Solid State Drives (SSDs) - has your time finally arrived?

stockhausen

stockhausen

stockhausen

Capodecina
Soldato
Joined
30 Jul 2006
Posts
12,130
This question really boils down to three parts:
  • how long will they last?
  • how reliable will they prove to be over the longer term?
  • should one avoid "defragging" them?
From what I have read, there is an inherent problem with SSDs in that NAND modules will degrade over time with repeated write/read/erase/write cycles. This wont happen overnight but it does make them inherently less reliable than traditional HDDs for long term heavy usage.

SSDs are now available for use with the SATA 6Gbps interface, making them significantly faster than traditional HDDs with rotating platters. Their outrageous price is also coming down to a nearly acceptable level.

I am considering using a £103 64GB Crucial C300 SSD as a system disk on a new build with a large HDD for data storage. The SSD will be used exclusively for Windows 7, programs & the paging area. What concerns me is that I believe that Windows tends to "page" a great deal, even with a fair bit of RAM (e.g. 4GB). Does this mean that the area of the SSD used by the page file will degrade rapidly and lead to problems?

Is the process of defragging a SSD likely to be pointless and harmful?


Comments and opinions please folks :confused:
 
In my experience:

SSDs =

1) super fast
2) super silent
3) super small

But on the flipside:

1) unreliable (my C300 died on me for no reason at all)
2) still require fiddling to get working at optimum
3) FW updates require formatting
4) still too expensive considering they have little impact on real-world every day use. ok so windows boots up a bit quicker, cool, game maps load a bit quicker, cool. but the real kicker will be when 1TB or more is attainable at a decent price and we can actually use these things for storage and project work.

I'm waiting for the price to drop a little but mainly just for the moment when you can just buy one of these things and install it without worrying that your settings aren't right or the FW is too old or TRIM isn't working etc. etc. i just want plug-and-play like regular mechanical HDDs. how long until that happens I don't know, but I hope not much longer, as I'd like to replace all of my 12+ mech HDDs in my systems with SSDs soon.

As for your defragging question someone else here will know the answer to that, I'm sure.

Cheers,
 
My guess is the Intel G3 will be that drive. I mean how many posts do you see on here that say 'Intel G2 firmware update failed', or 'it randomly died', or 'trim doesn't work'

The others are all playing catchup in terms of the overall package quality.
 
I'm very happy with my Intel 80GB G2, no probs at all with it. I think the new 120GB G2 model might be worth a look (not sure if Overclockers are selling them yet?).
 
defragging SSD's is bad and has no benefit

as for reliability, mechanical HD's aren't exactly perfect, but SSD's do also have a limited lifetime depending on how they are used. :)

For me I'm sticking with mechanical HD's for now, I couldn't care less if windows takes a few more seconds to boot up... The quietness of SSD's does appeal to me though.
 
stockhausen said:
  • how long will they last?
  • how reliable will they prove to be over the longer term?
  • should one avoid "defragging" them?
From what I have read, there is an inherent problem with SSDs in that NAND modules will degrade over time with repeated write/read/erase/write cycles. This wont happen overnight but it does make them inherently less reliable than traditional HDDs for long term heavy usage.
Click to expand...

1: under normal use about as long as a regular HDD is expected too if not longer
2: on average more reliable than the average mechanical hdd
3: yes

The stuff baout them dying over time effects the MLC (cheap home user) SSD's but not the SLC (£900 for 128gb) enterprise ones, which is why MLC is unsuitable for commercial use but for home use with a modern SSD with TRIM you shouldnt get any trouble for it (just keep your torrents off it lol)
 
stockhausen said:
Is the process of defragging a SSD likely to be pointless and harmful?
Click to expand...

Yes. Defragging is only for mechanical hard disks, where speed is lost if the head had to keep moving around the disk back and forth to read data, instead of it being kept together. Flash disks like SSDs, USB memory sticks, etc don't have moving parts, so don't have that issue. Their seek speed is 0.1ms.
 
Its kinda like how screen savers used to be really popular back in the days of CRT screens because they kept things moving to avoid screen burn, however screen savers damage lcd screens so nowadays people just set the power saving to put the monitor to sleep.
 
I would never go back too a normal hd they are slow as said its not the boot up speed its the speed its loads things up click and its there.
 
lifetime

The expected lifetime on a HDD for me is around 3 years. After that I tend to get edgy about data failure and tend to replace rather than risk data loss of key elements.

Now I have SSD drives that are already over the 3 year mark, and still perform very well.

when it comes to laptops, especially netbooks for kids/students, I always suggest a SSD, with a backup regime to a regular HDD (of course parents agree its a brilliant idea but the kids/students hardly ever bother with the backups.) The upside of a SSD in laptop/netbook for kids is no moving parts, no gyro effect , no data loss when they drop it etc.
 
DragonQ said:
For which drives is this the case? I know OCZ SandForce drives can have their firmware updated without formatting in a second or two. For some people they can even be updated from within an OS running from that SSD.
Click to expand...

sounds good to me if that's the case. i'm talking mainly about my (now sold) C300, which required formatting to update.
 
DragonQ said:
For which drives is this the case? I know OCZ SandForce drives can have their firmware updated without formatting in a second or two. For some people they can even be updated from within an OS running from that SSD.
Click to expand...

And my Intel's firmware was updated without data loss. Any decent manufacturer will not require a format for firmware updates (IMHO!).
 
They are starting to fall into my price range, I've partitioned my harddisk into a 100Gb section as a trial to see if I could manage with a SSD as my main drive.
 
I've had 2 x Intel X25-M G2s for a year now and I initially installed Win 7 and that has been it really, updated the firmware quite a while ago, but no re-formatting needed to be done, they have both run without any issues...just as it should be!
 
mothermachine said:
... I'm waiting ... for the moment when you can just buy one of these things and install it without worrying that your settings aren't right or the FW is too old or TRIM isn't working etc. etc. i just want plug-and-play like regular mechanical HDDs. ...
Click to expand...
I haven't ever actually used an SSD but I had assumed that they were just like HDDs - Plug & Play - is this not the case?

I had heard that firmware updates came out from time to time and that SSDs don't work with earlier versions of Windows but I hadn't appreciated that these are REAL issues - thanks for the "heads-up" there :)


ih8modem said:
The expected lifetime on a HDD for me is around 3 years. After that I tend to get edgy about data failure and tend to replace rather than risk data loss of key elements.

Now I have SSD drives that are already over the 3 year mark, and still perform very well. ...
Click to expand...
I'm puzzled by this. You don't trust HDDs beyond three years (I have ones that are twice as old as that and give me no trouble) and yet you seem happy to trust SSDs (which are being developed and enhanced VERY rapidly) for longer than three years - have you had many HDDs fail :confused:

Personally, I can only think of one HDD that has ever failed (in a neighbour's PC) and I have only ever discarded HDDs when SMART tells me they should no longer be used in a server - I replace them and then use them as backup devices :)
 
stockhausen said:
I haven't ever actually used an SSD but I had assumed that they were just like HDDs - Plug & Play - is this not the case?

I had heard that firmware updates came out from time to time and that SSDs don't work with earlier versions of Windows but I hadn't appreciated that these are REAL issues - thanks for the "heads-up" there :)


I'm puzzled by this. You don't trust HDDs beyond three years (I have ones that are twice as old as that and give me no trouble) and yet you seem happy to trust SSDs (which are being developed and enhanced VERY rapidly) for longer than three years - have you had many HDDs fail :confused:

Personally, I can only think of one HDD that has ever failed (in a neighbour's PC) and I have only ever discarded HDDs when SMART tells me they should no longer be used in a server - I replace them and then use them as backup devices :)
Click to expand...

SSDs are "plug and play" in a way but as pretty much every SSD owner on here will tell you there are always things that can be tweaked to increase performance and reliability, which is my issue. the main thing being chosing the right driver to use. Marvell, MS etc... all a bit of a hassle to be honest.
 
SSDs are probably not worth it at the moment . . .

mothermachine said:
SSDs are "plug and play" in a way but as pretty much every SSD owner on here will tell you there are always things that can be tweaked to increase performance and reliability, which is my issue. the main thing being chosing the right driver to use. Marvell, MS etc... all a bit of a hassle to be honest.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that, I am genuinely grateful for the advice I have received on this thread. It and the fact that that according to Custom PC, the 64GB Crucial C300 SSD is slower than its larger siblings whilst still costing more than £100 has persuaded me to avoid SSDs for the moment.

Again, thanks to all :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom