Are SSD's more reliable than spindle drives.

[Lemon law]

Both my wife and I spend a lot of time on our computers. We both have win XP systems that meet our needs, networked together with ICS, and our only broadband options are EVDO 3G or Satellite. We choose 3G Evdo which is capped at 5 GB/month.

Until Sata spindle drives came out, we never experienced a HDD failure, but in the last 2 years, we have experienced 3 HDD failures. Not only is it a giant hassle to reload windows XP onto a new drive, it really breaks the bank on that 5GB/mp cap after all those windows updates have to be done.

And here I am, after my 1.5 year old Seagate drive has borked windows XP pro again.
Its not totally toast yet, but system restore is gone, system information no longer loads, and its eaten my ICS ability. Been there done that, I can probably reformat the Sata spindle HDD and reinstall windows, but in less than a month, its almost certain to be borked again.

So here I am in the HDD drive market again. Thankfully I have a ancient but reliable backup XP computer, its slow, hadn't been used for a year when my wife's HDD drive got replaced, and now I have only spent the bulk of 12 hours getting it back to updated. But at least it buys me the luxury of time to decide what HDD drive to get.

I have read the ZAP sticky but it does not seem to cover reliability, But I see most SSD's are rated a million or more hours mean time before failure. Compared to spindle drives that are typically rated at only 50,000 hours at best. And I see under 5,000 hours in reality.

As it is I never have more than 20GB's on a hard drive, so a 60 to 80 GB SSD drive would suit me fine with the increased speed a bonus. I now understand I should seldom or seldom defrag a SSD, but would a SSD buy me better reliably than the crap
results I now get with Sata2 spindle drives.

Yes a SSD would cost me an extra $80 over a spindle drive, but reliability is priceless.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

SSDs are rated up to like 1000 G's or something, they have no moving parts to wear out, they don't have bearings or electric motors. So yes, other than bugs in firmware or design defects, SSDs are more reliable. But then, a good portion of HDD failures are due to those two things also.

Google's big drive study showed that something like half of drives go bad very quickly (aforementioned two factors) and the other half last their life and die of mechanical failure after like 4 or 5 years. SSDs are not immune to the first part, but will not be subject to the second part. They do have an end-of-life metric, but you'll never reach it before you replace the drive/computer.

 

[lsv]

I'd be more worried about some underlying cause which may be attributing to your HD failures.

Then again it may just be bad luck.

 

[FishAk]

There simply isn't enough time spent on SSDs to answer your question. In any case, reliability should be the last requirement you have for a storage drive. I'm not saying it's not important, but it's not as important as price, size, and speed. Reliability is only achieved through backups.

With storage so cheap, no one should be running their system without a minimum of two drives, and it boggles my mind to see that so many people only use one. I see very few OEM systems advertised with two drives, and also, very few DIY builds include a second drive. You should always have a backup drive that backs up your primary drive. You know for a fact that your storage drive is going to die- they all do- so why wouldn't you have a replacement set of your data? The only way to guarantee reliability is to have proper backups.

There is no need for re-installing your OS and programs after a drive failure. Use Macrium Reflect (free) to image your OS partition. It's then a simple task to restore the partition in just a few minutes. Your OS and programs will be restored to the same exact state they were in when you took the snapshot.

You should never- not seldom- but never defrag an SSD. It causes a little harm in wear, and does absolutely no good. If you continue to use XP, a Sandforce drive with their superior garbage collection would work best. XP has no TRIM support, but Sandforce's GC works about as well. (it's as close to defragging as an SSD gets)

The best setup right now, is a small SSD, and two spindle drives. Put your OS and programs on the SSD, all your data on one HDD, and backup your primary HDD with the second. An external drive set should be used for less frequent backups that are taken off sight to protect against fire, theft, flood, ect. Put images of your OS/programs partition on all your drives, and test them.

 

[Lemon law]

I'd be more worried about some underlying cause which may be attributing to your HD failures.

Then again it may just be bad luck.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since this has happened on basically three totally different computers, due to spindle HDD failure and not malware, I suspect the spindle HDD as institionilized bad luck.

Which is why I want to get away from a spindle based HDD.

But am I jumping from the frying pan right into the fire with a SSD?

 

[Gigantopithecus]

I'd be more worried about some underlying cause which may be attributing to your HD failures.

Then again it may just be bad luck.

Probably more likely to be an underlying cause than bad luck.

OP, you mentioned Seagate - their 7200.10 & onwards drives have a bad reputation for a number of reasons.

How are you buying your drives? A lot of etailers, even the more reputable ones, are known to package drives poorly & that can shorten lifespan.

How's the juice in your place? Is the electrical wiring good or old? Are other sensitive electronics going bad or acting flakey? Do you have your computers on good power regulators/surge protectors? Are your power supplies new and high quality or are they older and mediocre quality?

How's the heat in your case? Check the hard drive temps - if they're sitting at 40C+ for extended periods of time that's too hot. Do they fluctuate in temperature rapidly? E.g. do your ambient temps go from really cold to really hot like is somewhat common in upper Midwest & Southwest (~50F to 90F)? Drastic & rapid temperature changes wear out drives.

In my experience, power supplies are usually to blame for repeated drive failures. High quality replacements for non-high end rigs are not expensive. For example, the Antec Earthwatts 380D can usually be acquired for $40 or less.

 

[Lemon law]

Good points Gigantopithecus,

My wiring is new and delivers 115-120 volts without brown outs, I do have a good power supplies that deliver rated voltages, and I use a high Joule rated surge suppressors. But yes, two of the crapped out spindle drives were new seagates and the other a Western digital. And yes I monitor case and HDD drive temps. And HDD temps never exceed 40C

I wonder if uninteruptable power supplies might help. And I also turn off my computers when thunderstorms come close.

 

[flamenko]

Regardless of how we look at the problem, the answer is still angling to the fact that the SSD is the better choice at the end of the day. We can state that SSDs havent been around long enough to conduct a full google study as much as we can recognize the study and realize that hard drives aren't as reliable as many want to believe, especially when you want to put them into an environment that tests their ability.

I might consider this...

The SSD has been around alot longer than consumer release and is depended upon for some very crucial functions in aeronautics, the medical field and military situations as well as many others. In the 3 years we have seen them at a release at the consumer level, how many have we really seen reach the end of their lifespan or fail without end reason. The other benefit is that when the SSD reaches endlife, it doesnt crash and all data can be read without problem... or so we believe anyway. This is hypothetical as we really havent seen that many reach that point yet.

JMT

 

[Voo]

Well the thing is, that the only thing that really can go bad on a SSD is the controller, while for the HDD you've got the controller (although vastly simpler) and all the mechanical parts, so from that perspective I'd think that in the long run SSDs should be more reliable.. or at least fail predictabely (i.e. you're running out of P/E cycles).

@flamenko: But those other drives surely have completely different controllers/fw than the new consumer drives, don't they?

But at the moment with still some fw problems lingering? Who knows. You need backups anyhow.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Good points Gigantopithecus,

My wiring is new and delivers 115-120 volts without brown outs, I do have a good power supplies that deliver rated voltages, and I use a high Joule rated surge suppressors. But yes, two of the crapped out spindle drives were new seagates and the other a Western digital. And yes I monitor case and HDD drive temps. And HDD temps never exceed 40C

I wonder if uninteruptable power supplies might help. And I also turn off my computers when thunderstorms come close.

Ha, then maybe you do just have shit for luck. If the point of asking your original question is to avoid the pain in the ass of reinstalling Windows & recovering all of your data, then I think your best bet is to buy two spindle drives, install everything on one, clone it, & keep the clone in the closet.

 

[tweakboy]

A good mechanical drive well taken care of can last longer then a SSD. There is a rate of failure in both. If you take care of it it will live good.. like defragging etc etc... just look at this and btw still going strong.

 

[Evadman]

<snip>
still going strong.

4.5 years. Nice.

 

[tweakboy]

Thanks Evadman actually Ive had that drive since 2004 ,,, sometimes machine was off ,,,