1 in 3 SSD failure rate 'unfounded' - bit-tech.net Forums

CardJoe · 20th Mar 2008, 09:15

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/03...te_unfounded/1

Avian Security published a report last week claiming that solid-state drives were experiencing a 30% return rate, but box builder Dell has called that "wholly inaccurate."

cyrilthefish · 20th Mar 2008, 09:34

Can't for the life of me remember where i saw the link now, but i remember recently seeing a news piece about the SSD return rates:

Yes, they were getting a hefty return rate, but not due to failures, instead due to not performing as well as customers expected for the considerable extra price.

which would make a LOT more sense

bubsterboo · 20th Mar 2008, 09:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by cyrilthefish

Can't for the life of me remember where i saw the link now, but i remember recently seeing a news piece about the SSD return rates:

Yes, they were getting a hefty return rate, but not due to failures, instead due to not performing as well as customers expected for the considerable extra price.

which would make a LOT more sense

Yeah, I seem to remember seeing some news exactly like that regarding the macbook air. For 1000$ extra i'm not surprised.

DarkLord7854 · 20th Mar 2008, 09:41

Isn't it the random access speed which really kills SSDs? I would imagine having a pair in RAID would be killer though

Bindibadgi · 20th Mar 2008, 09:47

No - SSD technology has a controller chip inside that varies where the bits are written to minimise wear. They don't crash like normal hard drives unless there's a catastrophic failure (unlikely - no moving parts) they just gradually lose capacity after a certain amount of time.

DXR_13KE · 20th Mar 2008, 11:35

Bindibadgi i think it is minimize wear and maximize life time....

Anakha · 20th Mar 2008, 11:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkLord7854

Isn't it the random access speed which really kills SSDs? I would imagine having a pair in RAID would be killer though

Nope. Random Access speed is SSD's party piece (It has a 0.00001ns random access time). At the moment, it's bandwidth. While a hard-drive may take 200ns to get from block to block, it can then transfer that block at a full 150Mb/s. SSD's on the other hand, get to a block instantly, but can only transfer at 33Mb/s (Or more, or less depending on the SSD).

Bindibadgi · 20th Mar 2008, 12:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by DXR_13KE

Bindibadgi i think it is minimize wear and maximize life time....

LOL yes, that's what I meant

Ive seen SSDs claim 100+MB/s now - OCZ's for example comes close iirc

AcidJiles · 20th Mar 2008, 13:09

whats the bit-tech staff experience of failure with SSDs

airchie · 20th Mar 2008, 14:01

I should be able to give first-hand experience of raid0 with two SSDs soon.
Friend of mine ordered two of the 32GB Sandisk ones from overclockers.
Unfortunately they're out of stock at the moment with no ETA for more coming in.

Still, watch this space.

As for high failure rates, I can't imagine how that would even be possible.
There's no moving parts so even dropping one while its on would be no worse than dropping your solid-state MP3 player.

EmJay · 20th Mar 2008, 16:40

I work for Puget Systems, a botique integrator. Out of a dozen or so SSDs we've had problems with two, I think. One definitely doesn't count, as it was a very early release sample with a bug that needed working out, and the other sort of doesn't count - we've been having issues getting benchmarks to run smoothly on it, but that's a problem that we're catching and taking care of long before it gets to the customer. We haven't had any fail after delivery to the customer. Overall, I wouldn't worry about the reports of high failure rates. There's always some weirdness that needs to get sorted out at the start of a new technology's lifecycle. Between that and the price, I generally think it's worth being six months behind the bleeding edge.

And yes, we've sold SSDs in RAID. They can do some pretty awesome stuff, but it costs as much as the rest of the computer!

ryanjleng · 20th Mar 2008, 17:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by CardJoe

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/03...te_unfounded/1

Avian Security published a report last week claiming that solid-state drives were experiencing a 30% return rate, but box builder Dell has called that "wholly inaccurate."

i don't think that is true as well.

we have been hearing FUD here and there. it feels like there's something going on in corporate back rooms or some misunderstanding.

initially, some executives in HDD recovery businesses were quietly telling us SSD crash will mean data is irrecoverable. that's full of "bollox" - borrowing a word from someone i know.

believe it or not, SSD has hit SATA-1 speed and beyond, as of now. We're not seeing them in market, yet. Some smarter SSD controllers are there already.

Prices are dropping in Japan market for certain type of SSD that uses less reliable MLC NAND (as oppose to SLC NAND) but they put a lot more into the package to makeup for the faster failure rate. These "backup" are hidden. At the end, it is expected to work for 5 years. I think Toshiba is doing that and they got nice controllers.

Rubbing my hands in anticipation. at least 6 more months baby, 6 months.... :O

Bindibadgi · 20th Mar 2008, 17:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by AcidJiles

whats the bit-tech staff experience of failure with SSDs

The early sample Samsung one we reviewed last year was extremely slow and designed for notebooks (we were just wondering if it made any difference to PC use with zero random read cost) but that still works just fine. When prices come down we'll definitely look at some more

TR look at SSDs in notebooks now and again and they've never had a problem afaik.

Hamish · 21st Mar 2008, 01:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi

LOL yes, that's what I meant

Ive seen SSDs claim 100+MB/s now - OCZ's for example comes close iirc

yep the relatively cheap ones (like the £200 ish samsungs) are pretty slow and only really worth having for laptops or if you have a specific need imo
the really expensive ones like the MTrons and the OCZ ones are fast but holy crap are they pricey

reckon another year or 2 and they'll be a worthwhile buy

shadeygrey · 21st Mar 2008, 12:44

I work at a software house, and my managing director is bonkers about having the fastest laptop.
He got a 64GB SSD drive, and he was very very happy

until it broke down just before a demo and had to swap back to a normal harddrive

He got it replaced, then it broke again...

Make your own judgement..

steveo_mcg · 21st Mar 2008, 13:49

By that reasoning all hard disks are unreliable the death stars (deskstar) didn't get there name for nothing.

OtakuHawk · 21st Mar 2008, 14:22

there are a few laptop hdd -> Compact Flash adapters out there. I'd just use one of those.

Bindibadgi · 21st Mar 2008, 16:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadeygrey

I work at a software house, and my managing director is bonkers about having the fastest laptop.
He got a 64GB SSD drive, and he was very very happy

until it broke down just before a demo and had to swap back to a normal harddrive

He got it replaced, then it broke again...

Make your own judgement..

Bad batch, crap brand, unlucky?

20th Mar 2008, 09:15	#1
CardJoe Player Character bit-tech Staff Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 7,940	1 in 3 SSD failure rate 'unfounded' http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/03...te_unfounded/1 Avian Security published a report last week claiming that solid-state drives were experiencing a 30% return rate, but box builder Dell has called that "wholly inaccurate." __________________ this is joe's non-bit-tech blog

20th Mar 2008, 09:34	#2
cyrilthefish Hypermodder Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: UK Posts: 833	Can't for the life of me remember where i saw the link now, but i remember recently seeing a news piece about the SSD return rates: Yes, they were getting a hefty return rate, but not due to failures, instead due to not performing as well as customers expected for the considerable extra price. which would make a LOT more sense __________________ AMD Phenom x3 720 @ 3.4Ghz \| Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H \| 4GB DDR3 \| ATI 4890 1GB\| 1TB Samsung F1 \| 64GB Corsair P64 SSD

20th Mar 2008, 09:41	#4
DarkLord7854 Web Developer Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: West Palm Beach, Florida Posts: 3,825	Isn't it the random access speed which really kills SSDs? I would imagine having a pair in RAID would be killer though __________________ Current Computer: eVGA 780i Motherboard \| Q6600 Core2Quad \| eVGA GTX260 896Mbs 216-core \| 2x Seagate 500Gbs \| 8Gbs OCZ Platinum DDR2 800 \| Creative XtremeGamer X-Fi \| Thermaltake Armor Case Custom WordPress, ZenCart, Joomla, vBulletin, etc installs and skinning, PM/E-Mail for a quote

20th Mar 2008, 09:47	#5
Bindibadgi Richard Swinburne bit-tech Staff Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Omnipwntent Posts: 28,228	No - SSD technology has a controller chip inside that varies where the bits are written to minimise wear. They don't crash like normal hard drives unless there's a catastrophic failure (unlikely - no moving parts) they just gradually lose capacity after a certain amount of time. __________________ Made you look, made you stare, made you clicked this in your underwear! Den of Geek!

20th Mar 2008, 11:35	#6
DXR_13KE Madeira's banana is the best!!! Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Madeira ; Portugal Posts: 6,466	Bindibadgi i think it is minimize wear and maximize life time.... __________________ *Renegade X - 0.40 Release!* <---- CLICK!

20th Mar 2008, 13:09	#9
AcidJiles Multimodder Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 152	whats the bit-tech staff experience of failure with SSDs

20th Mar 2008, 16:40	#11
EmJay Supermodder Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 315	I work for Puget Systems, a botique integrator. Out of a dozen or so SSDs we've had problems with two, I think. One definitely doesn't count, as it was a very early release sample with a bug that needed working out, and the other sort of doesn't count - we've been having issues getting benchmarks to run smoothly on it, but that's a problem that we're catching and taking care of long before it gets to the customer. We haven't had any fail after delivery to the customer. Overall, I wouldn't worry about the reports of high failure rates. There's always some weirdness that needs to get sorted out at the start of a new technology's lifecycle. Between that and the price, I generally think it's worth being six months behind the bleeding edge. And yes, we've sold SSDs in RAID. They can do some pretty awesome stuff, but it costs as much as the rest of the computer! __________________ Current status: Modding on

21st Mar 2008, 12:44	#15
shadeygrey What's a Dremel? Join Date: Jan 2008 Posts: 3	I work at a software house, and my managing director is bonkers about having the fastest laptop. He got a 64GB SSD drive, and he was very very happy until it broke down just before a demo and had to swap back to a normal harddrive He got it replaced, then it broke again... Make your own judgement..

21st Mar 2008, 13:49	#16
steveo_mcg What owl? Join Date: May 2005 Location: Edinburgh Posts: 3,975	By that reasoning all hard disks are unreliable the death stars (deskstar) didn't get there name for nothing. __________________ No boom today, boom tomorrow... there's always a boom tomorrow.

21st Mar 2008, 14:22	#17
OtakuHawk Hypermodder Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Chicago Posts: 659	there are a few laptop hdd -> Compact Flash adapters out there. I'd just use one of those. __________________ Ultra-Lurker