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SSD Reliability...is it better than HDD? (Answers!?)

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For real return rates on SSDs, I highly recommend looking at http://www.behardware.com/articles/862-7/components-returns-rates-6.html

I have had 2 SSDs fail. Both failed without any warning, and far from the flash endurance level. If you are using windows, I highly recommend hddled, which is a program that can track your reads and writes per disk. For example, with my computer up 13 hours I have had 1.39gb of data written to my ssd and 2.31gb of data read from it.
 
I find older HDD's a lot more reliable than newer ones. Still rockin an IDE Caviar Black. ;) As a matter of fact, my old 8Mb drive has only been dead for about a month now. They were tough little buggers.

I have an old, second hand Maxtor 500 MiB EIDE drive that still works perfectly and has no defects OR relocated sectors. Although, to be fair, I haven't used it much in fifteen years. I wasn't the original owner either, I bought it used.
 
I'm a bit late to the game here, but what a good read. I know the article is a couple years old, but it certainly helps put things into perspective. Thank you ED for putting up the info.

I find it kind of ironic that I actually work the Helpdesk for Micron (who also owns IMFT). I get to see the actual images taken from the electronic microscopes, infrared sensors, and other tools used to make NAND. Let me tell you... there is a LOT of data being processed for each batch (wafer). Very fascinating. They use a program to actually map out the "defects" that the tools detect in the wafer as it's being manufactured. It's quite interesting to remote into a engineer's PC and see a bunch of the things they are working on ;)

Obviously, I can't spill the beans on what's around the corner, but I'll tell you guys that it is exciting ;)
 
My OCZ Trion 100 240Gb died suddenly after only approx 6 months of daily usage.... this was one of the first SSD's I've ever used, acquired new with my Samsung Pro SSD 240Gb at same time, that one is still performing but not impressed with the state of SSD reliability unless its very vendor specific.. however my "ancient" WD 1TB blacks used daily for last 4 years now still keep performing well.

I would never recommend anything OCZ related to anyone, pitty cause' they were pretty good back in the DDR2 days..
 
Yeah, I know, Necromongering here.

I saw this article regarding HDD vs. SSD reliability from Backblaze and thought it would be worth posting.

Q1-2021-HDD-vs-SDD-Lifetime.png

Perhaps the discussion will be "but with SSD you get no warning" as is generally the case. But still.........

Full article here.
 
I wonder that looks like when the SSDs were around for an average of over 4 years... or I wonder what the failure rate for HDDs are after a hair over 12 months.

This data feels like apples and oranges to me... anyone else?
 
I think MTBF might be more illustrative, or at least provide an extra dimension of information.
 
I would say it all depends on many factors. For some things, SSD are better while for other it's hard to replace HDD.
Looking only at the posted table, we can see a huge difference in drives age - ~12 vs ~49 months. I wish to see a failure rate at ~3 years of continuous work for both, SSD and HDD as this is a minimum expected life for a drive ... or at least a while ago it was recommended to replace drives at least every 3 years of continuous work. As far as it's nice to see some results and comparison then I find this report just a bunch of results put into some tables.

I also wonder how it will look like in 2-3 years when enterprise SSD will run on QLC or more cells, as higher density will require that. Right now datacenter SSD are all MLC and new series (from the last 12 months) are already TLC.
I guess that the cost of a replacement is calculated as we already went down from $1k USD per 400GB SSD to about $100 (count server/enterprise series SSD) so even when will be a higher failure rate in the same period then it will be still cheaper.
 
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There was remarked in the article that the SSDs tended to be boot drives whereas the HDDs are trending to be storage. Adoption of SSDs impacts the data as they've been more slowly coming into systems (pricing is still higher than HDDs on a $/GB basis). This info should be more relevant as time wears on (pun intended).
 
Lifetime is a delicate matter because we don`t understand the necessary factors involved.

According to my theory, the mechanics of a HDD is a sensitive issue because the quality-range of the production is much larger than that of a SSD. There are moving parts that have to work in a accuracy that is unchallenged in any other mechanics. The manufacturing is simply unable to hold up the required precision in order to have a low failure rate. In this case i think it can`t be truly expanded to a value lower than 5% failure. Failure simply means, the mechanics is lacking the required accuracy in order to maintain more than 1 year without failure. Unlike SSD, which comes down to a controller and NAND, defective mechanics is not able to be restored. Of course, if there are defective "sectors" they can be detected and then become wiped out of access. The HDD may detect it automatically by a algorithm, not much a user have to do (so the Bytes may vary dependable on sectors available). However... this will not affect the overall lifetime, unless the platter is generally of very bad quality. Sure, there are some processors on a HDD aswell (sometimes even NAND as a cache), but they got the usual failure rate of any well made chips nowadays.

In term the mechanics is well made, a HDD may have the same lifespan such as a SSD. In general, for an HDD surpassing 5 year of use they may have same failure rate and lifetime such as any SSD, but up to this point a HDD have to pass the test of time (and work)... A HDD nowadays is build more complex than a SSD. A SSD is simply a huge array of transistors and the cost including failure rate can be reduced a lot with new improvements in manufacturing. With HDD the matter is more difficult because there is simply some limiting laws of physics and with improved size and performance the challenge in manufacturing can be higher than that of the best SSD. In my mind, the HDDs nowadays are priced to low and i expect a price jump in the future. The only reason the price is still rather low is because usually they simply can`t charge more, else a SSD may just provide a better overall value. Another reason is because only the biggest drives are using the best technology, so the manufacturer can save up on cost for any HDD midrange or even lower than this. Of course, on a HDD with 16 TB and more size, the cost of using a expensive technology is lower compared to the total price of the drive.

Still, some of the new technology, especially Helium-Seal, is not as foolproof as we may assume. Sealing away Helium inside those drives is still a huge challenge because this gas is very volatile and it may even be able to penetrate something as dense as iron... sounds like a joke but this is science. Helium can even leave the earth atmosphere at a very slow pace. Yes, a rocket need a extremely fast speed in order to leave earth but this is not a absolute number, it depends on the material. So, over time, the drive may lose some of the Helium inside, which is just another issue out of many other issues a high performing HDD may experience.

Regarding SSD, as long as the controller is build well and not overheating, they can last almost forever. The NAND may have defective sectors but this is not a big issue because those "bad sectors" can be detected and then simply wiped out of access. The main issue, at least in the beginning of the SSD-era, was the controller. Nowadays the controller is developed so high, it is almost foolproof with just a few failures such as with any other processor.

As for the use: In general everything is common sense and both HDD and SSD got unique traits i do not want to miss. A HDD is great as a backup of any data, no matter the size, and in my mind for long term data storage it an be more safe than a SSD, because a SSD-NAND is to a certain extend more volatile than that of a platter. If the mechanics is bad, a platter can still be read by a data recovery lab (at a high cost), this procedure will not work with NAND. If NAND is defective, data is ultimately lost, because the charge is simply gone without any trace.

In general, the sequential read of a HDD is nowadays sufficient for any passive media streaming, so it`s great as a media-center and data-center for host and storage. As a worker-drive with active editing and of course boot- or gamerdrive a SSD is supreme, simply because of the performance and the high general reliability. However, if the data is huge (media-center and data-center, especially backup) a SSD with sufficient space is extremely expensive along with other disadvantages (data recovery of defective NAND is not possible).


Surely, HDDs even today are still relevant to us, but with increased capacity and lower SSD cost, a HDD may move to more specialized customers with special needs, especially the need of huge space. So, in 10 years or even sooner, there will only be few consumer-HDDs because SSD will replace almost any of the use previously done by a HDD, in as good as any consumer-device. We will only see HDDs as a cheap backup-storage in the consumer-market at a size lower than 10 TB (low to midrange).

More advanced backup-solutions including media and datacenter is more focused toward a minority as the space is so extremely big (above 10 TB as a single drive or even a NAS-array of 20 TB and more). So in general, HDDs will be for special needs and SSDs will soon be dominating almost any place... no matter consumer or industry.

This means, the previously highly developed "1.8 to 2.5 inch" HDDs are soon gone because there is simply no demand anymore, a SSD can take over this job; and the very huge enterprise HDDs (for media and storage) will be the new direction the development have to be focused on. So, we will see more of the heavy and huge 3.5 inch HDDs and the lower ones may slowly "fade away"...

Nowadays even consoles and almost any notebook is build using a SSD and this direction is only increasing. So, HDDs are slowly shifting toward special needs, especially industry.
 
I'm not sure if it's somehow related or it's my luck, but yesterday I noticed that 2 of my M.2 SSD are dead. One died during tests, one wasn't in use for a month, and I wanted to use it as a replacement. One is HP FX900 Pro which has maybe a half year, and another one is an almost new KLEVV CRAS C930. Both are using the InnoGrit IG5236 controller, and I also have Acer Predator GM7000, which is exactly the same as the HP FX900 Pro and was randomly dropping from RAID for the past half year.
I don't want to create any weird theories, but all three SSD are using the same controller and have a similar design.
 
Heh, with your luck of things dieing, I wouldn't hold my breath for link between them. :p
 
Trash controllers? Could they be replaced to bring the SSD back to life? To me this the same as a HDD's controller board going bad. Only difference is one is bolt on and the other is soldered.

Obviously, not a economical repair unless you've got the equipment to DIY or the value of information on the SSD is greater than the repair.
 
As I said, it's maybe my luck, but you can read on Amazon or other large stores that some users report the same issues, like they had DOA or SSD is randomly invisible. There are still not enough comments to be sure.
Btw. Acer and HP SSD are manufactured by BIWIN, so GM7000 and FX900 Pro are exactly the same SSD, and ID is different but firmware has the same number. KLEVV is Hynix brand and is something else. That KLEVV SSD is not available in stores yet, so you won't find users' comments. GM7000 had like 10% bad comments on Amazon when I was checking it the last time, but it's not available anymore, so can't read them. 17% of bad comments about the FX900 Pro are related to what I have with my SSD. Again 17% is still only a couple of comments, so hard to make a global issue out of that. Those who are happy with the product usually don't say anything.
I only add that I have no problems with any other Acer, HP or KLEVV SSD. In my gaming PC runs Acer GM7 for two months 24/7 so far. Another HP and Acer are working in other computers and also KLEVV C910 SSD passed long tests without problems.

I only lost test results for reviews, so have to rerun everything. Not a big problem except for the wasted time and another delay.
 
To each their own, but the cost /GB for SSDs and even NVMe-based M.2 SSDs is so low that there are few reasons not to put programs on your SSD. I would think you would want your applications on the fastest storage so those you use open fast and have access to fast storage if needed. What's the point of putting your OS on it, but every application opens from a slow platter? If you want the feels of a fast OS, the programs should also launch from the fastest drive. :)

I run a 2TB NVMe M.2 drive and partitioned it around 300GB (did this with 1TB drive too). This holds the OS and all my programs and benchmarks on the fastest storage medium I have. The remainder is for games (along with another M.2 drive for additional games). It all depends on what hardware you have. But today (or for several years now really), there's no way I'd put programs on a spinner if I could help it.
 
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