SSD vs Raptor

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Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
Sorry, but HDDs can and do go bad with no warning, or the warning is only enough to frustrate you as you fail to get the data off. That is a very poor justification for HDDs. Before perpendicular recording, only the most craptastic Seagate and Maxtor drives would fail w/o warning. At least half the time, these days, the HDD is too far gone by the time there are any warning signs, unless you carefully watch for them.

Any important data should always exist in more than one place. Period. If you think HDDs are more reliable than SSDs, and leave one copy, that copy is what you're going to lose.
 

exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
10
81
Any important data should always exist in more than one place. Period. If you think HDDs are more reliable than SSDs, and leave one copy, that copy is what you're going to lose.

This. Rather than be paranoid about SSDs failing, esp in RAID0, I just keep partition backups on... another SSD and assume one will brick any day.

If and when it happens, I break the RAID0, RMA the drive, rebuild the RAID0 with the remaining drives and restore the partition backup in less than 30 seconds.

That's faster than some computers take to reboot...
 

Virgorising

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2013
4,470
0
0
a good compromise is run the fast on fast ssd, run the slow n steady on reliable hard drive.

I've had more 15K SAS drive failures this year over the 100+ ssd (desktop 60/server 40) drives. the sas drives blew the feck up total devastation across all platters lol.

What does this mean????????

15K mechanical drive failures?

Could U pls try to EMULATE offering data in a way we can all understand, EMULEX?
 

Pariah

Elite Member
Apr 16, 2000
7,357
20
81
Any important data should always exist in more than one place. Period. If you think HDDs are more reliable than SSDs, and leave one copy, that copy is what you're going to lose.

Indeed, but since we know that practically no one regularly backs up their data, typically because they are too cheap to buy the extra drive, your point is meaningless.

It's a fact that when SSD's go bad, there is no way you are going to recover the data yourself. And having owned computers for close to 30 years, it is also a fact that unless you drop the drive or physically damage it some other way, traditional hard drives rarely just up and die without any warning. If you use computers regularly, you are going to have a hard drive die on you at some point, unless you religiously replace all your drives every year which would be ridiculous, and still not completely fail proof.
 

Virgorising

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2013
4,470
0
0
Indeed, but since we know that practically no one regularly backs up their data, typically because they are too cheap to buy the extra drive, your point is meaningless.

It's a fact that when SSD's go bad, there is no way you are going to recover the data yourself. And having owned computers for close to 30 years, it is also a fact that unless you drop the drive or physically damage it some other way, traditional hard drives rarely just up and die without any warning. If you use computers regularly, you are going to have a hard drive die on you at some point, unless you religiously replace all your drives every year which would be ridiculous, and still not completely fail proof.


Well, and this was ENTIRELY unexpected....after just seeing the above---I've posted here before about the sudden death reality of SDDS and unrecoverable data---even got attacked for it---and I always have and still do do internal backup in my desktops as I have in the one I am on right now.....I got cold feet, went to Newegg, order for my bargain new SSD was still in the "packaging" phase...there was a CANCEL button, and I hit it.

It then said we can't guarantee the order can be cancelled, you will get an email. But, given it's Friday, am sure it did.

I just could not resist the price, it blew me away.

Only time in my life, so far, I cancelled any order.:|
 
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Pariah

Elite Member
Apr 16, 2000
7,357
20
81
Well, and this was ENTIRELY unexpected....after just seeing the above---I've posted here before about the sudden death reality of SDDS and unrecoverable data---even got attacked for it---and I always have and still do do internal backup in my desktops as I have in the one I am on right now.....I got cold feet, went to Newegg, order for my bargain new SSD was still in the "packaging" phase...there was a CANCEL button, and I hit it.

It then said we can't guarantee the order can be cancelled, you will get an email. But, given it's Friday, am sure it did.

I just could not resist the price, it blew me away.

Only time in my life, so far, I cancelled any order.:|


I've been using SSD's in my main computer for almost 5 years now. Over those 5 years, I've had 3 of them die on me. During the same period, I've had 0 traditional drives die, despite using a whole lot more of them. Those 3 dead drives taught me 2 things. One, don't ever buy an SSD from OCZ. That's not a problem any more since they just declared bankruptcy (well deserved). 2nd, never store anything important on them, as all 3 drive died instantly with no warning. Until recently, large SSD's were so expensive, that you wouldn't use it for any type of storage anyway.

That said, I still continue to use SSD's for my boot drive, in fact just ordered another one yesterday, because they are noticeably faster. And as a boot drive with OS and some apps, if it dies, I lose nothing that can't be replaced. So, like I said earlier, so long as you have another drive for storage, get the SSD if you can afford it.
 

Virgorising

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2013
4,470
0
0
I've been using SSD's in my main computer for almost 5 years now. Over those 5 years, I've had 3 of them die on me. During the same period, I've had 0 traditional drives die, despite using a whole lot more of them. Those 3 dead drives taught me 2 things. One, don't ever buy an SSD from OCZ. That's not a problem any more since they just declared bankruptcy (well deserved). 2nd, never store anything important on them, as all 3 drive died instantly with no warning. Until recently, large SSD's were so expensive, that you wouldn't use it for any type of storage anyway.

That said, I still continue to use SSD's for my boot drive, in fact just ordered another one yesterday, because they are noticeably faster. And as a boot drive with OS and some apps, if it dies, I lose nothing that can't be replaced. So, like I said earlier, so long as you have another drive for storage, get the SSD if you can afford it.

Thanks for this follow up. Re OCZ, I've read far enough on this site from Ketchup79 re their PSUs to never ever buy any of their stuff.

Since I initially bought the Black Friday drive, you can assume I could afford to, but YOU reminded me of what I already knew but which that sale price temporarily deleted.

And, as I posted, I have zero interest in using an SSD as just a boot drive. My goal was to use it as the main drive I boot into which has everything both my HDDs (identical) now have. Meaning the OS, all my apps, all my files, EVERYTHING.

My plan was to pull my older WD HDD and use my WD black as my new backup drive, and the new SDD as my main drive.

As they say, the best laid plans of mice and men.....

While I am a little sad, I also think I did the right thing. I got seduced by the price...and forgot all I knew.

And I thank YOU for reminding me!!!()
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
Indeed, but since we know that practically no one regularly backs up their data, typically because they are too cheap to buy the extra drive, your point is meaningless.
Hardly. They lose data, and either learn or don't.

It's a fact that when SSD's go bad, there is no way you are going to recover the data yourself. And having owned computers for close to 30 years, it is also a fact that unless you drop the drive or physically damage it some other way, traditional hard drives rarely just up and die without any warning. If you use computers regularly, you are going to have a hard drive die on you at some point, unless you religiously replace all your drives every year which would be ridiculous, and still not completely fail proof.
IoW, if notebooks, feet, pets, and children didn't exist, HDDs would be just perfect.

Every storage type has failures. They fail in different ways. But any of them can and will fail without sufficient warning. SMART warnings on boot are great, but they only sometimes catch anything. With low vibration drives using fluid bearings, bearing damage can no longer be heard or felt. With SnR decreasing as density is increasing, there's less and less each gen for the controller to be able to recover by re-reading it automatically, or using gddrescue, spinrite, etc..

Unfortunate as it may be, HDDs do up and die. One of my Samsungs from a few years ago, FI, even failed with a non-platter-related failure. Practically nothing could be gotten off it. The PC shutting down out of nowhere was the only sign, and all SMART values looked good, even afterwards. It would just drop out after a few MBs of reading, and some of what got transferred was corrupt. Dealing with other people's computers, and businesses' computers, sudden failures just aren't that uncommon, now. They used to be, but not any more. It's also become quite common that there will be warning, but the very act of trying to recover data gets into being FUBARed. Now, HDDs in general, seem to be more reliable than ever, if they don't die early, and are treated with care (such as not being in a notebook, for starters).

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/170748-how-long-do-hard-drives-actually-live-for
Check it out. Based on their results, you could very well go through 20+ HDDs with no failures during their primary service lives, and not be an outlier (the wear they put on them in 3 years probably takes most of us 5+).

https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/fast07/tech/schroeder/schroeder.pdf
It's all server drives, from several years back. Basically the same story, just that they're built a bit better than consumer drives.

Only time in my life, so far, I cancelled any order.:|
If it was at, "packaging," still, you should get an order cancel confirmation, though you might have to wait until Mon or Tue for your funds to come back.

But, don't worry over it. If you ever got to have dealings with hundreds or more drives, failures of all kinds happen. Get into thousands, and it'll be a daily thing. To protect the money you may spent, get a drive with a good warranty. To protect your data, do backups. Being for a notebook, all you'd need to do is make slip to have a good old head crash. You can even do it by too quickly catching the notebook from falling, so it happens before it had park the heads, due to your own hands. An SSD wouldn't even notice anything had happened.

So, once you get that cancellation, just go get a Sandisk Ultra Plus 256GB or Samsung 840 Evo 250GB, to save that 0.5-1W. No major series of SSD is likely to brick on you. It happens, yes. But the chances are extremely good it won't.

All drives have a failure rate of 100%
 

Virgorising

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2013
4,470
0
0
Well, re the above, is true, I have not had vast or long experience.....but I have had some. And, by all acccounts I am a quick study. Only once so far, have I had a HDD start to go....only ONCE. And most of the drives I have bought I have gotten used but in very good shape on ebay.....never once had a problem.

So I am not buying into the 100% failure rate for the average user, tho no drive lasts forever.

The only terrible experience I ever had, was ironically with a new WD I got on Newegg a while back. It had so many bad sectors, WD diagnostics could not count them. I RMAed it, WD sent me a tested replacement, and it was excellent.

No, I think I did the right thing, no matter how suddenly it struck me to do, no matter how unique it was. And in my case, it was less the specific drive I chose, than what I posted waay back here: I think these pies ain't cooked enough yet for me....re all SSDs.

When I saw the price of that drive.....the contents of my brain re SSDs went right to the recycle bin. But I guess I didn't hit empty immediately as I always do.....so, seeing the post which reminded me of what was in The Bin....I hit RESTORE.
 
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Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
So I am not buying into the 100% failure rate for the average user, tho no drive lasts forever.
Well, that's the point. Even a perfect one from the factory will either get mild damage over time, or just plain wear out. It's just a question of when and how. You might be done with a computer long before it happens, for one drive, or it could happen after a couple years of perfectly good service. Chances are, with either an SSD or HDD, it will be the latter. But, the best way to protect yourself is to assume that any single drive could fail tomorrow, and plan accordingly. Working in IT helps hammer it home, I'm sure, but I think everyone I know, by now, got bit bad at least once by not backing up, and learned the hard way to get some type of backup system in place, instead of trusting the hardware to stay alive.
 

Virgorising

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2013
4,470
0
0
T
Well, that's the point. Even a perfect one from the factory will either get mild damage over time, or just plain wear out. It's just a question of when and how. You might be done with a computer long before it happens, for one drive, or it could happen after a couple years of perfectly good service. Chances are, with either an SSD or HDD, it will be the latter. But, the best way to protect yourself is to assume that any single drive could fail tomorrow, and plan accordingly. Working in IT helps hammer it home, I'm sure, but I think everyone I know, by now, got bit bad at least once by not backing up, and learned the hard way to get some type of backup system in place, instead of trusting the hardware to stay alive.

This is my third Optiplex MT.....all via eBay, I choose the chip first. From my first one thru right now, I do old school internal backup with cloning once a week and dual boot.

My two WDs are side by side in my HDD bay, and the older one is asleep. Truth is with mechanical drives....and I have used some old ones, not once did I think any would die tomorrow. Again, only one, waaay back started clicking.....plenty early for me to then slave another drive and transfer all the data.

Trust me, while not a gamer, I like speed as much as anyone. (I have the speeding tickets to prove it.) But re storage, I think I cherish reliability and peace of mind more. Did I loose my mind for a while cause I came upon this uber bargain? I did. I then got the nylon caddy insert for it on ebay. :whiste:

Plus, this new/used WD Black I recently got on ebay.....is faster than I thought any mechanical drive could be.

Not to worry, it's all good.....and all interesting and all....life.
___________________________________________________
Edit: just found mail from Newegg in my spam folder....


Thank you for shopping at Newegg.com.

We always try to give you the best possible shopping experience, and we're sorry you decided to cancel this order . . . unless, of course, it was so you could order something else you wanted more!

Your request to cancel this order has been approved. Your email confirmation is shown below. Please keep a copy for your records. If your debit or credit card has been charged, your order should be refunded in full within 3 to 5 business days.

Order Summary:

Sales Order Number:
232267278

Sales Order Date:
11/29/2013 2:19:50 PM
 
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Asphodelus

Member
May 29, 2011
73
6
71
Indeed, but since we know that practically no one regularly backs up their data, typically because they are too cheap to buy the extra drive, your point is meaningless.

It's a fact that when SSD's go bad, there is no way you are going to recover the data yourself. And having owned computers for close to 30 years, it is also a fact that unless you drop the drive or physically damage it some other way, traditional hard drives rarely just up and die without any warning. If you use computers regularly, you are going to have a hard drive die on you at some point, unless you religiously replace all your drives every year which would be ridiculous, and still not completely fail proof.

But would there even be any value in pulling data off of a dying drive?

I had a hard drive start start to give off the usual warning signs back in September. After I got a replacement drive the next day and transferred all of the data off of it, I did a binary comparison of all of the data against a backup. It turns out that within less than 24 hours of the drive exhibiting symptoms of dying, over a quarter of my files had already been corrupted.

If I didn't have my backup, I would've lost a lot of important files, plain and simple. Having warning signs and being able to transfer the data off to another drive were ultimately meaningless given the extensive data corruption.
 
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Blain

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
23,643
3
81
Before perpendicular recording, only the most craptastic Seagate and Maxtor drives would fail w/o warning. At least half the time, these days, the HDD is too far gone by the time there are any warning signs, unless you carefully watch for them.
Ding, Ding, Ding...
Platter density has become very unforgiving.
We love the huge capacities, cheap prices but hate the higher failure rates.

We demanded larger capacity HDs and we got them in spades.
 

Virgorising

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2013
4,470
0
0
But would there even be any value in pulling data off of a dying drive?

I had a hard drive start start to give off the usual warning signs back in September. After I got a replacement drive the next day and transferred all of the data off of it, I did a binary comparison of all of the data against a backup. It turns out that within less than 24 hours of the drive exhibiting symptoms of dying, over a quarter of my files had already been corrupted.

If I didn't have my backup, I would've lost a lot of important files, plain and simple. Having warning signs and being able to transfer the data off to another drive were ultimately meaningless given the extensive data corruption.

Well....yr experience with the corrupted data is TRAGIC. I must say, in my one experience with a starting to get sick drive.....in an old HP desktop I had, did no internal backup, this was just before I started getting the Optiplexes....I was able to save everything. How anyone can sleep without doing backup, I have no clue at all.
 

Virgorising

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2013
4,470
0
0
Ding, Ding, Ding...
Platter density has become very unforgiving.
We love the huge capacities, cheap prices but hate the higher failure rates.

We demanded larger capacity HDs and we got them in spades.

This new/used WD black I only recently got for excellent price on ebay.....perfect condition and quiet like a mouse....is the biggest drive I ever had; 500GBs and it is 378GBs EMPTY.

So, while what you post is true, forget really IMPORTANT, I am no way someone who has demanded bigger drives! I think people who do are in some ways slobs and slaves.

They think bigger is cooler. They think converting and burning avi files to DVD is not cool. They think even having an optical drive is uberly uncool. They think DVD and even Blue Ray is a thing of the past and only for uncool humans. They think anything with the word FLASH....is the only way to go for anyone cool. They think having an almost filled by crap 3TB drive...IS cool. :whiste:

And I think they are wrong and not cool at all.

I also think they are weenie wagging. And that, is as uncool as uncool gets.()
 
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john3850

Golden Member
Oct 19, 2002
1,436
21
81
A few years back while cleaning up my spare room I pluged in my pentium 75 from 1993.
The Conner hd made a death noise but it booted up 98se.
Those early slower less dense drives were very hard to kill.
 

sub.mesa

Senior member
Feb 16, 2010
611
0
0
I would dispute that. They just have so low data density that uBER is not a problem for those drives. Only recent (~7 years) drives have problems with uBER and that's the reason they are not reliable enough to be used without redundancy and without backup.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,554
10,171
126
I'm sad to see you cancelled your SSD puchase, Vigor. I was looking forward to hearing you espouse the "Joy of SSD".

I would reconsider your configuration, though, and consider a smaller SSD boot drive, with the rest of your data on a spinner, rather than put evrything on the SSD.
 

Asphodelus

Member
May 29, 2011
73
6
71
I would dispute that. They just have so low data density that uBER is not a problem for those drives. Only recent (~7 years) drives have problems with uBER and that's the reason they are not reliable enough to be used without redundancy and without backup.

Err, hard drives have been failing for as long as they've existed. If you were to ask a group of CTOs at Fortune 500 companies whether backing up is something that they only had to start doing ~7 years ago, they'd laugh you out of the room.
 

Virgorising

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2013
4,470
0
0
A few years back while cleaning up my spare room I pluged in my pentium 75 from 1993.
The Conner hd made a death noise but it booted up 98se.
Those early slower less dense drives were very hard to kill.


Wow. I keep sayin....the newer, the crummier!!!
 

Virgorising

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2013
4,470
0
0
I'm sad to see you cancelled your SSD puchase, Vigor. I was looking forward to hearing you espouse the "Joy of SSD".

I would reconsider your configuration, though, and consider a smaller SSD boot drive, with the rest of your data on a spinner, rather than put evrything on the SSD.

I FEEL U!!!! I was lookin forward to that even MORE!!!:|

Again, my boot time now is around 30 seconds. More important, I have zero interest in having a drive for rapid boot, and everything I want and need on some other volume!!!

Sorry, anyone who goes batdoody over 30 second boot time, I think, is in a rush to nowhere that matters.
 

Virgorising

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2013
4,470
0
0
By "we" I meant HD consumers as a whole.


I know! Plus I have been saying same esp re the result of consumers demanding lighter, thinner lappys for almost ever!!!

I was just dissociating myself from those autopilot hostages, and that I observe same as you do and the inevitable results!!!! Very sad stuff, it is.:|
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
Booting up is not the main advantage. I may have waited and waited and waited for my desktop, but my notebooks got new leases on life from SSDs, and boot time was never an issue for them (also, for them, small SSDs are fine). All those times you'd wait on the HDD, become almost a memory. Page thrashing going on forever can still be a nuisance, but that's about it (and, I can't put enough RAM in them for no PF to be viable...I tried, but I'm just too much of a memory hog ).
 

Virgorising

Diamond Member
Apr 9, 2013
4,470
0
0
Booting up is not the main advantage. I may have waited and waited and waited for my desktop, but my notebooks got new leases on life from SSDs, and boot time was never an issue for them (also, for them, small SSDs are fine). All those times you'd wait on the HDD, become almost a memory. Page thrashing going on forever can still be a nuisance, but that's about it (and, I can't put enough RAM in them for no PF to be viable...I tried, but I'm just too much of a memory hog ).

I get all of this and do not doubt it. Remember, I never use my Alienware Sentia lappy anymore; I use my phone for what I used to use it for. It sits in the top of a closet in its green Targus bag.

Again, esp since I got this WD Black wit da 32 cache....nothing I do in this full sized, desktop system lags or is not rapid! I also keep it lean and mean and free of glut, and the drive defragged.
 
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