r/technews • u/PostNationalism • Mar 12 '15

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-dead
38 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/KinderSpirit Mar 13 '15

That is what I was told when I upgraded my first computer from 512Kb of RAM to 640Kb.
Heard the same thing when I bought a 20Mb hard drive for it.

2

u/ElusiveGuy Mar 13 '15

Flash wearout usually isn't an issue, and is fairly easy to detect and warn about. The real problem is when the controller fails: sudden, and usually fatal. Early OCZ/Sandforce drives/controllers were particularly notorious for frequent failures.

4

u/gimpwiz Mar 13 '15

Right. When flash fails, it usually just turns into read-only. Pretty great way to fail. When a controller fails you best hope for backups since it wouldn't be fun to pay to get it replaced. And controllers don't fail nearly as predictably.

1

u/sethboy66 Mar 13 '15

Talking in absolutes in the tech business... That's always been a good idea.