SSD drive failure!

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

I bought a "hot" MSI gaming laptop last year to give me the opportunity to run the ASi 174MM at very high frame rates for solar work.
The original SSD drive died after only a couple of months and was replaced.

When it runs it's majic!!!!

BUT, here we are almost one year later and guess what....the SSD drive has failed again!
Anyone else having similar issues/ problems with SSD drives????

[brisen (Brian)]

I have had an SSD in my work computer since mid 2010 and it still purrs along nicely. have recently updated to a larger one as the old one was getting a bit full but it still works. Maybe a bad batch from the supplier?

Brian

[sil (Steve)]

What brand drive? SSD is NOT a stable hardware and suffers when you do things like defragment it. A good quality drive well looked after. As an only drive in a laptop just expect failures they shouldnt be treated/used like regular hard drives are.
If you have the operating system on it, programs/games installed on it AND you write video to it then you're doing it ALL wrong.

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

Sil,
The SSD drive they say has a 5 year warranty.... but it's away for at least ten days....
The supplier (TECS Melbourne) did in fact recommend that the OS be cloned from the other internal HD to the SSD. There's nothing else on the SSD drive other than the necessary imaging programs to work with the camera(s).
When the AVI files are downloaded - up to 3Gb I check them then move them to the other HD for processing and storage.
(Don't know the make/ brand of the SSD - it was installed upon purchase.)

[AstralTraveller (David)]

My SSD has run for about 3 years and (touch wood) is still going strong. I have my OS's and VM's on it but my data on conventional drives. It's in a well-cooled case and our usage never pushes it hard. Perhaps it's a bit too hot in the lappy?

[ChrisV (Chris)]

I bought a number of OWC SSDs for work computers. 3 out of about 10 failed within 1 - 2 years. I've since just bought locally - and brands like samsung sandisk etc - and haven't had a problem. Luck of the draw or poor quality, I don't know.

[Exfso (Peter)]

I use Samsung SSD's have them on 4 different computers, never a problem.

[garymck (Gary)]

Have 3 Samsung drives, one 3 years old and never had so much as a glitch. ll used quite heavily.
cheers
Gary

[ZeroID (Brent)]

All laptops bought here are SSD, we expect longer life than conventional HDDs, especially with field engineers with their bumps and knocks. 3-5 years should be the norm at least. And ours are all encrypted as well. They work a lot faster than HDDs.

Why would you treat an SSD any different from a HDD ? They are the replacement hardware for all future equipment.

Possibly the question is what conditions is your laptop working in ? Extreme cold, heat, humidity ? Is the PC overheating ? Just seems strange to have the SSD fail twice in such a short period. Unless the manufacturer is using the cheapest hardware available, not unknown to happen in my experience.

[sil (Steve)]

Originally Posted by ZeroID

Why would you treat an SSD any different from a HDD ?

Because they are a different technology completely and so susceptible to chip problems that magnetic media never were and if you use them exactly the same its reducing life expectancy. Why would you treat your 1970s Ferrari any different to a current Golf Diesel?...hm, if you dont understand the actual differences not just the marketing ones you can do real damage is all. But technically 99.999% of computers are configured and used incorrectly anyway. Single physical disk storage is inheritly bad practice, hdd or ssd. People are poorly educated and like sport cars owners often think owning one gives them the skills to use it.

[redbeard (Damien)]

Originally Posted by sil

Because they are a different technology completely and so susceptible to chip problems that magnetic media never were and if you use them exactly the same its reducing life expectancy. Why would you treat your 1970s Ferrari any different to a current Golf Diesel?...hm, if you dont understand the actual differences not just the marketing ones you can do real damage is all. But technically 99.999% of computers are configured and used incorrectly anyway. Single physical disk storage is inheritly bad practice, hdd or ssd. People are poorly educated and like sport cars owners often think owning one gives them the skills to use it.

Hi Sil,

Could you please explain how you should treat SSD drives compared to HD's.

You mentioned there is a difference but you didn't explain what that was and how to implement it. I'm using a laptop that only has physical space for 1 drive.

Many thanks,

Cheers,

Damien.

[RickS (Rick)]

Here's a significant study of SSD reliability (6 years, many drives):

http://0b4af6cdc2f0c5998459-c0245c5c...-schroeder.pdf

tl;dr: SSDs have a much lower replacement rate than HDDs but are more likely to develop uncorrectable errors and bad blocks. Usage is not as big a factor in SSD failure as expected but age is significant.

Originally Posted by redbeard

Could you please explain how you should treat SSD drives compared to HD's.

You mentioned there is a difference but you didn't explain what that was and how to implement it. I'm using a laptop that only has physical space for 1 drive.

SSD drives are based on NAND flash, and NAND flash blocks wear out after being written too many times (technically, they have a limited number of program/erase cycles.) The SSD controller does wear levelling to spread write activity evenly over all the physical blocks. By comparison, writing to a HDD block doesn't cause any wear though the mechanical nature of HDD drives means that they wear out over time as well.

In normal use it will take you a very long time to exceed the number of P/E cycles for a modern SSD drive (and as the paper linked above finds, the failure rate doesn't get dramatically worse when you do). Unless you are writing very large amounts of data very frequently I wouldn't worry about it.

Cheers,
Rick.

[issdaol (Phil)]

Originally Posted by RickS

Here's a significant study of SSD reliability (6 years, many drives):

http://0b4af6cdc2f0c5998459-c0245c5c...-schroeder.pdf

tl;dr: SSDs have a much lower replacement rate than HDDs but are more likely to develop uncorrectable errors and bad blocks. Usage is not as big a factor in SSD failure as expected but age is significant.



SSD drives are based on NAND flash, and NAND flash blocks wear out after being written too many times (technically, they have a limited number of program/erase cycles.) The SSD controller does wear levelling to spread write activity evenly over all the physical blocks. By comparison, writing to a HDD block doesn't cause any wear though the mechanical nature of HDD drives means that they wear out over time as well.

In normal use it will take you a very long time to exceed the number of P/E cycles for a modern SSD drive (and as the paper linked above finds, the failure rate doesn't get dramatically worse when you do). Unless you are writing very large amounts of data very frequently I wouldn't worry about it.

Cheers,
Rick.

This is correct ....

Also different SSD HDD's are manufactured to optimise different read and write lifecycles to suit different usage patterns.

So you should choose your SSD very carefully.

Another consideration is O/S and the O/S filesystems.......the latest version of Mac OS has a new filesystem APFS which specifically caters for the unique nature of SSD storage.....but not all O/S's work as well with SSD to extend the lifetime & reliability.

If I had to buy a new SSD today it would be the new Intel 3D XPoint technology drives.

[Exfso (Peter)]

Just wondering how the top end M2 SSD's will last, these things really are damn quick compared to standard SSD's. You do need an appropriate mobo though. One can only dream hey

[Wavytone]

Originally Posted by ZeroID

Why would you treat an SSD any different from a HDD ?

Rigorous and regular backup of your files is necessary - when and SSD fails the chances are the files are all reduced to free electrons, unlike a HDD where in many cases you stand some chance of recovering files even if it means paying for it.

[redbeard (Damien)]

Originally Posted by RickS

Here's a significant study of SSD reliability (6 years, many drives):

http://0b4af6cdc2f0c5998459-c0245c5c...-schroeder.pdf

tl;dr: SSDs have a much lower replacement rate than HDDs but are more likely to develop uncorrectable errors and bad blocks. Usage is not as big a factor in SSD failure as expected but age is significant.



SSD drives are based on NAND flash, and NAND flash blocks wear out after being written too many times (technically, they have a limited number of program/erase cycles.) The SSD controller does wear levelling to spread write activity evenly over all the physical blocks. By comparison, writing to a HDD block doesn't cause any wear though the mechanical nature of HDD drives means that they wear out over time as well.

In normal use it will take you a very long time to exceed the number of P/E cycles for a modern SSD drive (and as the paper linked above finds, the failure rate doesn't get dramatically worse when you do). Unless you are writing very large amounts of data very frequently I wouldn't worry about it.

Cheers,
Rick.

Cheers for the info Interesting read.