupted (less than 0.1% data lost) apparently due to power loss. Admittedly none of our Intel drives have failed yet either, but the new 530s tendency to disappear after a warm boot made us wary of them up until last week when Intel finally released the firmware fix for that issue.

    4. Re:So make the power reliable... by Tumbleweed · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I've never found a UPS useful. I used to buy them, but this always happened:

      * Power went out
      * UPS didn't quite come up in time
      * Computer reset
      * UPS now was happy to provide power for my computer to boot

      I've tried very expensive and very cheap - they just don't work for computers in my experience, and the batteries need replacing every couple of years, and are difficult to dispose of.

      "UPS didn't quite come up in time"? WTF? I've never had a UPS do that, and I"m on my third one in 12 years.

    5. Re:So make the power reliable... by ahabswhale · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I've never had this problem. I run my computer, monitor, wifi, and cable modem into mine and it works like a champ every time. I've only had two UPSs but they both worked without fail each and every time. The only problem they have is that their power is reduced as they age.

      --
      Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
    6. Re:So make the power reliable... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wild guess: He's mixing a cheap off-line UPS with a horrible PC PSU that can't do the required hold-up time.

  2. Is it that hard to include a capacitor? by ZorinLynx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These things are already expensive; surely spending a few more cents per unit on a capacitor to ensure power loss reliability isn't a big deal.

    The cap only has to be big enough so the controller can do a controlled shutdown.

  3. Consumer grade vs. Enterprise Grade by CajunArson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Slightly more seriously than my last post, the S3500 was the only enterprise-grade SSD tested in that batch. Frankly, I have little sympathy for you if you expected consumer-grade SSDs to perform like Enterprise-grade SSDs in a mission-critical application.

    Consumer grade drives, even/especially the "high performance" ones that will often benchmark better than the "overpriced" enterprise drives, ain't designed to have perfect data retention. Of course, consumer or enterprise, any drive can fail and appropriate measures including RAID and backup* should always be in place no matter what type of drive you have.

    * Yes, RAID != backup, I know, don't bother making that post.

    --
    AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    1. Re:Consumer grade vs. Enterprise Grade by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If one company's enterprise grade drive is the same price as another company's consumer level drive, isn't it valid to compare them head to head?

  4. Power-loss protected? No Samsung? by MatthiasF · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does this mean the write-cache is NAND too? I do not see that in the features for the SSDs they selected.

    Also, why was Samsung excluded? Their 800 series with RAID support has been tested in the past with long term writes with great results.

    http://us.hardware.info/reviews/4178/10/hardwareinfo-tests-lifespan-of-samsung-ssd-840-250gb-tlc-ssd-updated-with-final-conclusion-final-update-20-6-2013

    I do not mean to plug a particular brand, but the range of SSD's tested in the articles does not seem very expansive nor do they seem to fit into the criteria they specify.

  5. Re:Stop Bragging! by ColaMan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    SSD's from certain companies were crap. Unfortunately you couldn't tell straight away (and I guess, they couldn't tell either, otherwise they wouldn't have shipped them).

    --

    You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
    There is a lot of hype here.
  6. Original research by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Original research by someone whose identity I can't look up. Hmm.

    I'd trust every conclusion except the one that pretty blatantly advertises Intel. I guess that means Toshiba might be worth looking into.

  7. An Odd Assortment of SSDs Tested by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm sure the reviewer tested what they had available, but I'm not sure I'd draw any conclusions from this list of drives. The drive that passes is the only current generation drive on the list. Everything else is last generation or older. In the case of the OCZ Vertex, much older. Most of the current popular drives seem to be omitted.

  8. Re:SSD drives are fast, but they suck for reliabil by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    People who have "important data" and fail to make a backup copy - no matter which type of media they are using - deserve to lose their data. Seriously, what you said doesn't only apply to SSD's.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  9. Statistical significance? by amaurea · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but from my skim through the article, it seems like he only used a single drive of each type. That makes it hard to demonstrate that the differences he saw were real, and not just random. I.e., it may be that all drives have a 75% chance of surviving the test, and that the Intel one just happened to be the lucky one. A more robust test would be to test N copies of each drive. N = 5 should give pretty good significance if this really is completely deterministic.