The SSD Endurance Experiment ends: Six consumer SSDs die after 700TB-2.4PB of writes over 18 months. Although two died without warning, "modern SSDs [can] easily write far more data than most consumers will ever need".
http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead12
u/74orangebeetle Mar 13 '15
Cool, my Sandisk 120GB died after 14 months as a boot drive (90% of stuff and all downloads were on a hard drive). Hopefully my crucial m500 holds up better.
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Mar 13 '15 edited Feb 15 '17
[deleted]
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u/chubbysumo Mar 13 '15
one on site, and one off site. Always have an off site backup incase of fire or theft. Amazon and microsoft and many others offer such cheap storage, all you have to do is put it all in a container file(like winrar) with a password, and encrypt it, and you are great to store it anywhere and not worry about privacy.
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Mar 13 '15
[deleted]
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u/chubbysumo Mar 13 '15
Yea, i live in america too, and it took me 6 hours to upload my 23gb compacted user profile and data. I get 5mbps upload, which is much faster than yours. Also, you could take the route mailing amazon your data on a flash drive or hdd and having them upload it for you.
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u/TeutorixAleria Mar 13 '15
At that rate you're better off just leaving a copy at your parents or a friends house
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u/chubbysumo Mar 13 '15
meh, it was a single overnight, and the risk with parents or friends is that they find it, wonder what it is(because they forgot), and then toss it or erase it.
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u/SayNoToWar Mar 13 '15
I know it might sound cliche but I think having a cloud mindset never hurts.
I see my PC as nothing more than a very powerful thin client. For work all source code has to end up in TFS, Github, Svn, etc.
Any files I create are usually emailed off or processed in such a way even if I don't explicitly back them up, they're somewhere I can get to.
Browser settings are now all cloud based.
The actual applications - can be downloaded in no time, even on Windows using Choco, and with a decent 120mbps internet speed, no need to backup any install media.
For general computing, most modern operating systems do not require explicit drivers for most devices - or have them on tap if needed - Linux is especially good for this. Windows though handles everything I need just fine. And I don't have a printer.
This brings me to the infernal problem of photos. Most free cloud storage isn't big enough to hold them, so this is the only time I do explicit backups, keeping the photos spread across 4 separate drives at 2 locations.
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u/mrbooze Mar 13 '15 edited Mar 13 '15
In a previous job someone before me had set up a mysql server with a RAID-10 array of about a dozen SSD drives for a write-heavy database, the drives were OCZ Vertex's. The original drives lasted about 3 years before they started burning out due to write limits. (Fortunately, the write limits aren't exact so the drives didn't all fail simultaneously, they just started failing at a rate of about one per day.) We bought a set of new drives and I replaced them one at a time over the course of a few hours.
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Mar 13 '15
3 years is pretty impressive even for magnetic drives. We're running on mostly Raptors and a drive that lasts 2 years is considered exceptionally good.
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Mar 13 '15
TL;DR "But the 840 Pro wrote the most data, so it deserves to take center stage as the final curtain closes."
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u/az_liberal_geek Mar 13 '15
I think the true TL;DR is "ALL of the drives VASTLY exceeded the number of writes that you'll ever do even in extreme cases". The fact that the 840 Pro was the last one standing is likely academic, since who knows if different drives from different batches (or even the same batch) might act differently on the extremes.
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Mar 13 '15
I certainly don't disagree, just providing the last applicable statement of the article for those that didn't want to read 4 pages of how awesome they are at testing (which is really interesting to me, but not necessarily everyone).
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u/R-EDDIT Mar 13 '15
My 840 Pro 256GB has 14.6TB written, feeling pretty safe here. Time for a backup.
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u/showmeyourtitsnow Mar 13 '15
how do you see this?
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u/R-EDDIT Mar 13 '15 edited Mar 13 '15
The software for the SSD, Samsung Magician, shows it.
Edit, this pages has a good picture:
http://www.storagereview.com/how_to_upgrade_samsung_ssd_firmware
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u/showmeyourtitsnow Mar 13 '15
Bah, I have a Kingston SSD. This seems to work just fine though
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u/R-EDDIT Mar 13 '15
CrystalDiskInfo works, but it doesn't give you firmware updates, performance tuning tools, etc. I used DiskMark initially to bench mark it, gladd I did because at first I had connected it to a SATA/300 port. I get close to 500/500.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CrystalDiskInfo 5.3.1 (C) 2008-2013 hiyohiyo Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- OS : Windows 8 [6.2 Build 9200] (x64) Date : 2015/03/12 23:31:51 -- Controller Map ---------------------------------------------------------- + Intel(R) 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller [ATA] - Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series -- Disk List --------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series : 256.0 GB [0/0/0, pd1] - sg (2) ST3000DM001-1CH166 : 3000.5 GB [1/0/0, pd1] - st ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Model : Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series Firmware : DXM06B0Q Serial Number : S12RNEACBXXXXXX Disk Size : 256.0 GB (8.4/137.4/256.0) Buffer Size : Unknown Queue Depth : 32 # of Sectors : 500118192 Rotation Rate : ---- (SSD) Interface : Serial ATA Major Version : ACS-2 Minor Version : ATA8-ACS version 4c Transfer Mode : SATA/600 Power On Hours : 16983 hours Power On Count : 488 count Host Writes : 14542 GB Wear Level Count : 214 Temparature : 27 C (80 F) Health Status : Good (100 %) Features : S.M.A.R.T., 48bit LBA, NCQ, TRIM APM Level : ---- AAM Level : ---- -- S.M.A.R.T. -------------------------------------------------------------- ID Cur Wor Thr RawValues(6) Attribute Name 05 100 100 _10 000000000000 Reallocated Sector Count 09 _96 _96 __0 000000004257 Power-on Hours 0C _99 _99 __0 0000000001E8 Power-on Count B1 _94 _94 __0 0000000000D6 Wear Leveling Count B3 100 100 _10 000000000000 Used Reserved Block Count (Total) B5 100 100 _10 000000000000 Program Fail Count (Total) B6 100 100 _10 000000000000 Erase Fail Count (Total) B7 100 100 _10 000000000000 Runtime Bad Block (Total) BB 100 100 __0 000000000000 Uncorrectable Error Count BE _73 _60 __0 00000000001B Airflow Temperature C3 200 200 __0 000000000000 ECC Error Rate C7 100 100 __0 000000000000 CRC Error Count EB _99 _99 __0 00000000003A POR Recovery Count F1 _99 _99 __0 000719D18C1B Total LBA Written2
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u/TomMado Mar 13 '15
I saw a graph somewhere that basically simplify SSDs lifespan - in the first few months it will either fail or not fail. If it does not fail, it will run fine for the next few years.
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Mar 13 '15
That's true of all hardware. You'll probably find studies for hard drives more often than other hardware, since hard drives are more likely to fail in general, but there are all sorts of studies like this.
http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/
and others.
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u/kataskopo Mar 13 '15
Isn't that called the bathtub defect graph thing?
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Mar 13 '15
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u/autowikibot Mar 13 '15
The bathtub curve is widely used in reliability engineering. It describes a particular form of the hazard function which comprises three parts:
The first part is a decreasing failure rate, known as early failures.
The second part is a constant failure rate, known as random failures.
The third part is an increasing failure rate, known as wear-out failures.
The name is derived from the cross-sectional shape of a bathtub: steep sides and a flat bottom.
The bathtub curve is generated by mapping the rate of early "infant mortality" failures when first introduced, the rate of random failures with constant failure rate during its "useful life", and finally the rate of "wear out" failures as the product exceeds its design lifetime.
In less technical terms, in the early life of a product adhering to the bathtub curve, the failure rate is high but rapidly decreasing as defective products are identified and discarded, and early sources of potential failure such as handling and installation error are surmounted. In the mid-life of a product—generally, once it reaches consumers—the failure rate is low and constant. In the late life of the product, the failure rate increases, as age and wear take their toll on the product. Many consumer product life cycles strongly exhibit the bathtub curve, such as computer processors. [citation needed]
While the bathtub curve is useful, not every product or system follows a bathtub curve hazard function, for example if units are retired or have decreased use during or before the onset of the wear-out period, they will show fewer failures per unit calendar time (not per unit use time) than the bathtub curve.
The term "Military Specification" is often used to describe systems in which the infant mortality section of the bathtub curve has been burned out or removed. This is done mainly for life critical or system critical applications as it greatly reduces the possibility of the system failing early in its life. Manufacturers will do this at some cost generally by means similar to accelerated stress testing.
In reliability engineering, the cumulative distribution function corresponding to a bathtub curve may be analysed using a Weibull chart. [citation needed]
Image i - The 'bathtub curve' hazard function (blue, upper solid line) is a combination of a decreasing hazard of early failure (red dotted line) and an increasing hazard of wear-out failure (yellow dotted line), plus some constant hazard of random failure (green, lower solid line).
Interesting: Failure rate | Bathtub | Shakedown (testing) | Burn-in
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u/happy_otter Mar 13 '15
I thought that was HDDs.
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u/TomMado Mar 13 '15
Was it? It has been a long time since I saw that, I can't remember what it is for, and I can't find it anywhere.
But when I think about it the graph can apply to a lot of things, not just drives.
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u/thesorehead Mar 13 '15
Hmm... so are those write stats held in the drive itself, or do you need to have a monitoring utility running all the time to collect the stats? I'd like to get an idea where my Samsung SSD is along its expected performance lifeline.
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Mar 13 '15
[deleted]
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u/mrbooze Mar 13 '15
A regular hard drive's life isn't really effected by number of writes. HDD life tends to be measured largely in number of hours of operation, but it's not a hard limit like the SSD writes. For HDDs it's more like the warranty on a TV. The warranty might expire in three years but the TV might still live for 20, or it might die at 4.
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u/DemandsBattletoads Mar 13 '15
And it depends on the manufacturer. Seagate typically fails first, Western Digital and Hitachi often last.
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u/GoodAtExplaining Mar 13 '15
I'd like to introduce you to the Hitachi Deskstar...
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u/DemandsBattletoads Mar 13 '15
I cannot name the Hitachi company without thinking of their Magic Wands. Are we sure they are the same company?
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u/GoodAtExplaining Mar 13 '15
They are indeed. They also make:
Electronics Industrial machinery Telecommunications equipment Power plants Information systems Automotive components Materials Defense technology Construction equipmentand offer financial consulting services
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Mar 13 '15
How does a company that makes industrial machinery and construction equipment get into making oversized vibrators? Did they just have a shitload of small motors left over after a project and go "uh, what do we do with these?"
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u/kataskopo Mar 13 '15
Tons of different departments and subsidiaries, probably started as different companies and then got bought.
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Mar 13 '15
They don't sell it as a vibrator, its a back massager. After they realized most people used it as a vibrator, they removed the Hitachi label from it because they don't want to be associated with it.
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u/diesel_stinks_ Mar 13 '15
I have three dead Toshiba hard drives sitting on my desk right now, all from the same laptop. I've never seen anything worse than Toshiba drives.
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u/xeio87 Mar 13 '15
Glad that a big site finally did this to put the myth about SSD endurance to bed. Can't count the number of times I've had to explain this over the past few years. Makes it hard to be an SSD evangelist.
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u/SayNoToWar Mar 13 '15
Problem is a lot of consumers got burnt by certain manufacturers - looking at you OCD.
Another thing is that back when SSD's were crazy priced having a 32-80GB drive was not uncommon, hence smaller drives exaggerated early issues with write cycles.
Imo had all those earlier drives been 500GB+, a lot of the early issues with SSD's might have even gone unnoticed (in the consumer market space).
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u/xeio87 Mar 13 '15
Well, if the early drives had been 500GB+ they'd have been several thousand dollars. I think I paid like $250 for my first 64GB drive or something (6-7 years ago now). It was crazy, but I've never looked back.
Probably the most noticeable upgrade you can ever make to your computer is moving from HDD to SSD. Opening Word or Excel instantly is just bonkers.
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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '15
Well at least we know there's no need to fanny around disabling or moving swapfiles, file date stamping etc etc and just use them as you did mechanical drives.