Will SSDs replace HDDs?

[Conrad Pinto]

Almost all HDDs will eventually fail, so I've heard. My question (thread name) arises from the fact that SSDs have become cheaper over the past few years. Is it possible that SSDs may be a replacement?
I'm guessing that HDD manufacturers cannot (more likely will not) make HDDs long lasting so that consumers must keep purchasing drives. Yes mechanical parts will fail, so no one can help that.
Can it be possible that we may see 2-4 TB SSDs in the near (or distant) future?
My reason for fear is that I've lost about 1.2 TB of data when my 2TB Seagate external drive failed. I had warranty so I got it replaced.
I've read that SLC SSDs last a very long time, possibly longer than an HDD.
I just recently lost a lot of financial data since my 500GB internal drive crashed. Recovery will be expensive. Now apart from cloud storage, what will be my options for personal storage in the next 5 years?
Can I assume that manufacturers will/are working on making SSDs last longer?
I want to hear your opinions and experiences.
One more thing, my refurbished 2TB HDD is 70%, after it hits 100% capacity I won't write more data to it (by deleting old data 😛). Plus I use it for only 4 hours a day. While I'm at work the HDD is not in use (not powered up). Will these 2 activities improve its lifespan. I also use a surge protector.

 

[esco_sid]

You best bet is having a good raid setup so incase a drive fails you have a backup such as raid 1 it mirrors 2 hard drives with same data ssd will not make it a whole lot safer as from my own experience fail just as much as hdds do.

 

[i7Baby]

SSDs fail quicker. Writes 'wear' them out. You can only got to about 100 times the capacity in writes before they will fail from this. And the faster they become, the quicker they wear out.

If you're worried about data loss then you need to have a spare drive and set up Backup in Windows. Or use a raid set up as above.

Both SSDs and HDDs are rated in MTBF - Mean Time Before Failure. The figures are usually in 1000's of hours. So less use will extend their life. The more reads and writes also wears both out quicker. Less is better. But you should expect 5 years of normal use out of each - and plan for their replacement.

 

[Conrad Pinto]

Most of my data on the refurbished drive is backed of 2-3 drives belonging to my friends. I know about all RAID configurations but since all drives belonging to 3 of us friends cannot fail at once I don't think I'll need that.
Is my way of handling the HDD safer?
1. I power it on only when I need it. It powers on only once a day no more.
2. Once data is written it is almost never deleted, so that sector won't be used for writing data again.
3. I never unplug till the device completely powers down.

What precautions do you take for SSDs? Or you don't need to?

 

[Deleted member 217926]

SSDs fail quicker. Writes 'wear' them out. You can only got to about 100 times the capacity in writes before they will fail from this. And the faster they become, the quicker they wear out.

If you're worried about data loss then you need to have a spare drive and set up Backup in Windows. Or use a raid set up as above.

Both SSDs and HDDs are rated in MTBF - Mean Time Before Failure. The figures are usually in 1000's of hours. So less use will extend their life. The more reads and writes also wears both out quicker. Less is better. But you should expect 5 years of normal use out of each - and plan for their replacement.

This is absolutely incorrect. Lets look at some real SSD endurance numbers.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7173/samsung-ssd-840-evo-review-120gb-250gb-500gb-750gb-1tb-models-tested/3

Note that those numbers are for an TLC based SSD that should theoretically have much less endurance than a comparable MLC drive.

Even the low end 120GB version writing 50GB a day! will last "officially" 8 years. Real world users are seeing double official numbers! And how many desktop users are going to write anywhere near 50Gb a day? None.

I have a 500Gb 840 Evo. At 50GB a day of writes my drive should officially last 31.67 years. Yeah. I think the SATA interface will be a bit obsolete before the drive is worn out.

SSDs are already replacing HDDs in data centers worldwide.

 

[InvalidError]

SSDs fail too: individual cells in the chips can only be erased and programmed so many times before they fail. This issue gets further complicated by the fact that flash memory can only be erased one page at a time and additional mechanisms ("wear leveling") are necessary to wear all available space more evenly so repeatedly writing to a given logical storage location does not cause the physical storage behind it to fail prematurely at a given location.

Yes, SLC memory is faster and more reliable than MLC/TLC but it is also a fair bit more expensive.

The big caveat with HDDs is that if you get a bad one, it will usually fail within the first 1-2 years. If you get a good one and take reasonably good care of it from the early days, they will often last 7+ years. The oldest HDD I own which is still in service today is a 14 years old 80GB ATA-133 Western Digital and about half of those 14 years were spent spinning 24/7. It makes weird noises during spin-up but otherwise appears to still be working fine after it reaches operating RPM and temperature. I would not put any remotely important data on it but it gets the job done in my living room/guest PC.

 

[Conrad Pinto]

14-years! Woa! One question, Does reading data do as much damage as writing, since reading is only copying data into the cache (talking about HDDs).
For SSDs, individual cells have a limited number of times for which data can be written after which it fails. So can I read data for an unlimited number of times? (Theoretically).

 

[InvalidError]

And how many desktop users are going to write anywhere near 50Gb a day? None.

Build a computer with only 4GB RAM, install the OS with swapfile on your SSD and start using some memory-intensive applications. You could easily burn through more than 50GB/hour (14MB/s) thanks to swapping in this scenario.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

And how many desktop users are going to write anywhere near 50Gb a day? None.

Build a computer with only 4GB RAM, install the OS with swapfile on your SSD and start using some memory-intensive applications. You could easily burn through more than 50GB/hour (14MB/s) thanks to swapping in this scenario.

This is why we follow even a basic SSD optimization guide when setting up an SSD. Or buy a Samsung and let the Magician software do it for you.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

And how many desktop users are going to write anywhere near 50Gb a day? None.

Build a computer with only 4GB RAM, install the OS with swapfile on your SSD and start using some memory-intensive applications. You could easily burn through more than 50GB/hour (14MB/s) thanks to swapping in this scenario.

Also it's late and I'm not up for correcting it right now but your math is way off. If you could burn through that in a few hours we would not still have ongoing SSD endurance testing that has lasted for years. This article is based on the even older Samsung 840 and still estimates years and years of life from normal workloads.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung-ssd-840-testing-the-endurance-of-tlc-nand


" Furthermore, it should be kept in mind that all SMART values that predict lifespan are conservative; it's highly unlikely that your drive will drop dead once the WLC or MWI hits zero. There is a great example at XtremeSystems where a 256GB Samsung SSD 830 is currently at nearly 6,000TiB of writes. Its WLC hit zero at 828TiB of writes, which means its endurance is over seven times higher than what the SMART values predicted. That doesn't mean all drives are as durable but especially SSDs from NAND manufacturers (e.g. Intel, Crucial/Micron, Samsung etc.) seem to be more durable than what the SMART values and datasheets indicate, which isn't a surprise given that they can cherry-pick the highest quality NAND chips. "

 

[Conrad Pinto]

And how many desktop users are going to write anywhere near 50Gb a day? None.

Build a computer with only 4GB RAM, install the OS with swapfile on your SSD and start using some memory-intensive applications. You could easily burn through more than 50GB/hour (14MB/s) thanks to swapping in this scenario.

What would be your solution? Suppose you have only 4GB RAM, you can't avoid the page file or the system will run slowly. So what do you do?

 

[Conrad Pinto]

I want someone to answer my original question.
Will SSDs ever replace HDDs?
I will pick the answer to this as a solution.

 

[InvalidError]

14-years! Woa! One question, Does reading data do as much damage as writing, since reading is only copying data into the cache (talking about HDDs).
For SSDs, individual cells have a limited number of times for which data can be written after which it fails. So can I read data for an unlimited number of times? (Theoretically).

The main risk for HDDs is heads touching the recording media and that risk will be roughly the same regardless of the reason why the drive is being accessed.

For SSDs, reading has negligible effect on wear. Erasing and writing is what causes flash cells to fail - writing cells involves driving its gate beyond the cell's dielectric breakdown voltage to drive a charge into it, which in itself effectively is a controlled failure of the cell's electrical isolation. With each failure, the cell's leakage increases which in turn increases the probability of errors if the cell does not get rewritten before its last programmed state is too far gone.

Thankfully, all half-decent SSDs use many of the same error-correcting tricks HDDs use to reduce the likelihood of read failures when the raw block read contains some errors.

 

[i7Baby]

I want someone to answer my original question.
Will SSDs ever replace HDDs?
I will pick the answer to this as a solution.

Not in the foreseeable future

 

[InvalidError]

Will SSDs ever replace HDDs?

Not any time soon IMO.

At least not for people who are more interested in $/GB than performance.

Most people use 120-250GB SSDs for their OS and frequently used applications/games and 1-4TB HDDs for everything else.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

They already are. Many new laptops come with SSDs only. Find a new high end data center being built and I guarantee it has SSDs and not HDDs. I paid close to $300 for my 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 about 4 years ago. I just paid about $300 for my 500GB 840 Evo in November. Last week I saw the same 500Gb 840 Evo for $230. Prices continue to drop while the technology gets faster and more reliable. SSDs are already many times more durable than mechanical hard drives. Do a little research and you will find that to be true. Information saying otherwise is years out of date.

To be honest the only reason I kept mechanical drives is music and video storage. The cost per gigabyte of an SSD is still slightly too high for pure storage. I do use my 120GB Vertex 2 as a fast music drive though as there is no lag accessing almost 80Gb of music files as there is with a mechanical drive.

 

[Conrad Pinto]

Thanks a lot guys for your time. Its a little sad to learn that we will still need to worry about data devices, but what the hell, Samsung EVO 1TB is giving 63 years of life on 50GB/day endurance test! I hope it gets better by 2020.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Glad to help

 

[InvalidError]

Find a new high end data center being built and I guarantee it has SSDs and not HDDs.

That would be highly dependent on what sort of data is being stored there and why.

SSDs in datacenters are mostly useful for their high IOPS which enables them to serve all the most frequently accessed stuff quickly. For companies with huge archives of relatively rarely accessed stuff though, like the tons of Youtube or Facebook videos that almost nobody watches, HDDs are still king.

It is the same thing as people using SSD+HDD in their PCs, just on a 100-1000X bigger scale: SSD(s) for frequently used stuff, HDD(s) for everything else.

 

[Y0GI]

One more thing, my refurbished 2TB HDD is 70%, after it hits 100% capacity I won't write more data to it (by deleting old data 😛). Plus I use it for only 4 hours a day. While I'm at work the HDD is not in use (not powered up). Will these 2 activities improve its lifespan. I also use a surge protector.

You should never fill a HDD nor an SSD to 100%!! Only 90 % maximum! Otherwise you risk having problems with either drive.

A surge protector only protects against voltage spikes. For best protection and reliability of your drives, get a voltage regulating UPS. These will also protect against "brownouts", which the surge protector is not equipped to handle.

Yogi

 

[InvalidError]

You should never fill a HDD nor an SSD to 100%!! Only 90 % maximum! Otherwise you risk having problems with either drive.

The only "problem" with filling a HDD to 100% is defragmenting. I disable defragmenting on my data partitions to avoid wasting time, power and wear on that. I will "defrag" when I move data to one of my backup drives or to a new HDD.

With SSDs having wear-leveling and TRIM, filling them is not nearly as much of a problem as it used to be apart from taking a performance hit from having to work harder to find the best way to handle writes.