1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

News SSD users report widespread data loss

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by arcticstoat, 1 Sep 2011.

  1. MjFrosty

    MjFrosty Minimodder

    Joined:
    3 Aug 2011
    Posts:
    871
    Likes Received:
    23
    Those statistics are odd. Although I'm under the impression the results would include memory sticks which have a tendency to die, which is where that high figure springs from.
     
  2. Phil Rhodes

    Phil Rhodes Hypernobber

    Joined:
    27 Jul 2006
    Posts:
    1,415
    Likes Received:
    10
    Then I suspect you have not run any of them long enough for it to have been a reasonable reliability test.

    You may recall some time ago and more than once I mentioned a need to do more comprehensive robustness testing on SSDs especially as system drives; I was shouted down.

    Sometimes it's so disagreeable to be proven right.
     
  3. MjFrosty

    MjFrosty Minimodder

    Joined:
    3 Aug 2011
    Posts:
    871
    Likes Received:
    23
    Proven right by what? A survey which is going to be mostly filled in by a handful of disgruntled people?

    Terrible logic there, Phil.
     
  4. fooboi

    fooboi What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    1 May 2010
    Posts:
    11
    Likes Received:
    0
    I have in the span of ten years accumulated around 15 broken mechanical drives,no slow degradation just poof next day gone, I'm known as the HDD destroyer in my company.
     
  5. Adnoctum

    Adnoctum Kill_All_Humans

    Joined:
    27 Apr 2008
    Posts:
    486
    Likes Received:
    31
    Given SSD, NAND and controller manufacturers do more testing and read/writes than you are ever likely to do, I'm thinking SSDs are going to be just fine for most users (individual implementations aside - Intel 320 being an example). Far more likely is that just like mechanical drives you'll replace it before it fails. Speaking of mechanical drives, how is your data reliability with all those highly spinning disks and fragile heads?

    What? What proof has been offered? See this quote from Kroll...

    In other words, they stuck a voluntary survey on their site, or paid another site to pester their visitors, and from the tiny few who bothered to say yes (no break down of the numbers, and a selection bias to begin with) they concocted a self-serving argument that SSDs fail and are hard to recover data from.
    So a company that specialises in data recovery from failed drives say that drives fail a lot, that drives are difficult to recover data from without specialist tools and that, oh yes (!!!), they just happen to have those specialist tools and would be willing to use them for a fee*.

    So if your drive dies, which it will according to these completely trustworthy and unbiased statistics, don't bother trying to recover the data from the drive yourself or recover it from your backup (you did make one right?), just send it along to Kroll Ontrack ("... the largest, most experienced and technologically advanced provider of data recovery products and services worldwide...") and they will recover your vitally important documents and porn.

    Did you also miss this bit...

    So...the same factors that affect any other type of storage medium?

    The story here is that there is no story. It is a self-serving PR piece that companies spew out by the ton every day in the hope that some journalist/blogger will pick up and cut and paste into a quick (and cheap) news filler. It is called "Press Release Journalism" or "Churnalism" and it is an incredibly sad reflection of the media.

    * (For an arm, a leg and your first born child)
     
  6. supermonkey

    supermonkey Deal with it

    Joined:
    14 Apr 2004
    Posts:
    4,955
    Likes Received:
    202
    I see quite a few people talking about regular backups to reduce data loss, but I interpreted the article a bit differently. Of the people reporting data loss on a given SSD, how many were fortunate enough to have that data backed up elsewhere? Even if I can recover my data form a separate home server, I might still report a failed SSD as data loss.
     
  7. Blackshark

    Blackshark What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    13 Apr 2004
    Posts:
    135
    Likes Received:
    2
    V3ctor - yes I have heard of people unable to install windows on SSDs but then I tend to think these are the same people overclocking their bus's to breaking point. The SSD by its very design is solid state. Therefore like all electronics is more reliable than a mechanical version.

    I simply can not believe that Business would use them if they had had those sorts of failure rates. Yes I am sure you will tell me they use Enterprise class SSDs but lets be clear, they use the same memory, same controller, etc... as SSDs meant for me and Joe Public
     
  8. -EVRE-

    -EVRE- What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    12 May 2004
    Posts:
    372
    Likes Received:
    1
    I have two crucial ssd's in daily use for 2 years now, never had a problem with either of them, thats why I spent $40 more to get a crucial M4 for a recent upgrade.
     
  9. azazel1024

    azazel1024 What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    3 Jun 2010
    Posts:
    487
    Likes Received:
    10
    If you read the article they are citing data loss as things like file system corruption, file corruption, accidently deleted data, etc. None of those are "flash" issues. Those are all user/OS issues.

    The rate of actual failures is pretty low, in the 1-3% range. So even if you have some of those respondants running around with multiple drives, you may only have 5-10% of respondants having suffered an actual drive failues. That means 40-50% are user/OS issues that you'd see on spinning disks as well.

    Been running a 60GB Vertex for a year and a half now and a 30GB vertex for about 9 months now and no issues with either (92% life left on the 60GB, bought new. 58% life left on the 30GB, bought used).
     
  10. azazel1024

    azazel1024 What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    3 Jun 2010
    Posts:
    487
    Likes Received:
    10
    Oh and every single important thing is backed up. Pictures, music, documents and itunes backups from my wife's laptop are backed up to the home file server as an on-demand process (IE when I think about it about every 3-5 weeks) as are pictures, music, documents and movies from my computer. The server automatically pushes out new movies to the router attached USB harddrive (used by the couple of media players for our TVs for streaming h.264 stuff) weekly at 2am Sunday.

    I have plans for a USB drive sitting in a fire safe connected to the file server as secondary backups just for the important documents and pictures (probably not backing up movies and music as that is a crap load of stuff, ~900GB. Family pictures and videos and documents is probably only about 200GB)

    In a next house with a better setup I plan on having scheduled weekly backups from my computer and my wife's to the server. However, with her having a laptop right now (migrating to a desktop in the next year or so once I upgrade my PC and she gets mine as a hand-me-down) and my PC being on a switched outlet (I have a 3 1/2yr old and a 1 1/2yr old and another one on the way, and the youngest loves just playing with the buttons on the computer, so when it is off it needs to be OFF!) there isn't an easy way to do automated backups.
     
  11. V3ctor

    V3ctor Tech addict...

    Joined:
    10 Dec 2008
    Posts:
    584
    Likes Received:
    3
    Just regular Joes... No OC, and loads of people, I thought that was strange, mainly were OCZ Vertex 3, with Sandforce controllers, they flashed theyre drives with lots of different OCZ firmwares trying to solve the instability problems...

    I'm just happy I have one of the earlier SSD's, I just think that my Intel is unbelievable reliable...

    Normally in HDD's the SMART kicks in and warns us that a drive is going to fail or something, with SSD's we don't have that "feature", it just dies and there's no way to get your data back.


    Here's a quote from a helper in the Forum

    -> post 412

    Use google translator :D there are lots of reports in the pages before and after
     
  12. Ph4ZeD

    Ph4ZeD What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    22 Jul 2009
    Posts:
    3,806
    Likes Received:
    143
    A data recovery company doing a survey that concludes that people need data recovery services? No way!
     
  13. Guest-44432

    Guest-44432 Guest

    I have found that I was losing Data/Files corrupted when using my old C300 in Raid 0 as a boot drive.
    I haven't had any problems since using a single Vertex 3 as my boot drive.
     
  14. leslie

    leslie Just me!

    Joined:
    19 May 2009
    Posts:
    412
    Likes Received:
    11
    You spent a bunch on an SSD, if you can't afford a backup system, you can't afford an SSD.

    SSD's are owned by bleeding edge enthusiasts, you take what comes with doing so, and you should have already learned to make backups.



    The only time I have seen flash memory lose data (ssd or thumb) was either accidental by me, complete failure, or the drive was full and corrupting data.
     
  15. rjkoneill

    rjkoneill What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    11 Feb 2008
    Posts:
    280
    Likes Received:
    6
    pointless and irrelevant news is pointless and irrelevant
     
  16. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

    Joined:
    11 Aug 2008
    Posts:
    6,953
    Likes Received:
    270
    This. One day working normally, next day no hard drive drive on boot.
     
  17. Aragon Speed

    Aragon Speed Busily modding X3: Terran Conflict

    Joined:
    12 Jan 2009
    Posts:
    168
    Likes Received:
    1
    I've just had my 'less than a year old' Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB give up and die on me today, so don't tell me one type of storage device is better than another without an unbiased poll of less that 10,000 people. 560? There are more people than that walking my local high street at any one time on a week day.
     
  18. rogerrabbits

    rogerrabbits What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    24 May 2011
    Posts:
    577
    Likes Received:
    11
    The data loss from government users was probably from leaving them on trains.
     
  19. hrp8600

    hrp8600 What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    12 Mar 2009
    Posts:
    54
    Likes Received:
    0
    12 months with no data loss
    Next day all data lost, C300 failed.
    Might be some time before SSD's are as reliable as normal hard drives long term.
    But at least prices are falling.
     
  20. Valo

    Valo Minimodder

    Joined:
    11 Aug 2004
    Posts:
    1,182
    Likes Received:
    22
    I have two answers in one for you surprised by the results of the survey:

    servers and admins

    In that kind of environment it is easy to max out hte IO threshold. That is also why they mentioned data recovery and were OnTrack's customers. Bear in mind that consumers buy a small percentage of SSDs manufactured.
     
Tags: Add Tags

Share This Page