Reliability of PC Flash SSDs?

An anonymous reader writes "SATA and IDE flash solid-state disks are all the rage these days — faster and, allegedly, more reliable than traditional spinning-rust disks. My organization dipped its toe in the flash-disk waters, buying a handful for some PC and Linux boxes. Out of 8 drives from various manufacturers, 3 have failed in the space of four months! Some are reporting bad blocks, others just crapped out and stopped responding entirely. (And no, this isn't a wear-leveling issue, nor were these machines in particularly harsh environmental conditions, nor were all failed drives from the same manufacturer.) So I ask you, the readers of Slashdot: what has your experience been like with basic, consumer-grade SATA or IDE flash drives? Are they failing for you too, or are we just unlucky? It's starting to remind me of the claims about long-lifetime compact fluorescent light bulbs that, in reality, have turned out to be BS!"

Re:Same type of experience here

[cellurl]

Until I see a graph from consumer reports [consumerreports.org], I don't believe anything.

Donate time, not money [wikispeedia.org]

Re:If you are talking about 3 that failed...

[PaladinAlpha]

What if one of them reported bad blocks and then "crapped out" afterwards? Wouldn't that mean two of them reported two bad blocks, and then two crapped out entirely, resulting in a total of three? Set theory. Think about it.

Re:Don't Defrag

[ballpoint]

[dr]ecent. Fixed that regex for you.

Re:If you are talking about 3 that failed...

[wtbname]

Nah, he's right.

"Think about it." *is* condescending, and completely unnecessary to make your point. Think about it.

Re:Windows 7 is SSH friendly

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome!

  #ssh hax0r@datamine .... nothing...

do I need ultimate version or something?