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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.

9 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Stop Bragging! by CajunArson · · Score: 5, Funny

    "after experiencing a costly 50% failure rate on over 200 remote-deployed OCZ Vertex SSDs"

    Stop gloating about how you got the good batch of OCZ SSDs! Some of us weren't so lucky....

    --
    AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
  2. 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 couchslug · · Score: 5, Funny

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

      Yet another brilliant example of Apple design!

      --
      "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
    2. 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.

    3. Re:So make the power reliable... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Funny

      The people in Starbucks look at me funny when I walk in with my Macbook Air and a UPS.

      Have you considered the possibility that it's not the UPS?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  3. 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.

  4. 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?

  5. 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.