News SSD users report widespread data loss

I have bought 2 Crusial M225 64 disk and have been very happy for them, but I have discovered that it has trouble handling big files. I experienced many times that my games with big files ->2GB became corrupt many times. When I placed my files on a normal disk the problem went away. The only conclussion about this for me was that I do not trust my SSD's to handle very big files.
I must say that I am running my laptop on one of the drives now with new firmware (Ver. 2030) and is very happy about it. have not seent he issue yet on this one.

 

My thoughts exactly!

 

I've had my OCZ Agility 3 vanish from the system once, causing a BSOD in the process and then it not to be found on the boot sequence at the beginning.

It was a 20p - 50p moment right there as I just finished installing windows and games I play.

However a power-cycle and a few choice words whispered to the drive coaxed it to appear again and so far it seems to be okay.

I just hope this is not a sign of it going to fail and die on me soon...

 

But they are also the kind of users (if halfway competent) who should have more robust data handling procedures that shouldn't require the employment of data recovery services. Violation of these procedures are messy, expensive and unnecessary.

It is also these users who would be least affected by SSD failure. Such users would be managing systems that would either have online drive redundancy ready to take the place of a failed drive (my own home NAS has 3 x drives in RAID 5 + 1 x drive as a hot replacement ready to rebuild the array) and/or several replacements on hand. Such systems should also eliminate power issues with a UPS and provide for daily offsite backups. Larger businesses should also be looking at offsite server replication, especially those that are multi-site or rely on a constant network presence.

Except for the server replication, none of this needs to be expensive and can easily be done for small businesses or even individuals. Except for the daily, offsite backups, I do this at home. I could offsite backup if I really, REALLY didn't want to lose my huge porn collection and could justify the hosting expenses for personal use. It should be a no-brainer for a business, especially given work-generated data requirements are generally very small without the huge video and audio files.

This leaves user error or maliciousness, which is just as likely to happen with mechanical drives and just as difficult for a recovery service to reconstitute into usable data. But this shouldn't affect back-ups.

 

Guys, when they say solid state storage they also mean memory cards, and those freak out and die for no apparent reason ALL the time.

 

I had something similar happen when I first installed my Intel SSD, but it was due to laziness on my part.

I had been using a HDD as my main drive in two partitions; OS drive (C) and storage (D). It meant I could re-install OS from a cloned image without needing to replace all the accumulated crap on D: again.
I plugged the Intel SSD in and installed a new OS on it. Then, being lazy and lacking boot discs (I spent a full 30secs looking!), I plugged in the HDD intending to set the SSD to 1st boot device and formatting the old C: partition from the OS.
BIOS didn't even see the SSD. Or then it did, and I made it 1st boot. But then it was gone again on restart after F10. And it wasn't in the boot list in BIOS again. On reset the SSD was in BIOS again and made boot device, and made it through to OS on restart.
HDD was D: and E: in drive listing, went to format D: and the HDD disappeared! Not even in list of attached devices. Then a BSOD, not as easy with W7 as it used to be with W98.
It was at this point I wished BIOS had a shell environment for this kind of simple task. My next MB will have EFI. My life would be much easier if every computer had EFI and a shell utility.

Then I did what I knew I should have done in the first place but was too lazy to do so: I spent 20 minutes hunting for a boot CD I knew I'd have somewhere and deleted the partition, changed the boot priority in BIOS (which now saw both the SSD and the HDD) to SSD, and booted into OS where everything was happy and good. I debated extending the storage partition into the now deleted area, but now I use the area for the cloned OS image and regular incremental backup images.

So...how lazy were you being?

 

Solid state memory chips will just up and die with no warning. I've had it happen in other devices. One good thing about mechanical drives is at least you usually get some warning signs before they die.

 

Data loss with SSD/flash? Did this survey include saving something to a USB flash drive then losing it?

 

Had you been eating chocolate or custard shortly before doing this?

 

Nope. Sometimes they do, sometimes not.

 

Note I said usually, not always.

 

I too missed that it was solid state storage, not just SSDs, that makes a huge difference.

Memory cards and thumbsticks are notoriously cheap and unreliable, combine them with iffy usb ports and you have a recipe for disaster.

 

What percentage of the SSD/flash market do SSDs occupy? Maybe 1%, if that - I bet 1 in 3 people has a USB pen drive or SD card to their name.

 

True - and I have had USB pen drives break on me. Sure, there was that one time where I absent-mindedly chomped the plug on the end, and the other time when I dropped one in water... USB pen drives are far more likely to break than SSDs.

 

I've gained data, thus rendering this boring and boring article boring.

 

SSDs are generally reliable, except for several bad batches, such as the case with earlier Patriot Torqx drives. I had two fail on me in a row. Luckily I had a backup.

 

lol, think ill stick to a vilociraptor, a million pound per gig for experimental technology, no thanks.

 

By a million pound per gig, you mean £1 / GB, right?

 

but dood it doesnt have a cool name like v1l0c1r4pt0rz!

 

I've been using a Samsung PB22-J 128GB SSD since may 2009, for a bit more than a year it was used in my desktop pc, then I got a Crucial M3 128GB for the desktop and moved the Samsung to the Notebook and both still work perfectly fine.