Investigation: Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive?

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hardcore_gamer

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Endurance of floating gate transistor used in flash memories is low. The gate oxide wears out due to the tunnelling of electrons across it. Hopefully phase change memory can change things around since it offers 10^6 times more endurance for technology nodes
 

acku

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As we explained in the article, write endurance is a spec'ed failure. That won't happen in the first year, even at enterprise level use. That has nothing to do with our data. We're interested in random failures. The stuff people have been complaining about... BSODs with OCZ drives, LPM stuff with m4s, the SSD 320 problem that makes capacity disappear... etc... Mostly "soft" errors. Any hard error that occurs is subject to the "defective parts per million" problem that any electrical component also suffers from.

Cheers,
Andrew Ku
TomsHardware.com
 

jobz000

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Great article. Personally, I find myself spending more and more time on a smartphone and/or tablet, so I feel ambivalent about spending so much on a ssd so I can boot 1 sec faster.
 
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You guys do the most comprehensive research I have ever seen. If I ever have a question about anything computer related, this is the first place I go to. Without a doubt the most knowledgeable site out there. Excellent article and keep up the good work.
 

acku

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[citation][nom]slicedtoad[/nom]hacker groups like lulsec should do something useful and get this kind of internal data from major companies.[/citation]

All of the data is so fragmented... I doubt that would help. You still need to take a fine toothcomb to figure out how the numbers were calculated.

[citation][nom]gpm23[/nom]You guys do the most comprehensive research I have ever seen. If I ever have a question about anything computer related, this is the first place I go to. Without a doubt the most knowledgeable site out there. Excellent article and keep up the good work.[/citation]

Thank you. I personally love these type of articles.. very reminiscent of academia. :)

Cheers,
Andrew Ku
TomsHardware.com
 

K-zon

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I will say that i didn't read the article word for word. But of it seems that when someone would change over from hard drive to SSD, those numbers might be of interest.

Of the sealed issue of return, if by the time you check that you had been using something different and something said something else different, what you bought that was different might not be of useful use of the same thing.

Otherwise just ideas of working with more are hard said for what not to be using that was used before. Yes?

But for alot of interest into it maybe is still that of rather for the performance is there anything of actual use of it, yes?

To say the smaller amounts of information lost to say for the use of SSDs if so, makes a difference as probably are found. But of Writing order in which i think they might work with at times given them the benefit of use for it. Since they seem to be faster. Or are.

Temperature doesn't seem to be much help for many things are times for some reason. For ideas of SSDs, finding probably ones that are of use that reduce the issues is hard from what was in use before.

When things get better for use of products is hard placed maybe.

But to say there are issues is speculative, yes? Especially me not reading the whole article.

But of investments and use of say "means" an idea of waste and less use for it, even if its on lesser note , is waste. In many senses to say of it though.

Otherwise some ideas, within computing may be better of use with the drives to say. Of what, who knows...

Otherwise again, it will be more of operation place of instances of use. Which i think will fall into order of acccess with storage, rather information is grouped or not grouped to say as well.

But still. they should be usually useful without too many issues, but still maybe ideas of timiing without some places not used as much in some ways.
 

cangelini

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To the contrary! We noticed that readers were looking to see OWC's drives in our round-ups. I made sure they were invited to our most recent 120 GB SF-2200-based story, and they chose not to participate (this after their rep jumped on the public forums to ask why OWC wasn't being covered; go figure).

They will continue to receive invites for our stories, and hopefully we can do more with OWC in the future!

Best,
Chris Angelini
 

ikyung

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Once you go SSD, you can't go back. I jumped on the SSD wagon about a year ago and I just can't seem to go back to HDD computers =[. Of course I only use SSDs for certain programs and HDD for storage.
 

iamtheking123

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[citation][nom]Pyree[/nom]SSD may not be more reliable but I think they are still physically more durable. I have yet to see a mechanical drive that will survive free fall onto a hard surface.[/citation]
I've yet to see a hard drive free fall period. It's just a "feature" people spout to justify paying waaaaayyyy too much per gb.
 
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Nice to see an article like this but if i would have made it i would have tested 2.5" normal harddrives. Atleast when comparing the return rates since those kind of drives normally is fitted into laptops wich are moved around alot, causing them to be more in a danger of faults.
I work in a PC store and we see a great deal more 2.5" drives from laptop with bad sectors than we do 3.5" from stationary PC's
 

whysobluepandabear

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I could've summarized this entire article up in 1 page. I actually would've preferred it that way.


A.) They (SSD and HDD companies) lie to us, and the figures and statistics are not reliable, nor paint an accurate picture of their reliability/performance.

B.) The slowest SSD rapes the fastest HDD by a significant margin.

C.) SSDs are no more reliable than HDDs - lack of moving parts does not necessarily mean lack of failure.

D.) Failure is a bit misused, as it's a term used to describe the progressive failing of a drive, and not the sudden.

E.) Rather than performance, many companies (and consumers) are more concerned about reliability, as like said, even the slowest SSD is MUCH faster than the fastest HDD.



And that's it in a nut shell.
 

flong

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Superb article - this kind of review has long been overdue.

For those posters to impatient to actually read the article - it is not disjointed, you have to carefully put all the pieces together.

The simple conclusion is that AFR (annual failure rates) are slightly greater for SSDs than HDDs for the first 3 years or so. After that, based on the graph provided, HDD failure appears to be much greater than SSD. That is based on the slopes of the failure rates, but this conclusion is only as reliable as the data points on that graph.

Neither failure rate of either SSDs or HDDs categorically proves one is more reliable than the other. They are roughly equal in reliability.

SSD reliability appears to be relegated to the manufacturer's quality control. In the various reports from industry users, Intel SSDs virtually did not fail - while other manufacturers appear to be having quality control issues (OCZ perhaps, but it is hard to tell without reliable data).

It appears that Intel has mastered the art of making a reliable SSD. Now when their next generation of SSDs come out that actually can compete speedwise with the third generation Sandforce drives, we may have a real winner depending on cost. Their next set of SSDs coming out is rumored to push the 1 GB/s threshold (though that would have to be over a PCIE slot as SATA 3 only allows 600 mb/s).

SSDs are inherently more reliable than HDDs and as demand rises, it is likely that SSD reliability will surpass HDD reliability. They are only separated by 1-2% now in this article.

It is likely that in 10 years, HDDs may not exist in their present form and SSDs will dominate the storage market.
 

Device Unknown

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[citation][nom]K-zon[/nom]I will say that i didn't read the article word for word. But of it seems that when someone would change over from hard drive to SSD, those numbers might be of interest. Of the sealed issue of return, if by the time you check that you had been using something different and something said something else different, what you bought that was different might not be of useful use of the same thing. Otherwise just ideas of working with more are hard said for what not to be using that was used before. Yes? But for alot of interest into it maybe is still that of rather for the performance is there anything of actual use of it, yes? To say the smaller amounts of information lost to say for the use of SSDs if so, makes a difference as probably are found. But of Writing order in which i think they might work with at times given them the benefit of use for it. Since they seem to be faster. Or are. Temperature doesn't seem to be much help for many things are times for some reason. For ideas of SSDs, finding probably ones that are of use that reduce the issues is hard from what was in use before. When things get better for use of products is hard placed maybe. But to say there are issues is speculative, yes? Especially me not reading the whole article. But of investments and use of say "means" an idea of waste and less use for it, even if its on lesser note , is waste. In many senses to say of it though. Otherwise some ideas, within computing may be better of use with the drives to say. Of what, who knows... Otherwise again, it will be more of operation place of instances of use. Which i think will fall into order of acccess with storage, rather information is grouped or not grouped to say as well. But still. they should be usually useful without too many issues, but still maybe ideas of timiing without some places not used as much in some ways.[/citation]

Please tell me English is your 3rd language. I couldn't understand anything you said lol
 

dimar

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My 5 months old Corsair Performance 3 failed few weeks ago. I did all I could not to abulse it. Temp, swap, progarm files, user profile files setup on HDD. Performance was still super fast. Started getting BSODs, and then the system wouldn't start. Checking SSD using checkdisk would freeze. Corsair exchanged it with a new one, with a new firmware, which they haven't posted online yet. Lost my windows data. This time I made a backup partition on the HDD, where I backup windows SSD partition every week.
 

tehcheeze

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I am now on my 3rd OCZ Agility 2 120gig SSD. The problem I've had with it both times is that after a while it just would not be recognized by the OS or BIOS. That and waking from sleep, the systems was really unstable/slow.
 

acku

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[citation][nom]flong[/nom]Superb article - this kind of review has long been overdue. For those posters to impatient to actually read the article - it is not disjointed, you have to carefully put all the pieces together. The simple conclusion is that AFR (annual failure rates) are slightly greater for SSDs than HDDs for the first 3 years or so. After that, based on the graph provided, HDD failure appears to be much greater than SSD. That is based on the slopes of the failure rates, but this conclusion is only as reliable as the data points on that graph.Neither failure rate of either SSDs or HDDs categorically proves one is more reliable than the other. They are roughly equal in reliability. SSD reliability appears to be relegated to the manufacturer's quality control. In the various reports from industry users, Intel SSDs virtually did not fail - while other manufacturers appear to be having quality control issues (OCZ perhaps, but it is hard to tell without reliable data). It appears that Intel has mastered the art of making a reliable SSD. Now when their next generation of SSDs come out that actually can compete speedwise with the third generation Sandforce drives, we may have a real winner depending on cost. Their next set of SSDs coming out is rumored to push the 1 GB/s threshold (though that would have to be over a PCIE slot as SATA 3 only allows 600 mb/s).SSDs are inherently more reliable than HDDs and as demand rises, it is likely that SSD reliability will surpass HDD reliability. They are only separated by 1-2% now in this article.It is likely that in 10 years, HDDs may not exist in their present form and SSDs will dominate the storage market.[/citation]

Actually that SSD 320 problem would have counted as a failure. When you can't accesses data, that's a big no no.

Thanks for the kudos. But a few corrections. There is no data to suggest that hdd failures are greater than ssds. The projections in the graph assume a constant failure rate, which never occurs. I just put it in so that people could see how it relates to a AFR of 1%. For the moment, it's unclear if SSDs are more reliable. The initial 2 year data suggests otherwise.
 

acku

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I completely agree. But think that information on reliability is important in the face of all the marketing that suggests otherwise.
 

dereksmall

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I've been considering switching to an SSD for a very specific reason that I would have like to have seen covered. G-shock tolerance, and long-term vibration resistence. I ride a motorcycle to work on a regular basis for the past three years. Since doing so I have found that I'm only getting about 8-12 months out of the conventional HDD in my notebook, before the vibrations cause the drive to start failing. (Yes the heads are parked when it's power off). I have been considering switching to an SSD to reduce failures due to the constant vibrations when my notebook is in a saddle bag.

Also I have lost several notebook hard drives over the years when it is dropped even from a couple inches while it's powered up and running (causing a head crash). Not the entire HDD isn't usually trashed, but it usually creates enough bad sectors that I have to reformat the drive.

For these two reasons it seems that SSDs would offer more security in mobile devices like notebooks. For my desktop I'll stick with conventional drives (for now at least).
 
I have had 2/5 SSDs fail (different brands, different controllers). The Sandforce one that died did so in a couple of months. Although I've taken a few out of service after a few years as a precaution, or when I got something bigger, I don't remember the last personal HDD I had fail (stepping on the SATA cable and snapping the connector off doesn't count!).
From my own personal experience with them, I don't want to give up the speed of even a slow SSD, so based on this article I suspect I will willingly pay a little more to get Intel drives now.
And yes, my primary SSD is on a weekly full backup schedule.
 
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