SSD reliablity dependance on what main factor?

[groberts101]

Some very good points there. Much respect.

 

[bryanW1995]

In the last 12 years, let's see if I can get this list even halfway right.

2000 - 40GB drive. WD. Lasted 7 years, retired.
2001 - 30GB drive. WD. Lasted 3 years, retired.
2003 - 2x 36GB Raptors. Lasted 5 years, retired.
2005 - 2x 74GB Raptors. Lasted 5 years, retired. Still on my desk. A few bad sectors, IIRC.
2003, 160GB WD Drive. Still in use, I think (parents)
2005 - Seagate drive DOA for my father.
2005(?) 640GB external MyBook drive, made internal, still in use.
2007 - 2x 750GB Drive, seagate. For my dad's system doing video work. He wanted space...still in use.

More recently, 2008 750GB Seagate. Still in use
1TB drive in 2009(?) still in use
2TB Drive 2010, still in use

Number of drives that have failed on me while in use: 0. Bad sectors? Sure. Outright "drive won't even spin up"? None. Going back further, there's a few 700MB drives in there that never died. There's a 20MB hard drive that is 5.25 in size. Last I knew it still worked (probably last booted that system in 2000 or so, for s**** and giggles.)

I have a history of spinning drives that WORK. I back up some data to 2 places (one is my own HD, one is my web server on a user account that is accessible only through SSH, and the host backs up the drives.

Over the past 10-15 years, however, you (and I) have only owned HD's from major manufacturers, and almost all of that is from just 1. I've never had a hard drive or ssd of any kind fail on me (furiously knocking on wood right now), and I'm 38 years old. I had a commodore 64 back in the day, and lots of different setups between then and now. Generally speaking, those of us not doing crazy i/o stuff, automatic backups on external hdd's, etc etc, don't really stress our drives that much. I have a 2tb internal hdd that probably hasn't even written over every sector one time in nearly a year of usage as my primary data drive. However, my 80 gb x25m g2 has been thrashed, used, filled up, formatted, reformatted, cached, etc etc etc for 26 months now in 2 different rigs, and it's still looking for more. A very reliable ssd is more reliable than a very reliable hdd, the problem is that the ssd market is still sorting itself out right now, and some companies aren't quite as good at putting out reliable products as others. Use your best judgement when making that price/reliability determination and you'll be fine.

 

[Helicobacter]

I found a good article on SSD reliability and real world stats (unfortunately all Intel MLC enterprise):
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html

 

[ed29a]

The mainstream user keeps the hardware and its firmware constant - why would things suddenly go wrong after months because of firmware code?

Crucial m4 issue: 5200 hours of usage later, BSOD every hour. On the other hand, I do kind of agree with if a firmware works, leave it. I still have firmware 1.29 on my Vertex 2, not gonna update it because it's been working for a year.

 

[groberts101]

On the other hand, I do kind of agree with if a firmware works, leave it. I still have firmware 1.29 on my Vertex 2, not gonna update it because it's been working for a year.

I would agree to a certian extent there.. but some don't understand the degree of variable that can change on a system with simple driver updates. Power mgmt related variables in particular.

As a tester for 1.29, previous, unreleased, and future versions of Sandforce firmware I can tell you that there were quite a few fixes associated with 1.32 version and beyond. Many(if not all) of those fixes were made available from all the other mfgrs in their firmware iterations as well. That widespread adoption says a lot in regard to the potential need for them to be implemented for all using thse controllers.

These things are far from being similar to bios firmware as the power mgmt functions, and resultant behaviour from changes to such, can bite you in the rear at times. It's like this. Sandforce is told by the mfgrs what is ocurring with their chip on some systems. They try to replicate it in testing. Most of the time if they do find something that seldom occurs on many systems..(with the volume of SF based drives sold that could still be well into the tens of thousands though).. they call it a "corner case".

Now, while your particular systems current hardware/driver/software may not be affected from that "corner case" issue at the moment?.. has not much bearing on the fact that any changes later on to hardware/driver/software configs may shove you towards that small(comparitively speaking) segment of users who actually did have issue with that particular firmware version with their configs.

Long story short here.. I would upgrade that firmware, or at the very least, never sleep hibernate that system. Power transitions in less than ideal environments can, have, and will potentially bite you in the rear eventually on that firmware revision.

Not trying to scare, debate, or tell you what you're doing wrong in regard to how you maintain your hardware. Just friendly advice from someone who has a little higher overview in regards to these particular controllers inner functions, is all. Good luck with it.

 

[Helicobacter]

I have noticed that SSD's are more prone to failure as "on" time increases rather than data volume increases. http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm
Even the "unreliable drives" can pack a decent chuck of load.

Compared to the common failures described here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html
and elsewhere

So, firmware appears to be more prone to either different data conditions (encryption, defragmentation) or power mgt related things (voltage fluctuations +bad power supply, awaking from sleep, power outages) or a mix thereof (hibernation), or compabitlitity issues with the motherboards (AHCI registers and tables etc.).

As to which one of those is the most likely, I don't know but I'm curious about it

 

[Golgatha]

I think you are leaving out firmware as a possible cause

I'd file that under controller though. The controller has to have firmware.

 

[Golgatha]

My intel 510 SSD took 6 months to die. Waiting for a replacement, but I'm not spending another DIME on SSDs for the next 5 years. To hell with em. Magnetic drives are just more reliable.

Everyone's got a story. I've had a SSD (Crucial C300) for about 1.5 years now. In that time I've returned 2 Seagate 1.5GB drives and the Crucial C300 + Intel 80GB G1 + Intel 80GB G2 I have in various systems are all still running fast and strong.