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!"
Same type of experience here (Score:5, Interesting)
I have avoided investing any money into those types of drives for that very reason. As a small business owner I see customer units come in that make use of those types of devices and I see a lot of failure. I'm still being patient.
eee ssd (Score:5, Interesting)
chipset inside and utilization? (Score:4, Interesting)
your not saying what chipset and what kind of usage you did.
if you are going to put a MLC drive for a gentoo distribution which is compiling 24/7, you will kill it in no time
if you got first gen micron chipset... you will have bad experience too
try again with indilinx or intel drive with SLC and come again
The 60 and 120GB drives (Score:4, Interesting)
in my everyday desktop are working fine since January, and they are the most used drives of the system, the smaller one being used to boot the system and store programs, the other storing program data and some DBs.
No problems here... (Score:2, Interesting)
Linus says... (Score:5, Interesting)
He sorta knows what he's talking about more often than a random average slashdotter.
One of 7 Transcends (Score:5, Interesting)
I have 7 Transcend SATA SSD's, 3 32GB and 4 192GB, one of the 192GB drives is flakey, random bad blocks and file curruption issues of files that had been fine but gone bad and have not been written to since their creation some months ago. I've reloaded it several times but eventually had to remove it from service because of its poor reliability.
My SSD died yesterday (Score:3, Interesting)
just wait for LED bulbs (Score:5, Interesting)
LED bulbs are going to render CFL bulbs a flash in the pan
no toxic mercury, no 30 second wait to dim up completely after turn on, not nearly as fragile, lasts much longer, nicer white glow, similar very low energy usage...
but currently, they are a little pricey and their lighting wattage is low
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/coming-soon-a-40-watt-led-light-bulb/ [nytimes.com]
Re:Why the CF bulb hate? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have 3 Lights of America CFLs laying right next to me. They started flickering only a few months after install, and died less than a year later. They should have lasted at least 5 years according to the warranty.
My GE CFLs come on nice-and-bright but they are limited in usage, because they are "swirls" and most of my lights don't accept swirls. They require traditional round bulbs.
My Philips CFLs provide that nice round bulb, but they are slow to reach full brightness, which is rather annoying. The 60-watt-equivalent bulb hanging upside-down in my kitchen is sometimes so dim, it looks like a brown dwarf star... barely any light at all.
In brief:
- CFLs hate temperature extremes. CFLs hate dimmers. CFLs hate being turned on and off.
- The savings on CFLs is trivial. I'm not seeing smaller monthly bills.
- In fact I'm actually *wasting* money because of failed experiments with the LOA and Philips bulbs.
Windows 7 is SSH friendly (Score:5, Interesting)
A moot point maybe since everyone agrees already..
But I noticed that Windows 7 detects SSD (even in a RAID config with the on-board ICH controller) and automatically turns off defrag on them.
Nice !
Re:chipset inside and utilization? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently, the JMicron controller that's been faulted for at least two of the drives in questions is also found in 3 OCZ SSDs. At least, that's what anandtech reports, and they've been very good with these kinds of investigations in the past.
I'd suggest to apply the same technique that should be applied to all new technologies: get a thorough understanding of the technology and the involved manufacturers before buying one. And any price that's too good to be true probably is - cutting edge technology never is cheap, and SSDs are still cutting edge technology.
Possible ground loop issues? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Same type of experience here (Score:3, Interesting)
- The savings on CFLs is trivial.
You're missing the really good part of using CFLs; they make it practical to quadruple indoors lighting. Go from 1 60W bulb to 3 20W CFL's and you get significantly more light, making for a nice change in darker climates. And compared to using 400W, 60W actually becomes a significant saving. Of course, it doesn't actually reduce electricity use...
The warm up time is also less of a problem if you use multiple CFL's. With enough powerful ones you quickly get more light than the 60W would give you anyway.
The quality issue seems to be mostly with the ultracheap ones. The cheapest useful ones I've found (brand Flair) come with a 5 year warranty and cost about $3, and this far most of them have at least survived 3-4 years.
And yes, any dimmable ones are crap. Even the quality dimmable ones can't be 'dimmed'. They might not break immediately, and they might sortof just go weak and maybe flicker a bit, but they're certainly not happy with the dimming and I can't imagine the person doing the dimming being happy either. As is, I'd go with (again) either multiple CFLs, or a combination of CFLs and LEDs if you can find a reasonable fixture or combination of fixtures that would give you the effect you're after.
Re:CFL reliability (Score:3, Interesting)
My first CFL which cost about $25 when I first got it (1990s) is also still working. It's the *current* CFLs that are being cheaply made($3 or less) which often die less than a year after purchase, or else provide POS dim lighting.
.
>>>There's a big difference between religion and relying on a reasonably unbiased testing company like consumer reports.
Yes that's true, but if you've got 1 million people scattered around the nation complaining about premature CFL failures, it's kinda foolish to sit there and say, "Unless I read it in Consumer Reports it didn't happen." That kinda of response reminds me of when hundreds of thousands of Toyota minivan engines started failing due to oil overheating/sludging. Toyota too refused to believe the evidence right in front of their faces. Like an ostrich sticking it head in the sand. (Then the U.S. government stepped-in and basically forced Toyota to replace the engines for free, or else face prosecution.)
>>>Your bias against CFLs approaches religion more.
I can't help that CFLs have frequent failures. I started-out telling everyone, "Buy CFLs; reduce your electricity usage and save money." Then I got hit with the reality of CFLs failing all over the place, not just in my house, but all over the place. I started in one position, and changed the other as evidence mounted. Any good engineer does the same when he observes an obvious flaw in a machine or design. Only a fool would continue to say "CFLs are great" in the face of mounting evidence that they are not.
At this point, having observed first hand the flaws, I think incandescents are superior over CFLs. Yeah they use a *little* more wattage, but their very simplicity (a glowing resistor) makes them extremely robust for a wide, wide range of applications.
Re:Don't Defrag (Score:1, Interesting)
Perhaps he was going for shell expansion with both terms at once?
Any {d,r}ecent controller...