Reliability of PC Flash SSDs? 467
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!"
Early days for consumer SSDs (Score:1, Insightful)
When they've been making the damn things for as long as the spinning-rust disks, we will see. I suspect when they get the flash right and the manufacturing processes and the real-world support with TRIM and such things will get better than they could be with spinning rust. But consumer SSDs are currently behind and if you're actually buying for reliability SSDs are NOT there in the consumer space.
If you are talking about 3 that failed... (Score:4, Insightful)
then to say "Some are reporting bad blocks, others just crapped out and stopped responding entirely..." is misleading.
You know the numbers, so tell them. If the total is 3, then you can't use a plural for two separate types of failures "some this, others that". That is just logically impossible if the number of failures is 3. Think about it.
Manufacturers / Drive Info (Score:5, Insightful)
FWIW, I have 2 of the Intel Drives and 1 OCZ drive and I haven't seen any problems.
Re:Don't Defrag (Score:2, Insightful)
Like with the CF bulbs, cheap = not good. (Score:4, Insightful)
BS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad troll. I read the fine article linked in this claim. The claims are not BS... there have just been problems with the supply-chain doing cost-cutting, and with people using cheap CFLs inappropriately. It's important to note that the Energy Star ratings board has been retesting CFLs and revoking use of the label for CFLs that fail to meet the standard.
It's not BS... it just needs some refining. Don't use CFLs on a dimmer switch. Don't use them in poorly ventilated enclosures. Don't use CFLs in fixtures you turn off and on a lot.
A little bit of consumer education goes a long way... but unfortunately so does FUD like the submitter's.
That's a good analogy. (Score:1, Insightful)
Like with the bulbs, the problem is probably that you're going for the cheapest thing you can find. Cheap out on hardware for marginal savings, have it turn out to be shit, what a surprise.
I think your data sample is missing something (Score:4, Insightful)
My first response would be: "What type of computers are these being used in? Desktops? Servers? Laptops? Netbooks?"
My second response would be: "What systems settings have been changed so the OS is properly set up for an SSD drive?"
My third response would be: "What exact make and model drives are we talking about here?"
All of this is important in determining whether this is just another typical anecdotal ask slashtards to make me feel better type question, or whether you are seriously asking.
Without specifics, this is nothing more than a waste of time.
If all of the failed drives are of a specific manufacturer's netbook mini pcie based 4GB SSD drives, and all were having the same basic issue, then it's really an indication of a problem with one manufacturer's drives, and not SSD's as a whole now isn't it?
It's like saying all 1.5TB rotational hard drives suck and lose data becuase at one point seagate had tremendous firmware problems with their 1.5TB hdd's.
If on the other hand, it's several different drives, in different environments, from several different manufacturers and across several physically different types of SSD's (mini pcie, full size, etc) utilizing several different types of RAM and several different controllers, then it would suggest a more widespread problem.
You don't even have a large enough data sample to begin to answer these questions.
Me personally, I've got SSD drives in everything from my home desktop, to my work laptop, to a couple of small file servers, to two different Dell Mini 9's running aftermarket Runcore SSD's
All have been in use for at least a year (the work laptop is actually a Dell xps m1330 that is almost 2 years old and has a 64GB Samsung SSD in it).
All are working flawlessly and show no signs of dieing.
Re:If you are talking about 3 that failed... (Score:2, Insightful)
then to say "Some are reporting bad blocks, others just crapped out and stopped responding entirely..." is misleading.
You know the numbers, so tell them. If the total is 3, then you can't use a plural for two separate types of failures "some this, others that". That is just logically impossible if the number of failures is 3. Think about it.
I think all of us understood what the poster meant.
Think about it.
That's a condescending thing to say. Whenever someone says "Think about it", it's always with the air of superiority - as if they have this insight that the lesser people haven't seen or unable to see.
My response to that order is "I'll spend every waking moment thinking about it." - then I forget about it.
Re:I think your data sample is missing something (Score:2, Insightful)
The original poster didn't ask you to debug his problem or theorize why he drives failed. He asked you a very simple question: what have your experiences been like with flash drives? You don't need any of the data you're asking for above to do that.
Re:Why the CF bulb hate? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Reminds me of... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, it also means the vendor gets a copy of whatever is on the drive... Confidential company information, personal data, furry pr0n...
Clever, in a completely unrelated way. What if a company (say they were operating out of a country not completely allied with the US) were to create a SSD device that had logic to "incapacitate" itself at some rate after it had been used to store enough information, before the warranty had expired, and not often enough (across the population) to raise suspicion. The disk could be a sort of new age Trojan horse, sneaking in, and back out with valuable, undetected all the while.
Re:eee ssd (Score:4, Insightful)
Same problem here. The 4G SSD in my eee 901 went bad the 2nd month. I sent it to Asus and they replaced it. The new one has been working since, but I don't store any critical data on that PC.
I'd also like to see optical media go away. Burns take too long, are too likely not to work on another drive or even the same drive, have one little bad spot that spoils everything, and drives go bad all the time. I'll take SSDs over DVD-RWs. Wish more Linux distros were set up for easy installation onto and from flash memory drives.
I bought a dozen of those LED night lights. That's a much cheaper way of trying LED lighting than going for regular lights. 4 of them failed early. Their brightness varies hugely even between the same models. That's life for beta testers. Have had better luck with CFLs. Only one early failure so far, and it wasn't real early-- lasted 5 years. Manufacturers have done a very poor job of informing people that most CFLs do not work with dimmer switches. Last time I went looking for a CFL for dimmers, I couldn't find one. Took a while to go through the fine print on all the models and confirm that none could hack a dimmer switch.
Re:Reminds me of... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's an obvious reason why it won't work for classified stuff; if a disk on the classified network fails it doesn't go back for warranty repair, it gets smashed with a sledge hammer and then melted with thermite and the failure rate is taken into consideration when deciding to buy from that manufacturer again.
Most companies have less strict rules, however. You could quite easily write a disk controller that would scan for keywords in every block that was written and fail after a key phrase had been used a certain number of times. This would mean you'd only get failures on disks used for storing commercially sensitive information.
Re:just wait for LED bulbs (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been looking like crazy, since the guy that remodeled the house I just bought loved Recessed can lights and dimmer switches. Right now, the only bulbs I see that come close in the LED range cost about $120 each. The CFL dimmables are crud, their lowest setting is still something like 75% of max brightness, so they are very bright when the dimmer is all the way down. I need a replacement LED "can light" in the $30 dollar range, before I can do anything about them. And the ones I have actually seen in that price range are designed for desklights and such, where they don't have to actually throw the light more than 2-3' from the bulb.
I really, really want to get rid of my old style bulbs, but the payback on 10x $120 bulbs is a very, very long time..
Re:Same type of experience here (Score:2, Insightful)
CFLs are also sensitive to vibration. Don't install one in a ceiling fan or garage door opener, at risk of drastically reduced lifespan.
CFLs are also sensitive to price. Don't hold high hopes for a cheap no-name bulb. I still have some Phillips CFLs running on 9 years.
Re:Manufacturers / Drive Info (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why the CF bulb hate? (Score:3, Insightful)
If they're smart, and like all the standard electronic amenities that most people do, they'll spend the money. It isn't just CF bulbs that die early from poor power sources. TVs, DVD players, stereos, PCs, and any other electronic device can all meet early deaths because of dirty power. Many people don't even realize this and just think they're "cursed" when buying electronics. It'd be interesting to see someone do some research to see how much money is lost every year do to prematurely destroyed electronics equipment and whether fixing all the houses with poor power sources might be a major source of environmental improvement in it's own right.
Re:BS? (Score:3, Insightful)
CFL reliability (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me of some religious types. "If it ain't in the book, I don't believe it."
There's a big difference between religion and relying on a reasonably unbiased testing company like consumer reports.
Your bias against CFLs approaches religion more. I think it was last month that we had quite the discussion about them.
BTW, I just had my first CFL blow on me - it still produced a visible glow, but no longer lit like the 100W equivalent it's supposed to be. It was in the bathroom, and a transplant from the time I lived in an apartment. It saw at least 5 years of usage, it predated the time I started writing the install date on the base in permanent marker.
Re:CFL reliability (Score:2, Insightful)
BTW, I just had my first CFL blow on me - it still produced a visible glow, but no longer lit like the 100W equivalent it's supposed to be.
I don't think I've ever had a CFL that was as bright as its "equivalent".
Re:Why the CF bulb hate? (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in an area that isn't serviced by an electric company, so I have a small solar array. My power is always a perfectly clean 117 volts at the wall (at least until my inverter fails, I guess). I still have all of the CF bulbs I bought 15 years ago at $30 each. A friend who has normal electrical service bought some of the same ones at the same time, and none of them lasted more than three years. So, yeah, electrical quality is important.
Re:Don't Defrag (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that "[]" is commonly used in writing to denote a change from the original word (whatever it was was) to "drecent," not "decent or recent". Using {} makes more sense because it denotes that you're doing something unusual that's not supported in normal English writing. Personally, I would've gone with "{d,r}" as the AC suggests or "(d|r)."
Re:Same type of experience here (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dimming works fine... (Score:4, Insightful)
That is, unfortunately, absolutely right: you do not save money with CFLs. For that matter, any energy savings is also questionable, once you account for the energy used in production, not to mention disposal.
We have CFLs for various reasons. For example, the big CFL lamps mentioned in the post above are in rooms that are often used by 20-40 people. With that many bodies, they already get too warm. Without CFLs, we would need some 2000 watts of lighting - that would be intolerable.
In the end, forcing CFLs is yet another political scam. So is just about anything touted for its energy conservation potential. Energy is the lifeblood of civilization - we ought to see how cheaply we can generate more of it, not shave pennies like misers.
Re:Like with the CF bulbs, cheap = not good. (Score:2, Insightful)
I dislike the comments which generally say: "you get what you pay for"
Because the poster paid for new hard drives that should last longer then 4 months. To suggest that this is acceptable (on average) for new SSD drives at any cost is ridiculous.
I don't ask my buddy how much he paid for his car when it completely stops working while still under warranty. Instead I think that maybe there is something wrong with the way that company is putting together their car and/or how they preform quality control for their production.
For SSD you pay for things like larger size, faster speed, connection type and longer warranty, etc.
You don't have to pay for a product that will work. That is a given.
Also, you don't have to pay extra to expect a product to last as long as the warranty. This is also a given.
* unless you happen to be selling the XBox from Microsoft.
This guy is getting broken drives over what he calls "normal usage". The cheapest of all SSD should offer that as a minimum.
Please stop suggesting that it is the consumers fault for not throwing more money at the problem before the problem was known.
Re:Dimming works fine... (Score:5, Insightful)
you do not save money with CFLs.
Tell that to my electric bill, which dropped roughly 25% when I switched to (almost) all CFLs. And as for lifespan, I still have half of my original set of them fully functional (almost a decade ago now). And quick tip, don't just buy twenty of them and replace all your lights en masse, do it as they burn out (otherwise, you've thrown away a perfectly good $0.50 bulb).
For that matter, any energy savings is also questionable, once you account for the energy used in production
Yup. You caught 'em. All those evil corporations actually sell their products at a loss compared to the cost of energy required to produce them - Because your statement implies exactly that. Same for all those naughty solar panels, dontchaknow. And yes, I appreciate all too well how massively unfairly the utilities favor corporate customers over mere humans - But even considering that, if GE could make more reselling electricity than selling CFLs, don't you think they would?
not to mention disposal.
Ahh, the specter of all that spooooky mercury. That 100% recyclable mercury. Along with the 100% recyclable phosphorus coating the 100% recyclable glass. And the (merely) 99% recyclable fiberglass and plastic in the base, don't forget that.
Yes, CFLs have their shortcomings - And most people get them totally wrong (with the exception of how poorly they work with dimmers, that alone holds true). They start right up, they only take a few seconds to reach full brightness, they do save money, they do last 10x (or more) longer (though they do admittedly have a slightly higher out-of-box failure rate), they come in full-spectrum versions (and something incandescents don't, they come in germicidal versions as well). They even come in every common form factor now, from candelabra to GX53 (I learned that part when I discovered my new house had all candelabra-base lights).