News SSDs Create More Carbon Emissions Than HDDs: Report

[bit_user]

Lithium batteries are involved with solar energy and they aren't so environmentally friendly.

First, we need to prioritize which problems we're solving. That doesn't mean ignoring environmental impacts of lithium mining or whatever else you had in mind, but it means that we can't let ourselves be trapped in the status quo of greenhouse gas emissions for fear of jumping into a slightly less deep pit.

Second, lithium batteries are not intrinsically tied to solar power. They're just one means used to buffer the power generated. There are lots of other energy storage techniques being researched and employed, but it takes a lot of time to build out the generation capacity and we can't afford to wait for the perfect energy storage solution in order to get started.

 

[bit_user]

I have no unused ones, because they're all in something, and even that ancient 64GB kingston drive and it's SLC nand is better than a hard drive as a windows boot.

A drive in use for a very long time and which retains its useful characteristic is far, far better for the environment than a big heavy metal drive in a landfill after 4-5 years.

Yup. I keep and reuse all my SSDs. I still have an old 64 GB Crucial SSD with SLC and SATA-3. At the time, it had killer 4k random read IOPS. After more than a decade, it's still a great boot drive.

 

[WrongRookie]

Tell me how I know you didn't read the article....

Topic says that SSDs are worse than HDDs for the planet?

 

[USAFRet]

Topic says that SSDs are worse than HDDs for the planet?

"So while HDDs have a higher carbon footprint throughout their operational lifetime due to increased energy consumption, SSDs generate the brunt of their emissions before they ever write the first byte. "

 

[watzupken]

In my opinion, this is a fatally flawed finding. I don’t know about others experiences, but out of the many SSDs I purchased, I’ve only seen 1 failed in the last decade. Even my 160GB Intel G2 SSD is still alive and kicking after more than 10 years, while I have seen many hard drives failed in these decade, regardless of high of low usage. That is clearly not accounted for. And they kind of shot themselves in the foot because it is clear that the power consumption on SSD is lower and it finishes the tasks much quicker and go into a low power state, while a conventional mechanical drive takes a significantly longer time to complete the same task. Take Windows 10/11 boot up on a same computer with a SSD and mechanical drive and you will know what I mean as a simple example.

 

[escksu]

Measuring CO2 is just dumb. We all breath in oxygen and breath out CO2. It 's part of the natural life cycle. The materials used, manufacturing waste created, energy used, and the ability to recycle are the factors that really matter. I would have liked to see more on that data. My guess would be the HDD would fare better, except for it's lifetime energy use. Chip making is very resource intensive.

Burning coal or oil to produce electricity is not natural

 

[toyotaman1178]

I'm sure this will deter some people but the amount I care can't be measured.

 

[InvalidError]

HDDs are mainly used for near-line/on-line databases, archives, backups, etc. where quantity and low cost are usually more important than performance. If you want to put 40TB on SSDs, you will need 12-24 SSDs and those will end up collectively consuming as much if not more power than three HDDs in a 2+1 setup.

 

[Geef]

Everyone Relax!!!

There is ZERO chance anyone is going to make SSDs illegal because of this. If they piss off all the IT guys on the planet, it is a sure fire way to get removed from power.

 

[USAFRet]

Everyone Relax!!!

There is ZERO chance anyone is going to make SSDs illegal because of this. If they piss off all the IT guys on the planet, it is a sure fire way to get removed from power.

Who said anything about illegal?

 

[bit_user]

while I have seen many hard drives failed in these decade, regardless of high of low usage.

In Dec. 2019, I replaced a RAID of 5x 1 TB WD Black HDDs that were > 10 years old and probably spinning for about 20% of that time. Before I removed them, I ran one last scrub and checked the SMART stats. Not one of them had a single unrecoverable error logged. Amazing stuff.

Not to talk up WD too much, the replacement array of only 4x 4 TB WD Gold drives had a drive failure while I was initially copying the data onto it. It turned out these Gold drives weren't designed by HGST, although the one I bought as a replacement was.

That is clearly not accounted for. And they kind of shot themselves in the foot because it is clear that the power consumption on SSD is lower and it finishes the tasks much quicker and go into a low power state, while a conventional mechanical drive takes a significantly longer time to complete the same task.

Yeah, but we all know that HDDs aren't used in the same way and for the same purposes as flash. So, the comparison is flawed on an even more basic level.

I think what the paper's authors were really trying to do is get people to account for the significant carbon inputs in SSDs, when estimating lifetime carbon footprint.

 

[tracker1]

Why don't we just cut to the chase: Every major component in a modern PC is worse for the planet than a PC of 10 years ago. And I'm due for an upgrade 😈.

It depends.. you can get parts that are more power efficient, idle power on newer computers is particularly good (d except gsync monitors, buu freesync).

If you're going desktop it's really good in other ways too. There are also laptops that don't solder everything on the board. From framework to xmg, tux, slimbook etc... Mostly dev or Linux focused, and good options. But you pay now for it, vs $500 cheap options.

 

[bit_user]

Old-school BBS Sysop

Thanks for that! It's been ages since I even saw that word! Talk about "old-school", I still remember chatting to kids at school about modems and debating baud vs kbps.