Originally posted by miagisan right, and i still have hds is use for pictures and storage which are running 7+ years. like anything, you treat your property as it should it will last. my job requires me to have a mini "server" running off my computer, and i do a lot of read/writing on my hd, not counting gaming and such. that 5 years could be drug down to 2 or 3 years, maybe less. And its easier to recover data from a bad hdd and nearly impossible to recover it from a bad SSD. Both sides have their quirks, but like i said, the price for longevity for me does not make sense. I didnt mean it as a generalized term.
I have a 640MB hard drive that still works fine. I've RMA'd a brand new 1TB hard drive. That's my point. You just can't tell with a hard drive. At least an SSD isn't random. But yes I wouldn't use an SSD for server application. That would wear it out too fast and isn't what it's meant for.
right, and i still have hds is use for pictures and storage which are running 7+ years. like anything, you treat your property as it should it will last. my job requires me to have a mini "server" running off my computer, and i do a lot of read/writing on my hd, not counting gaming and such. that 5 years could be drug down to 2 or 3 years, maybe less. And its easier to recover data from a bad hdd and nearly impossible to recover it from a bad SSD. Both sides have their quirks, but like i said, the price for longevity for me does not make sense. I didnt mean it as a generalized term.
I have a 640MB hard drive that still works fine. I've RMA'd a brand new 1TB hard drive. That's my point. You just can't tell with a hard drive. At least an SSD isn't random.
SSDs still have their quirks and can fail in mid write if the cell goes bad. Granted the OS should be able to compensate, but like any peice of technology, Tech + murphey's law will always triumph when you really dont want it too happen
I thought SSDs were supposed to last about ten years, as that is how long the NAND flash is supposed to hold its charge. Patriot actually gives some of their SSDs a 10 year warranty. Very aggressive writing can reduce that, but that's not a problem for ordinary desktop use. Massive amounts of reading from the SSD doesn't affect the lifetime at all. The PCB and controller chip should last basically forever.
That survey only gives you failure rates over a short term--and likely from people who took the drive home, couldn't get it to work, and immediately returned it. SSDs still have some compatibility issues if you're not using Windows 7, so that probably led to a significant number of SSD returns from people who couldn't get it working in the first place. So would the need to flash firmware on SSDs, especially if the controller chip is fairly new. If your only concern is getting the system up and working in the first place, then an SSD would be vastly worse than a hard drive.
But that's not the real concern. If you take an SSD home, it is DOA, you take it back and get a replacement, and the replacement works just fine, oh well. Sure, it's a nuisance, but you didn't lose data. An SSD failure of that type is no worse than a processor failure or a video card failure. It's not the type of data loss failure that makes storage reliability so much more important than most other components, save the power supply (which can take other components with it when it dies) and perhaps motherboard (ditto, plus hard to diagnose).
The real problem is if you buy a hard drive or SSD, install your stuff on it, and it seems to work just fine. Then 17 months later, it abruptly dies, without warning. If you've gotten lazy in your backup routine, maybe you lose a month worth of data. You had a backup routine, right? Some people would lose all their data. That's catastrophic. And it's a lot more likely to happen on a hard drive than an SSD. SSD drive failures also tend not to be catastrophic, so it's likely that you can get the information off of the memory chips if you really, really need to (though for an exorbitant price); if your hard drive has a head crash, the data is gone and nothing can be done to save it.
It is the nature of hard drives that they have platters (think a CD or DVD, except smaller) spinning furiously at 120 revolutions per second (or 90 revolutions per second for some, or occasionally other speeds). Meanwhile, there is a drive head hovering nanometers away from the surface reading and writing. The drive head isn't stationary, either; it whips back and forth constantly go to where the data is phsically located and grab it as it goes by. And if the drive head runs into the platter (remember, it's only nanometers away, and moving very fast), you get a head crash. The hard drive is toast, and whatever data you had on the platter is gone and unrecoverable, even at exorbitant data recovery prices. If that sounds precarious, that's because it is, and if anything, it's an engineering marvel that hard drives are as reliable as they are.
Less catastrophic is if the motors to spin the hard drive platters or move the drive heads fail or malfunction. That will still kill the drive, but at least the data will be recoverable, albeit at exorbitant prices that you probably still won't want to pay.
Solid state drives simply don't have any analogous ways in which it is physically possible to fail, as they have no moving parts. Sure, you could crack the PCB or have an electrical failure or bad firmware flash or some such. But you can have other sorts of non-physical failures for hard drives, too.
right, and i still have hds is use for pictures and storage which are running 7+ years. like anything, you treat your property as it should it will last. my job requires me to have a mini "server" running off my computer, and i do a lot of read/writing on my hd, not counting gaming and such. that 5 years could be drug down to 2 or 3 years, maybe less. And its easier to recover data from a bad hdd and nearly impossible to recover it from a bad SSD. Both sides have their quirks, but like i said, the price for longevity for me does not make sense. I didnt mean it as a generalized term.
My this thread has moved fast since it was resurrected.
If you've got a seven year old hard drive, it's living on borrowed time already. Hard drives are only meant to last five years. Maybe it will continue to work, but you shouldn't be the least bit surprised if it completely dies without warning.
There are SSDs that are appropriate for write-heavy servers, but they're a lot more expensive per GB. See, for example, OCZ's Vertex 2 EX, or Intel's upcoming Ephraim SSDs that will probably recycle the X25-E branding.
If it's a read-heavy server that doesn't do much writing (e.g., to host a web page), then a typical consumer SSD should work just fine. If it's a write-heavy server (e.g., for an aggressively edited database), then a typical consumer SSD is out.
I thought SSDs were supposed to last about ten years, as that is how long the NAND flash is supposed to hold its charge. Patriot actually gives some of their SSDs a 10 year warranty. Very aggressive writing can reduce that, but that's not a problem for ordinary desktop use. Massive amounts of reading from the SSD doesn't affect the lifetime at all. The PCB and controller chip should last basically forever.
That survey only gives you failure rates over a short term--and likely from people who took the drive home, couldn't get it to work, and immediately returned it. SSDs still have some compatibility issues if you're not using Windows 7, so that probably led to a significant number of SSD returns from people who couldn't get it working in the first place. So would the need to flash firmware on SSDs, especially if the controller chip is fairly new. If your only concern is getting the system up and working in the first place, then an SSD would be vastly worse than a hard drive.
But that's not the real concern. If you take an SSD home, it is DOA, you take it back and get a replacement, and the replacement works just fine, oh well. Sure, it's a nuisance, but you didn't lose data. An SSD failure of that type is no worse than a processor failure or a video card failure. It's not the type of data loss failure that makes storage reliability so much more important than most other components, save the power supply (which can take other components with it when it dies) and perhaps motherboard (ditto, plus hard to diagnose).
The real problem is if you buy a hard drive or SSD, install your stuff on it, and it seems to work just fine. Then 17 months later, it abruptly dies, without warning. If you've gotten lazy in your backup routine, maybe you lose a month worth of data. You had a backup routine, right? Some people would lose all their data. That's catastrophic. And it's a lot more likely to happen on a hard drive than an SSD. SSD drive failures also tend not to be catastrophic, so it's likely that you can get the information off of the memory chips if you really, really need to (though for an exorbitant price); if your hard drive has a head crash, the data is gone and nothing can be done to save it.
It is the nature of hard drives that they have platters (think a CD or DVD, except smaller) spinning furiously at 120 revolutions per second (or 90 revolutions per second for some, or occasionally other speeds). Meanwhile, there is a drive head hovering nanometers away from the surface reading and writing. The drive head isn't stationary, either; it whips back and forth constantly go to where the data is phsically located and grab it as it goes by. And if the drive head runs into the platter (remember, it's only nanometers away, and moving very fast), you get a head crash. The hard drive is toast, and whatever data you had on the platter is gone and unrecoverable, even at exorbitant data recovery prices. If that sounds precarious, that's because it is, and if anything, it's an engineering marvel that hard drives are as reliable as they are.
Less catastrophic is if the motors to spin the hard drive platters or move the drive heads fail or malfunction. That will still kill the drive, but at least the data will be recoverable, albeit at exorbitant prices that you probably still won't want to pay.
Solid state drives simply don't have any analogous ways in which it is physically possible to fail, as they have no moving parts. Sure, you could crack the PCB or have an electrical failure or bad firmware flash or some such. But you can have other sorts of non-physical failures for hard drives, too.
i agree with everything you said. like i said, i do a ton of read / write between cad/data crunching/light server work, etc.....the read write on my comp is enormous. not something i am trusting ssd with, and most ssd companies give a 3-5 year warranty, with the average lifespan on a ssd being 5 years (more if you get a larger drive)
right, and i still have hds is use for pictures and storage which are running 7+ years. like anything, you treat your property as it should it will last. my job requires me to have a mini "server" running off my computer, and i do a lot of read/writing on my hd, not counting gaming and such. that 5 years could be drug down to 2 or 3 years, maybe less. And its easier to recover data from a bad hdd and nearly impossible to recover it from a bad SSD. Both sides have their quirks, but like i said, the price for longevity for me does not make sense. I didnt mean it as a generalized term.
My this thread has moved fast since it was resurrected.
If you've got a seven year old hard drive, it's living on borrowed time already. Hard drives are only meant to last five years. Maybe it will continue to work, but you shouldn't be the least bit surprised if it completely dies without warning.
There are SSDs that are appropriate for write-heavy servers, but they're a lot more expensive per GB. See, for example, OCZ's Vertex 2 EX, or Intel's upcoming Ephraim SSDs that will probably recycle the X25-E branding.
If it's a read-heavy server that doesn't do much writing (e.g., to host a web page), then a typical consumer SSD should work just fine. If it's a write-heavy server (e.g., for an aggressively edited database), then a typical consumer SSD is out.
exactly (sorry you wrote your post after i hit reply...so you repeateded what i was trying to say)
Comments
I have a 640MB hard drive that still works fine. I've RMA'd a brand new 1TB hard drive. That's my point. You just can't tell with a hard drive. At least an SSD isn't random. But yes I wouldn't use an SSD for server application. That would wear it out too fast and isn't what it's meant for.
SSDs still have their quirks and can fail in mid write if the cell goes bad. Granted the OS should be able to compensate, but like any peice of technology, Tech + murphey's law will always triumph when you really dont want it too happen
I thought SSDs were supposed to last about ten years, as that is how long the NAND flash is supposed to hold its charge. Patriot actually gives some of their SSDs a 10 year warranty. Very aggressive writing can reduce that, but that's not a problem for ordinary desktop use. Massive amounts of reading from the SSD doesn't affect the lifetime at all. The PCB and controller chip should last basically forever.
That survey only gives you failure rates over a short term--and likely from people who took the drive home, couldn't get it to work, and immediately returned it. SSDs still have some compatibility issues if you're not using Windows 7, so that probably led to a significant number of SSD returns from people who couldn't get it working in the first place. So would the need to flash firmware on SSDs, especially if the controller chip is fairly new. If your only concern is getting the system up and working in the first place, then an SSD would be vastly worse than a hard drive.
But that's not the real concern. If you take an SSD home, it is DOA, you take it back and get a replacement, and the replacement works just fine, oh well. Sure, it's a nuisance, but you didn't lose data. An SSD failure of that type is no worse than a processor failure or a video card failure. It's not the type of data loss failure that makes storage reliability so much more important than most other components, save the power supply (which can take other components with it when it dies) and perhaps motherboard (ditto, plus hard to diagnose).
The real problem is if you buy a hard drive or SSD, install your stuff on it, and it seems to work just fine. Then 17 months later, it abruptly dies, without warning. If you've gotten lazy in your backup routine, maybe you lose a month worth of data. You had a backup routine, right? Some people would lose all their data. That's catastrophic. And it's a lot more likely to happen on a hard drive than an SSD. SSD drive failures also tend not to be catastrophic, so it's likely that you can get the information off of the memory chips if you really, really need to (though for an exorbitant price); if your hard drive has a head crash, the data is gone and nothing can be done to save it.
It is the nature of hard drives that they have platters (think a CD or DVD, except smaller) spinning furiously at 120 revolutions per second (or 90 revolutions per second for some, or occasionally other speeds). Meanwhile, there is a drive head hovering nanometers away from the surface reading and writing. The drive head isn't stationary, either; it whips back and forth constantly go to where the data is phsically located and grab it as it goes by. And if the drive head runs into the platter (remember, it's only nanometers away, and moving very fast), you get a head crash. The hard drive is toast, and whatever data you had on the platter is gone and unrecoverable, even at exorbitant data recovery prices. If that sounds precarious, that's because it is, and if anything, it's an engineering marvel that hard drives are as reliable as they are.
Less catastrophic is if the motors to spin the hard drive platters or move the drive heads fail or malfunction. That will still kill the drive, but at least the data will be recoverable, albeit at exorbitant prices that you probably still won't want to pay.
Solid state drives simply don't have any analogous ways in which it is physically possible to fail, as they have no moving parts. Sure, you could crack the PCB or have an electrical failure or bad firmware flash or some such. But you can have other sorts of non-physical failures for hard drives, too.
My this thread has moved fast since it was resurrected.
If you've got a seven year old hard drive, it's living on borrowed time already. Hard drives are only meant to last five years. Maybe it will continue to work, but you shouldn't be the least bit surprised if it completely dies without warning.
There are SSDs that are appropriate for write-heavy servers, but they're a lot more expensive per GB. See, for example, OCZ's Vertex 2 EX, or Intel's upcoming Ephraim SSDs that will probably recycle the X25-E branding.
If it's a read-heavy server that doesn't do much writing (e.g., to host a web page), then a typical consumer SSD should work just fine. If it's a write-heavy server (e.g., for an aggressively edited database), then a typical consumer SSD is out.
i agree with everything you said. like i said, i do a ton of read / write between cad/data crunching/light server work, etc.....the read write on my comp is enormous. not something i am trusting ssd with, and most ssd companies give a 3-5 year warranty, with the average lifespan on a ssd being 5 years (more if you get a larger drive)
exactly
(sorry you wrote your post after i hit reply...so you repeateded what i was trying to say) 