Would you go SSD?

[jrw]

Nowadays when memory grows very quickly current 64GB SSDs will be very outdated in say 5-7 years - not to mention 39 years

Mine is 128gb but exactly, 5 years and i aint gonna want it anyway....or it will go in an old laptop for VCDS!

[cheezemonkhai]

Its a crucial M4 and it is only a boot/work drive and all the big stuff is on normal drives.

That's an MLC drive. Even with Trim, there will come a point where writes are unreliable.

Every 1 bit write is a read into ram, erase (write by pulling all high), modify the in memory data, write the modified data to disk and verify.

That's for a large number of bits at a time, even if you only write one.

Not an estimate as they are standard Lenovo SSD's that have been running XP for 4 years (with no trim support either).

The 4 year old drives, will likely be SLC drives. They are a lor more resiliant than the MLC ones, but also a lot more.

Regardless of the fact they have lasted 4 years, I wouldn't trust important data to them and expect it to come back 100% right.

Not that I'd fully trust a single HDD either for a long time period.

I have no doubt that my SSD will last a hell of a lot longer than 3 years. Added to the fact how much a 128gb ssd will be in 3 years is neither here nor there to me really and I will have upgraded my PC's and laptops a couple of times by then anyway.

They would probably outlast any standard hdd nowadays anyway.

Have also found this article on them:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/20646

Crucial wouldn't confirm the write-erase limit of the m4's flash chips, but it does publish endurance specifications for the drive as a whole. According to the company, the m4 can write 72 terabytes of data over its lifetime. Amortize that over a five-year span, and you're looking at 40GB per day. Which is a lot. 72TB is also the same Total Bytes Written (TBW) rating that Crucial slaps on the C300. All flavors of the old RealSSD share this rating, but 64GB variants of the m4 do not. The new drive's smallest capacity point is limited to 36TB of writes, which still works out to 20GB a day for five years.

On an average day i would probably struggle to hit 1gb, call it 5gb for arguements sake and that works out at 39 years. Need i say more?

That's 72TB, assuming you're writing the full block at a time.

If you were to write a small fraction of that data, but all in small changes of a few bits, then that number will be much much lower.

For example if a write size is 4MB at a time, then the erase/write of 4MB files might give you a big number.

However the way the tech works, is that if you write 1 bit, 1 byte or 100k, then the whole 4MB has to be erased/written cycled as I said above.

You can see from that how the claimed 72TB writes could actually become a very small fraction of that.

I'm not saying some people won't get drives that work for long periods for them, just like some HDD's last 15 years.

However, SSD drives have a habbit or silently losing data while apearing to still be ok, when they go duff.

What I'm saying is don't trust an old drive with important data.

Where did you get it from? SSDs come with 3 years warranty, and their lifespan is calculated @~5 years at extremly harsh conditions. In normal conditions that apply to 99.99% of users SSD should last at least twice this like not more...

For an non enterprise MLC drive, it's typically 5 years at home user levels.

If you stuck a load of home user drives in a raid array in use for a database, it wouldn't be pretty.

That's the same for most things though.

SSD, HDD, tape and even paper all have their place in keeping data. They key is to know the limitations of the technologies you've chosen.

Edited 29 June, 2012 by cheezemonkhai

[jrw]

That's an MLC drive. Even with Trim, there will come a point where writes are unreliable.

Every 1 bit write is a read into ram, erase (write by pulling all high), modify the in memory data, write the modified data to disk and verify.

That's for a large number of bits at a time, even if you only write one.

The 4 year old drives, will likely be SLC drives. They are a lor more resiliant than the MLC ones, but also a lot more.

Regardless of the fact they have lasted 4 years, I wouldn't trust important data to them and expect it to come back 100% right.

Not that I'd fully trust a single HDD either for a long time period.

That's 72TB, assuming you're writing the full block at a time.

If you were to write a small fraction of that data, but all in small changes of a few bits, then that number will be much much lower.

For example if a write size is 4MB at a time, then the erase/write of 4MB files might give you a big number.

However the way the tech works, is that if you write 1 bit, 1 byte or 100k, then the whole 4MB has to be erased/written cycled as I said above.

You can see from that how the claimed 72TB writes could actually become a very small fraction of that.

I'm not saying some people won't get drives that work for long periods for them, just like some HDD's last 15 years.

However, SSD drives have a habbit or silently losing data while apearing to still be ok, when they go duff.

What I'm saying is don't trust an old drive with important data.

For an non enterprise MLC drive, it's typically 5 years at home user levels.

If you stuck a load of home user drives in a raid array in use for a database, it wouldn't be pretty.

That's the same for most things though.

SSD, HDD, tape and even paper all have their place in keeping data. They key is to know the limitations of the technologies you've chosen.

So its no odds to you then, you don't trust old drives full stop so a moot argument. But still even writing a 4mb cluster even if you are writing 1 bit it will still last longer than 3 years even if you constantly write to it else they wouldn't offer 3 years warranty.

Besides the fact that most mech drives now only come with 1 years warranty and the SSD's come with 3.

I paid £80 for mine and will get my money's worth out of it even if it packs up after 3 years. As i said, a lot happens in 3 years in the tech world.

[cheezemonkhai]

So its no odds to you then, you don't trust old drives full stop so a moot argument. But still even writing a 4mb cluster even if you are writing 1 bit it will still last longer than 3 years even if you constantly write to it else they wouldn't offer 3 years warranty.

Like hard drives used to offer a 5 year warranty?

It's a gamble that most of your drives won't get killed in the warranty period.

If people started to abuse home drives, the warranty would go down.

If prices drop, ditto on that too. Mainly because they have to make the money on everything at the end of the day.

Besides the fact that most mech drives now only come with 1 years warranty and the SSD's come with 3.

I paid £80 for mine and will get my money's worth out of it even if it packs up after 3 years. As i said, a lot happens in 3 years in the tech world.

Yes most home user drives come with 1 year.

Other point I'd make is that £80 will get you 128GB or 2-3TB, which is a 20-30 fold capacity increase for the same money on disk.

I think people are now finding, it's not out of place to trade a little bit of flash and a much bigger chunk of disk, kind of like a HSM.

Edited 29 June, 2012 by cheezemonkhai

[jrw]

Like hard drives used to offer a 5 year warranty?

It's a gamble that most of your drives won't get killed in the warranty period.

If people started to abuse home drives, the warranty would go down.

If prices drop, ditto on that too. Mainly because they have to make the money on everything at the end of the day.

Yes most home user drives come with 1 year.

Other point I'd make is that £80 will get you 128GB or 2-3TB, which is a 20-30 fold capacity increase for the same money on disk.

I think people are now finding, it's not out of place to trade a little bit of flash and a much bigger chunk of disk, kind of like a HSM.

£80 will not get you 3tb. I have a 3tb on order for £115. I think most people know that these are good for OS drives and for laptops, netbooks, facebook machines etc.

[Guest]

Not reliable enough yet. With an estimated life span of just 3 years, it's simply not good enough yet to take the plunge.

I've yet to see even an early SSD fail. I've been running many sizes over the last couple of years and they are in constant use 24/7 in commercial applications where they are canned mercilessly. We changed to SSD to gain a speed increases and reliability on the network and since doing so have had zero SSD failures. Previously, one hd per six months would go down. I note many manufacturers quoting big MTBF (mean time between failures) of several hundreds of thousands of hours and the one I list below, the kingston 128GB has a 1,000.000 hour MTBF.

I note Dabs.com are offering a good deal on the Kingston 128GB at just £59.95 including free delivery. Take a look here: http://www.dabs.com/products/kingston-128gb-ssdnow-v200-sata-6gb-s-2-5--solid-state-drive-7V53.html?utm_source=retention+email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email280612-kingstonSSD&utm_content=i700

[cheezemonkhai]

£80 will not get you 3tb. I have a 3tb on order for £115. I think most people know that these are good for OS drives and for laptops, netbooks, facebook machines etc.

I'm currently paying well under that when ordering in smal quantities (circa 6-12) , so I'd be amazed if you can't pick up a 3TB drive for that on the retail soon or very soon. Still moot, though as it's 20 times the capacity for the same price, even at 2TB.

I've yet to see even an early SSD fail.

Happy to send you one that won't reliably hold data. They fail 'early' same as everything else.

I've been running many sizes over the last couple of years and they are in constant use 24/7 in commercial applications where they are canned mercilessly.

Define caned mercilessly though. Are you running a tier 1 DB on them, using them as a massive read buffer for VDI or VMs or something else?

We changed to SSD to gain a speed increases and reliability on the network and since doing so have had zero SSD failures. Previously, one hd per six months would go down. I note many manufacturers quoting big MTBF (mean time between failures) of several hundreds of thousands of hours and the one I list below, the kingston 128GB has a 1,000.000 hour MTBF.

You are aware that the MTBF doesn't work that a time of 1,000,000 hours will mean that's the average time they live?

Most hard disks have an MTBF of over 1million hours, and you'd not use that to say they'd never fail.

Anyway, as I've said, different things, different uses and different price points.

Best thing you can actually do is put your inactive data in a trusted archive, so that you can have a small fast primary system and a nice small backup window for keeping your live data safe.

[lmb]

SSD, HDD, tape and even paper all have their place in keeping data. They key is to know the limitations of the technologies you've chosen.

All that home user needs to know is that SSDs are reliable enough to be not worried about the data stuck on them. I'm more concerned about HDD than SSD. Though I keep my backups on two HDDs

[Chronicbint]

You dont buy an SSD to keep critical data on, you buy them for the speed. Even if you do have data on them I would expect most sane people do backups. I use my SSD for the OS and most common Apps/Games, no data. Data is on several other HDD, backed up to a server and also backed up to cloud storage. However once 512g SSD prices drop a bit more I will be doing away with the physical drives on my desktop and just using SSD's(with a backup routine in place).

With prices dropping all the time its a no brainer to get an SSD as a OS/App drive, they really do make the computing experience much better.

[mbames]

128Gb Kingston SSD for £60 from Dabs

http://www.dabs.com/...7V53.html?src=2

Prices ramp up steeply if you want a lot of storage.

I put one of these in my ageing Dell Pentium D about 12 months ago (maybe a bit longer) and it gave the machine a new lease of life. I have a 750GB for data, etc. Shifted all my users profiles from the SSD to the normal hard drive. At £60 it is an investment not to be missed out on!

[Guest]

Happy to send you one that won't reliably hold data. They fail 'early' same as everything else.

I didn't say they don't fail. Merely, I haven't seen one yet. You seemed to imply they fail all the time and have a very short life which is completely untrue. SSD's are widely used now and the evidence is the oposite to what you are saying. Electronics of any kind will usually last a long time but, like a light bulb, one or two may go early. But it's rare in the overall event of things. We have around 400 SSD's in constant use around our organisation and have had for just over two years. So far zero failures, zero data lost, faster, much faster network. I know this because I am one of the network managers and I also build for our organisation. In spite of the slightly small sizes available at the moment, they are my first choice instead of conventional hds'. The smaller sizes are easily manageable with the server protocols available now.

Define caned mercilessly though. Are you running a tier 1 DB on them, using them as a massive read buffer for VDI or VMs or something else?

We do exactly the same with SSD's that we have always done (and still do on one other network) with conventional hd's. We still get conventional hd's go out to lunch on the other network.

You are aware that the MTBF doesn't work that a time of 1,000,000 hours will mean that's the average time they live?

Yes! but the average seems to run into 100,000's of hours unlike conventional hd's.

Most hard disks have an MTBF of over 1million hours, and you'd not use that to say they'd never fail.

Show me a conventional hd that has a MTBF of 1,000,000 hrs! There isn't one! MTBF's for most hd's are in the region of 60,000 to 88,000 hours. Even the hardened military grade that we have been running in small quantities for experimental purposes are not really any different. But at least a nuclear exchange would mean I can still be at my desk writting letters or some such stuff and be able to save it to the hd.

Anyway, as I've said, different things, different uses and different price points. Yes!

Best thing you can actually do is put your inactive data in a trusted archive, so that you can have a small fast primary system and a nice small backup window for keeping your live data safe. That's what we do, plus a whole load more.

[cheezemonkhai]

Show me a conventional hd that has a MTBF of 1,000,000 hrs! There isn't one! MTBF's for most hd's are in the region of 60,000 to 88,000 hours. Even the hardened military grade that we have been running in small quantities for experimental purposes are not really any different. But at least a nuclear exchange would mean I can still be at my desk writting letters or some such stuff and be able to save it to the hd.

Since I used to work in the Hard disk and storage industry, I'll be happy to oblige.

There are plain desktop drives (and most of the below are fairly standard anyway) with >1 million too.

WD RE3 1.2million hours:

http://www.wdc.com/w...2879-701281.pdf

Seagate Cheetah 15k 1.6 million hours:

http://www.seagate.c...77.3-1007gb.pdf

Seagate Consellation ES2 range 1.2 million hours:

http://www.seagate.c...5-4-1111-gb.pdf

Seagate SV 1 million hours:

http://www.seagate.c...79-6-1112gb.pdf

I have personally destroyed SSD's doing tests specifically designed to see how they cope with workloads.

I've also killed a fair few hard disks too, but most HDD's die due to an issue that was not picked up at the time of manufacture.

If they dropped the HDD capacity a bit, then they could be made massively more reliable, however most people take the space trade off, just as they do for speed on an SSD.

No they won't be useless in a laptop, but I don't understand why everyone is so happy to pay high high prices for a gain in some ways and a loss in others.

For some reason if the SSD industry says we're all fine and it'll take over the world they believe it.

Since the fabs used to make NAND are also used to make chips, I personally don't think NAND will do it.

Now other solid state might well do so, but nothing out there is without it's issues (HDDs included

Edited 30 June, 2012 by cheezemonkhai

[Guest]

MTBF's for most hd's are in the region of 60,000 to 88,000 hours real world. And now of course the manufacturers are increasingly using the less than 1% pa failure rate description which according to our rep, means some hd's are getting less reliable. But in reality how can anyone make a judgement about the 'less than' description, incidentallly used in one of your links? It's almost meaningless if you think about it. The reason more and more people are doing the same as our organisation is the speed and reliability you get from ssd's. Your test results, while valid for you I'm sure, are not representative of what happens in the real world. I and others know this due to the improvement we get from running ssd's and the low or non existent (for me) failure rates. I dont' have the figures in front of me but I would hazard a guess that our storage device failure rate is down by nearly 60% since making the switch with only conventional hd's failing. I would seriously like to know how many drives you tested, and how you did your tests. Our tests showed no such weaknesses before we took the ssd's into the workplace. In honesty, I don't know all the test procedures that were employed on our ssd samples. That was done by specialists for local government. But I do know the testing was loading the drives to the maximum 24/7 with encrypted and non encrypted data along with huge volumes of real world back ups to conform to local government standards for testing and reliability at upper level. It's a pretty rigorous test which goes on and on. It might be that your SSD's were early ones, less refined perhaps or a faulty batch. Obviously I don't know, but it has clearly coloured your view of these ssd drives in my opinion. How many of your drives failed out of how many tested? Saying you've caused ssd's to fail doesn't mean your results are valid in the real world. We've honestly not had one failure in over 2 years whilst conventional hd's of all sizes continue to fail in the 'ordinary way'. We and lots of other organisations we deal with will all be ssd soon. But everyone is entitled to their opinion on these ssd's and whilst I'm sure you have formed yours through your experience, however valid for you, it certainly isn't in tune with what I see and experience, or many others are seeing.

[Chris GB]

No they won't be useless in a laptop, but I don't understand why everyone is so happy to pay high high prices for a gain in some ways and a loss in others.

Simple, the huge gain in performance in many si****ions (wtf is the matter with the swear filter?) makes the SSD a much more cost effective way to speed up a typical computer than other means. The hard drive is, in most modern PCs, the bottleneck. Raid helps, but the use of an SSD really helps things moves along. My W7 PC takes longer to run the CMOS than it does to boot from there onward. Producing a set of lightbox images from 16GB worth of RAW files is the work of a few seconds instead of the minutes it used to take from a fast HDD.

Then there is the improved battery life in laptop applications, as well as immunity to knocks.

Looked at as cost vs performance, the SSD is far more effective than any processor upgrade.

Chris

[cheezemonkhai]

MTBF's for most hd's are in the region of 60,000 to 88,000 hours real world.

MTBF is calculated based on an algorith. It's not a mean time, between the drives having a failure.

I'd not denying hard disks die, but you'll be hard pressed to buy one these days that doesn't have an MTBF approaching or above 1 million hours.

To be fair, it's a faily pointless point for a home user as to them an MTBF isn't relevant.

The reason more and more people are doing the same as our organisation is the speed and reliability you get from ssd's. Your test results, while valid for you I'm sure, are not representative of what happens in the real world. I and others know this due to the improvement we get from running ssd's and the low or non existent (for me) failure rates. I dont' have the figures in front of me but I would hazard a guess that our storage device failure rate is down by nearly 60% since making the switch with only conventional hd's failing.

Failure modes on HDDs tend to be pretty fatal, with the dirve stopping completely.

On an SSD they tend to be more silent and affect the retention of data. My experience, is that they tend to retain the data less well the more the writes go up. Yes trim etc helps, but at the end of the day everything has a failure mode.

I would seriously like to know how many drives you tested...

Sample size was about 10k drives, run on a machine drive test.

The tests were with a high number of small random writes, simulation a DB writing towars full throughput.

One area the SSD is better, is that you don't get vibration from the disks causing issues with those surrounding it.

Poor lead free soldering is a different issue, but that can apply to any circuit board not just SSD.

But everyone is entitled to their opinion on these ssd's and whilst I'm sure you have formed yours through your experience, however valid for you, it certainly isn't in tune with what I see and experience, or many others are seeing.

I have an opinion of SSD yes, but it's not to say that it's not fit for use, far from it.

Just that you have to target it's use to deal with it's strengths and weaknesses.

I use SSD for a certain layer or storage where the data is transient, so you are less likely to see age related retention issues.

I also use SLC or Enterprise grade MLC based devices to reduce issues.

I then back that data off to disk and other media where appropriate, so that it's there.

For bringing something up and disposing of it when you're done, SSD certainly has it's place.

For low write cycle jobs flash is just fine too.

It's all about what's right for the job.

Would you use flash for an archive? Probably not as it's not proven enough.

Would you use flash for user home stores? Probably not as it's cost per GB is very high.

Would you use flash for a boot drive for a node that's doing high throughput crunching?

I'd say yes, although more RAM might be more effective at a similar price (to a point)

Producing a set of lightbox images from 16GB worth of RAW files is the work of a few seconds instead of the minutes it used to take from a fast HDD.

For home use where you have one drive yes. And generally it will be good, but the cost per GB is similar to RAM and having 64GB of RAM would probably help things more than a 64GB flash drive in those instances.

Not denying the huge performance for yourself at an afordable price for home users, just that it's not the answer to all problems in all si****ions.

Then there is the improved battery life in laptop applications, as well as immunity to knocks.

Actually the battery life one doesn't really stack up from what I've seen, and while HDDs are pretty resilliant to knocks these days I won't deny the drop resistance is handy.

Anyway, I think I've probably gone off at a bit of a right angle here, because I was trying to make the point that SSD isn't all perfect and has it's problems.

Will an SSD be ok for a home users laptop, almost certainly, you just need to be a little careful about setting the pagefile/swap and filesystem indexing appropriately for the drive type.

Edited 1 July, 2012 by cheezemonkhai

[lmb]

For home use where you have one drive yes. And generally it will be good, but the cost per GB is similar to RAM and having 64GB of RAM would probably help things more than a 64GB flash drive in those instances.

IMVHO it wouldn't. I work with software that can utilise any amount of RAM and the problem with this software is it uses some sort of libraries. They are never loaded to RAM and software has to read them from the storage. And sometimes it is a pain. Aslo this software needs to write and read the data/results to the storage and again if these are files such as 4-8GB than SSD makes sense.

Personally I bought 2 64GB SSD some time ago and run them in RAID0 matrix for speed (2x SATAII). And I was very happy with this configuration. I'm just waiting for the further price drop (already a decent 128GB M4 costs ~80 quids) and the reason why I don't look forward for 256-512GB as they random read/write speeds (4kB-512kB) are worse that smaller in size siblings. I plan to use this new SSD for OS/software and 64GB for my working drive. Still I keep my documents on HDD and 2xHDD backups

Edited 1 July, 2012 by lmb

[rockhopper]

I've been using a 128gb crucial m4 for about a year now and it gave my 13" MacBook Pro a new lease of life. 8gb ram also helps. The core2duo doesn't though!

It has been very reliable. I store everything on it. I do back up everything and my work is also stored in Dropbox.

[Aspman]

Everyone should be backing up important stuff anyway. So disk failures become an irritation rather than a disaster.

My photographs are about the only really important data that I have. I have three copies of it. One on the machine hd, one on an external hd and an occasional backup to DVD (since it needs about 4 of them).

[corbo]

I've had two laptops in my office in the last week with failed hard disks, both under a month old, both 5200rpm 2.5" bog standard disks.

These are i5 laptops with 4gb RAM, 5200rpm hard disks are just a bottleneck now, and just as unreliable as they have ever been. SSD's are the best upgrade you can put in your PC right now.

I'm running a 64gb SSD in my laptop. Ubuntu boots in 10 seconds it's great. On my desktop I've got a 1tb OCZ Revodrive Hybrid that plugs into the PCI express bus to get over the SATA limitations, and it's phenomenal.

If you're worried about drive failure, backup or RAID....... just like traditional spinning disks. Common sense.

[Ant.]

Thanks for the replys and your help!

Aspman - Thats the one I have just ordered!

Adam

I have also just ordered one of these Kingston drives from Dabs. It may not be a "performance" SSD, but it isn't marketed as such. Compared to your traditional mechanical drive, should still offer a good enough gain in performance.

The early V200s were plagued with performance issues, however this has recently been resolved by a firmware update, so it's worth checking the firmware version before you install your OS and update if necessary.

http://www.kingston.com/us/support/technical/downloads?product=SV200S3&filename=SV200S3_64G_128G_e120506a

The one review I've read post firmware update was very positive and claims all previous issues appear to be resolved.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

[lfc958]

I have had an HP Pavillion netbook size laptop for approx 2 years along with an Advent pad for 12 months, the HP boot time with W7 is slow, HDD is quiet, but the fan cutting in / out was noisy, The pad was an Android machine, with a rom of honeycomb on & was brilliant, quicker to start than the std OS, no fan, but limited space even with a micro SD card.

GIven the improvements in SSD technology, i have decided to move to an ultra book with this technology, so have sold Pad, & in process of cleaning up the HP & will be selling shortly.

Although limited in space compared to the HDD market, I had already started to re learn storage habits on the HP, freeing up space by keeping data on an external USB drive, & backing up to a NAS.

GIven the lack of moving parts, & despite scare stories around failures, which by the way you will get regardless of which storage technology used, i personally can see the advantages to SSD technology.

[Brads]

Well it's amazing, Only running on a SATAI Laptop, but the speed difference is amazing especially with a fresh install win7!!

Bootup time is so so fast!!!

btw - not overly fussed about reliability due to it being on a laptop that is only used for web browsing

Adam

[Guest]

Brads, it will be fine. I've never seen an SSD fail in over two years and we have exactly 402 of these drives of several different makes in our networked machines and some laptops at work. That's not to say they won't start to fail at some point, but usually, if we had just installed that number of conventioanal hard drives, they start failing right from the word go and continue to fail regularly. As yet, fingers crossed, still haven't had one go out to lunch. If it's going to fail, it will normally be right near the start of it's life, or just at the predicted end of.

[danrock101]

I've got a SSD sitting a disused computer which I need to split, I should put it in this netbook really, even if it's just for the fact that it's solid state and less likely to get damaged when I knock this netbook about! But if I didn't have it spare, I don't think I'd bother.

[JohnMcL7]

Yes, all my machines run off SSDs bar one old ultralight which can't take one. I enjoy the improved responsive of the PC with the only issue I've had with them up until now is the limited capacity and high cost but with 512GB drives now dipping under £300 that's becoming less of an issue. I've steered clear of the SSD's with known issues and so far have had no problems with reliability and lacking the mechanical complexity of hard drives I seriously doubt SSD's will come anywhere close to the hard drive rate of failure (which I've seen plenty of). My drives are backed up as they should be so unless they all start chronically failing it won't affect my choice of drive.

John