Reliability of SSd

[Greg]

That's useful, but my experience with WD RE has been mixed. I accept that greater quality and tolerance is engineered in, but Google use a shed load of disks so I take their findings quite seriously.

IIRC SAS didn't fair any better than SATA statistically speaking.

 

[Wil_Wheaton]

Enterprise SSDs typically use SLC flash memory which can do 100K write cycles. Consumer SSDs typically use MLC flash memory which do less than 10K write cycles. The SSDs firmware distributes writes across the available cells. This wear levelling increases the total number of writes. As mentioned previously enabling TRIM in OS can reduce total writes. But even for consumer drives, the write cycles should be sufficient to last several years of user write throughput. So I doubt consumer drives are failing because they have exceeded their available writes. Its more likely failures are due to the reliability of the drives controller\interface electronics. I've never put a huge amount of thought into buying SSDs, but favour older generation models with good reviews from well know manufacturers.

 

[Greg]

Enterprise SSDs typically use SLC flash memory which can do 100K write cycles. Consumer SSDs typically use MLC flash memory which do less than 10K write cycles. The SSDs firmware distributes writes across the available cells. This wear levelling increases the total number of writes. As mentioned previously enabling TRIM in OS can reduce total writes. But even for consumer drives, the write cycles should be sufficient to last several years of user write throughput. So I doubt consumer drives are failing because they have exceeded their available writes. Its more likely failures are due to the reliability of the drives controller\interface electronics. I've never put a huge amount of thought into buying SSDs, but favour older generation models with good reviews from well know manufacturers.

the Vertex 4 seems to walk a line between MLC and SLC
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vertex-4-firmware-benchmark,3245-8.html

 

[DevillEars]

On the other hand I've had consistently poor experience with HDDs. A very large google study found no greater reliability between brands or between enterprise class and basic designs. Their advice was expect failure and plan accordingly.

Hi Greg,

I currently run with an SSD as the OS disk and use HDDs for all else.

The home system has 42TB via 14 x 3TB drives (all Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3-platter drives).

I tried both Hitachi and WD 3TB drives but found these 3-platter Barracudas to deliver the fastest transfer rates - both over SATA6G (averaging 175MB/sec) and USB 3.0 (averaging 145MB/sec) links.

The 14 x 3TB drives are configured as follows:

a) In-Chassis: 6 x 3TB (all SATA6G)
b) External 1: 6 x 3TB (all USB 3.0) - as near-line backup for a) above
c) External 2: 2 x 3TB (also USB 3.0) - as shared volumes for the family
d) In-Chassis: 1 x 256GB OCZ Vertex 4 plus 1 x Seagate Momentus 2.5" 7200rpm 750GB (office data)

I've deliberately avoided trying Seagate's latest 4-platter 4TB drives as I know myself and I'd probably wind up migrating all 14 drives and I have some other priorities right now...

 

[garyi]

At current prices i am thinking ssd is still not quite there in my experience. But damn they are quick.

New ssd will be here from amazon tommoz. One thing that cannot be doubted is amazons customer service.

 

[lAmBoY]

That's useful, but my experience with WD RE has been mixed. I accept that greater quality and tolerance is engineered in, but Google use a shed load of disks so I take their findings quite seriously.

IIRC SAS didn't fair any better than SATA statistically speaking.

Yes I recall that whitepaper at the time. It was of course only relevant to Googles data center implementation and doesnt touch on the applications served by offerings of drive companies and storage providers such as NetAps. The magic is in the hw AND sw.

Bottom line, if you have a media server for playback through the hi-fi (which I assume would be very low Writes), then an SDD would probably last a long time.

As with all things tech...YMMV

 

[lAmBoY]

Hi Greg,

I currently run with an SSD as the OS disk and use HDDs for all else.

The home system has 42TB via 14 x 3TB drives (all Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3-platter drives).

I tried both Hitachi and WD 3TB drives but found these 3-platter Barracudas to deliver the fastest transfer rates - both over SATA6G (averaging 175MB/sec) and USB 3.0 (averaging 145MB/sec) links.

The 14 x 3TB drives are configured as follows:

a) In-Chassis: 6 x 3TB (all SATA6G)
b) External 1: 6 x 3TB (all USB 3.0) - as near-line backup for a) above
c) External 2: 2 x 3TB (also USB 3.0) - as shared volumes for the family
d) In-Chassis: 1 x 256GB OCZ Vertex 4 plus 1 x Seagate Momentus 2.5" 7200rpm 750GB (office data)

I've deliberately avoided trying Seagate's latest 4-platter 4TB drives as I know myself and I'd probably wind up migrating all 14 drives and I have some other priorities right now...

That is a lot of storage for the home!

 

[Greg]

42TB at home is brilliant

Putting aside our hosting servers which are all in various data centres, in our office environment I calculate we have around 32 server hard drives in either NAS or direct attached. Over the past 6 years we have RMA'd at least 8 drives.

In any given RAID array I would never consolidate on one manufacturer and definitely not on one batch within one manufacturer. We tend to mix and match as long as capacity, spindle speed and cache are the same.

 

[lAmBoY]

I suggest a planned maintenance for drives, replacing every 5 years even if not faulty. Depends how much you value your data.

 

[mmterror]

Remember folks almost everything gary buys....never works.

I've bought about 8 Sandisk SSDs (Pulse/Ultra and Extreme) over the past 18 months and all of them are still going strong.

My go to brand for good value SSDs.