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Consumer-Grade SSDs Survive Two Petabytes of Writes

crookedvulture writes The SSD Endurance Experiment previously covered on Slashdot has reached another big milestone: two freaking petabytes of writes. That's an astounding total for consumer-grade drives rated to survive no more than a few hundred terabytes. Only two of the initial six subjects made it to 2PB. The Kingston HyperX 3K, Intel 335 Series, and Samsung 840 Series expired on the road to 1PB, while the Corsair Neutron GTX faltered at 1.2PB. The Samsung 840 Pro continues despite logging thousands of reallocated sectors. It has remained completely error-free throughout the experiment, unlike a second HyperX, which has suffered a couple of uncorrectable errors. The second HyperX is mostly intact otherwise, though its built-in compression tech has reduced the 2PB of host writes to just 1.4PB of flash writes. Even accounting for compression, the flash in the second HyperX has proven to be far more robust than in the first. That difference highlights the impact normal manufacturing variances can have on flash wear. It also illustrates why the experiment's sample size is too small to draw definitive conclusions about the durability of specific models. However, the fact that all the drives far exceeded their endurance specifications bodes well for the endurance of consumer-grade SSDs in general.

6 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Re:HDD endurance? by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 4, Informative

    In average desktop use, and even non video media workstation it's rare to see a drive that's written 10TB. Most people will never wear out a SSD due to straight out media wear.

  2. Re:HDD endurance? by Luckyo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Impossible to test in the same way due to time constraints. Filling the entire hard drive takes a very long time, unlike a much smaller and much faster SSD.

  3. Re:Random failures by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Informative

    Great, so now we just need to fix the sudden random failures where the drive completely fails but it is 6 months old and showed no signs of degradation.

    Just counted - the stack on my workbench of completely dead SSD's is 13. I think I've seen one hard drive ever go completely dead. I literally don't understand how the vendors think they can get away with such junk on SSD controllers. I know flash will fail, but that's no reason to hang dead on the SATA bus and not talk to anybody. Admit defeat by SMART and move on.

    I don't always use SSD's for journals, but when I do they're in a RAID configuration. Stay speedy, my friends.

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  4. Re:HDD endurance? by Hamsterdan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Recording TV is not a typical scenario. Besides, at around 8GB/hour (HD), that's around 2000 hours a year, which is little more than what my BeyondTV machine does, and its 3TB WD green is still alive and kicking. You just have to disable the insanely aggressive head parking on those drives otherwise they might die...

    http://www.storagereview.com/h...

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  5. Re:HDD endurance? by hairyfeet · · Score: 1, Informative

    But its bullshit, its like saying "HDD survives 100 bazillion writes!" because the plate doesn't shatter. NEWS FLASH its NOT the flash cells that fail, ITS THE CONTROLLER and frankly THAT is what still makes SSDs risky.

    I'm sure this will be followed by a million stupid fucking anecdotes because somebody got a 2003 Maxtor or 2011 Seagate 1.5TB and it shit the bed but considering I've dealt with more HDDs in a week than most here will swap in a lifetime? Mine should probably count a little higher and like it or not HDDs by and large WILL give you a warning before they shit the bed, be it SMART, or noise, or delayed write fails, it'll give ya something to go on. When an SSD controller is about to shit, doesn't matter the brand because NONE of them give you ANY warning. There is no SMART for SSDs, no POST, no diagnostics, just one time it works and the next it dies and takes your data with it....poof!

    So yes SSDs are nice IF you make religious backups AND you don't put anything you care about on them....if that is the case? Enjoy. But if you are putting things you actually don't want to lose on SSDs? Well you've been warned, you'll learn when that drive controller fails and nothing short of a $5k recovery by specialists can get your stuff back.

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  6. Re:HDD endurance? by Bengie · · Score: 4, Informative

    The controller is just as likely to fair on a regular HD. Overall, SSDs have 1/2 of the warranty claim rate of mechanical HDs. Samsung is so sure of their SSDs, they have a 10 year warranty on their new ones, or 150TB written, which is a lot of writes for a 128GB drive. Show me a mechanical drive with a 10 year warranty for under $150