Are SSDs Reliable?

[TomBrooklyn]

Are SSDs reliable?

 

[David 617]

yah. fail time after average use is about 5yrs. and they are blistering fast.
regardless, you should always have a backup in-case of theft fire, ect.

 

[sminlal]

When they work, they work well. Of course a technological limitation of SSDs is that they have a finite number of write cycles. But for a typical user it means they'll "use up" their drive in a period of something like 5-10 years or more - and since the drive will likely be obsolete by that time it's really not the huge issue that a lot of people seem to think. But you do need to be a little prudent about what kind of files you put on the drive in order to avoid excessive writing.

The biggest real issue that a lot of people seem to have is firmware issues. The firmware in an SSD is very complex because it needs to handle "wear leveling" in order to extend the life of the flash memory chips. And it seems like a lot of new drives have bugs that have to get fixed with new firmware versions. For that reason I'd recommend not buying the very latest drives, but rather wait until they've been on them market for, say, 6-9 months to see how robust their firmware turns out to be.

 

[beenthere]

The answer is sometimes...

From the Aug. 2011 Tom's SSD review:

"There's no debating whether SSDs offer blistering performance. That that doesn't really matter if you can't trust the device holding that important information. When you read about Corsair's Force 3 recall, OCZ's firmware updates to prevent BSODs, Crucial's link power management issues, and Intel's SSD 320 that loses capacity after a power failure, all within a two-month period, you have to acknowledge that we're dealing with a technology that's simply a lot newer (and consequently less mature) than mechanical storage. "

Immature tech and all the major brands having issues with different model SSDs should tell you SSDs are not really ready for consumer use unless lost data, BSOD O/S re-installtion, etc. are acceptable to you. Consumer grade SSDs definitely have issues that they should not have or be sold with.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-solid-state-nand-reliability,2998.html

 

[JackNaylorPE]

We really don't have more than simulations to go on as the market isn't mature enough to have a 5 year history. As usual, backups should be part of your routine with any storage solution.

And as for the "blistering" ..... yes the benchmarks are impressive.....the impact on productivity or "observed" performance, much less so.

Using a modern HD and latest generation 550 MBps SSD, boot time drops from 21.2 to 15.6 seconds. Doesn't really allow me to get much more work done each day

 

[nikorr]

Hi TomBrooklyn

I have to agree with sminlal^, and they are not better or worst than HDD in longevity.

Many times it is the users fault. They do come with warranty too. So don't worry.

Back up regularly and u are fine.

Get one, u wont be disappointed : ) SATA 2 & SATA 3 only...


/ "So fast, you'll freak out"