Solid-State Drive (SSD) Reliability Problems?
Over the last month or two I’ve heard from a number of people who have had Solid-State Drives (SSD) fail. The first couple of times I heard this I thought it was odd. After the fifth time (all from different people) I began to worry about a potential trend. All of these were in computer systems, being used as primary storage (what most of us use hard drives for).
What I don’t know is who made all of these drives. It’s entirely possible (although seems unlikely) that they were all made by the same vendor, who is having some serious problems.
This is completely unscientific, but I’ve heard this enough times to make note of it.
SSD memory has a limit of 100,000 write cycles, so the story is that they should last for a LONG time. Unfortunately, flash drives haven’t been real-world tested as thoroughly as normal hard drives.
Of course, if you drop your SSD drive laptop from a height of five feet WHILE it’s processing, you’re much more likely to retrieve your data than a normal hard drive.
So, if you are a power user, choose a hard drive. If you’re clumsy, then go with SSD.
These stories I’m hearing are for systems that are well under a year old, which was another factor that amazed me. I really want SSDs to be a real world option, anything to make laptops generate less heat.
Turn off system restore and page filing and the drives will last a lot longer. If you have a good amount of RAM page filing can be turned off. There is no need to defragment an SSD. Doing so will wear it down. SLC type SSDs will last about ten times longer than MLC. I am currently using an MLC 64gb g.skill SSD. There isn’t a huge difference in speed but applications and files are more responsive. This is because the seek time is less than a millisecond according to HD Tune. Read speed is in the hundreds of megabytes. An SSD will save you time. The drive I am using will last about 5 years according to g.skill with normal use. My HHD lasted less that 6 months. I will find out how long this SSD will last. It has a 2 year warranty. But above all, speed and responsiveness matter most to me that is why I chose to buy an SSD for my laptop. This SSD has been working for 3 days so far.
Most of the systems that I heard about failing weren’t Windows systems. For mass storage devices I don’t think most people would consider speed and responsiveness as their top priority. Those are important, but being generally reliable for storing data is probably the single most important aspect.
Yeah, if data is important to you then you should consider getting a reliable HHD. If you have money then get the SLC version of the solid state drives. But then again, SSDs haven’t been used for very long with operating systems. This is somewhat new technology in terms of the market but it has been out since about 2000. Its just beginning to heat up. I would wait about a year or two to see if people are experiencing any major problems. I know that these drives are not good for servers but for simple use they are not bad. I know that people come in from search engines to this article to research SSD reliability. Because of that, I will let you and your viewers know when my SSD MLC fails. I started using it on Feb 3, 2009.
Interesting discussion so far. However, I am still nowhere in my decision to go or no go with SSD.
Considering a Dell Latitude XT2, and need the drive to last at least 3 years (typical time before I change the laptop).
I wish there were more comments in this article which could help me out :)
Thanks for posting this