New study shows SSDs liable to bricking/wiping by power outages

[Mark R]

A new study, recently published at FAST 13, has demonstrated that the majority of SSDs on the market suffer severe vulnerability to unclean shutdown/unexpected power outage scenarios.

The investigation has shown findings reminiscent of rumors from the early days of SSDs, where certain companies gained a reputation for poor quality, due to power cycle bugs. However, unlike relatively isolated cases attributed to one particular brand of controller, this new study shows that similar, albeit less frequent, bugs exist in most drives on sale today.

One drive model was found to be bricked by power outages while the drive was processing writes. Other models have shown total data corruption, and others have shown severe data corruption affecting approximately 30% of the data on the drive.

Most other drives tested corrupted or missed the writes in progress, most in ways which break the crash recovery algorithms in journaled file systems, databases, etc.

Even drives with supercapacitor power backup were found to corrupt data when power was last while the drive was busy.

Link

 

[imagoon]

Doesn't really surprise me. The pages are larger than they used to (ie disk 512b -> 4kb) vs 512kb+ on some SSDs. That means writes are more vulnerable. While ignoring any write caching going on.

 

[corkyg]

Sounds like a demend for a UPS when a SSD is installed in a desktop. Should not be a problem in laptop or ultrabook.

 

[Railgun]

New?

Though I will say this...HW involved will play a large part.

I've had relatively recent issues with power on my raid 0 array. Essentially I didn't utilize the extra mobo power connection, so my controller was experiencing low 3.3v issues. I was frequently hitting 3.1 or lower, causing the PC to crash. Even these power issues didn't affect the array in any way and what I built a good 18 months ago is still going strong.

I've only experienced a single power outage and then, no issues.

 

[Phynaz]

Thanks

 

[piasabird]

In some places where they have poor power supply systems I could see the brown outs causing instability in power supplies. I live in the midwest and sometimes the power just goes out due to thunderstorms and heavy rain.

Often the problems are caused by drunks running into telephone poles.

 

[Mark R]

Maybe they need something like a capaciter circuit so you have time to do a more controlled shutdown.

That's the point. Some of the ones *with* capacitor circuits still got corrupted.

 

[Phynaz]

The only gripe I have with the paper is they keep talking data centers, but then "test fifteen commodity SSDs".

What they tested aren't being used in data centers.

I think the authors would have better served themselves if they had just not talked about data centers. But then they couldn't have presented at USENIX.

 

[beginner99]

The only gripe I have with the paper is they keep talking data centers, but then "test fifteen commodity SSDs".

What they tested aren't being used in data centers.

I think the authors would have better served themselves if they had just not talked about data centers. But then they couldn't have presented at USENIX.

So their take-away message is "Don't user consumer grade electronics in data-centers!". Like that's new.

Never had an issue so far. But power outages here are very,very rare.

 

[Blain]

Electronics need a supply of power to function correctly.
An AVR UPS should be required for everything.

 

[bryanl]

What were the 5 brands of SSDs out of the 13 tested that did not suffer data loss?

Anybody taking bets on OCZ?

 

[sub.mesa]

Sounds like a demend for a UPS when a SSD is installed in a desktop. Should not be a problem in laptop or ultrabook.

Unfortunately, this is not true. Even in UPS-protected environments, your SSD can have Unexpected Power-Loss.

You can easily verify this with an SSD which includes the variable 'Unexpected Power-Loss count' in its SMART output. Many quality SSDs do. Even with a UPS or without actual power failures, your SSD will have power failures.

A power failure from the perspective of an SSD is any loss of power without a prior 'STANDBY IMMEDIATE' ATA command sent to the drive, to prepare for sudden power loss. If power loss occurs outside of these parameters, the SSD has the potential to become corrupt and even stop working working altogether if the mapping tables were sufficiently damaged.

What you really need is a safe SSD; one protected with a capacitor array like the Intel 320 or Crucial M500. All the other consumer SSDs are prone to corruption and basically are designed to fail and become corrupt because sudden power-loss is a normal operational parameter the SSD just has to be able to cope with in consumer-usage scenarios.

 

[spandexninja]

I think my mSata Crucial M4 'unexpected power loss' counter goes up whenever I unplug the mSata from the laptop without first removing the battery (while the laptop is turned off).

CrystalDiskInfo says my M4 has 2 unexpected power losses (but my laptop is always on battery and has never crashed).

 

[Magic Carpet]

http://forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-S...quot-disappear-quot-from-my-system/ta-p/65215

Makes sense. Not sure, how it is still relevant today, though.

 

[Eug]

Link

Haha. I got this message from Acrobat Reader trying to open the link:

"There was an error opening this document. The file is damaged and could not be repaired."

It's just on my desktop though. Works fine otherwise.

Anyhoo, I have UPSes for all my main desktops, my fax machine, my switches and router, and my NASes. While I can understand why people don't have UPSes for their fax machine and switches, I don't understand why anyone would risk running their desktop without a UPS.

The power in my office goes out about once every 2 months, and every 2 months someone claims they lost 20 minutes of work or whatever. Every single time. Just get a damn UPS already. Imagine if they lost their whole drive...

 

[VirtualLarry]

The power in my office goes out about once every 2 months, and every 2 months someone claims they lost 20 minutes of work or whatever. Every single time. Just get a damn UPS already. Imagine if they lost their whole drive...

Which I guess was the point of the article, if they were using an SSD, they COULD lose the entire drive in one fell swoop.

 

[Remobz]

Sounds like a demend for a UPS when a SSD is installed in a desktop. Should not be a problem in laptop or ultrabook.

I have lots of powers cuts and power spikes where I live.

Operating a computer here without a UPS is pure suicide!

 

[Remobz]

Unfortunately, this is not true. Even in UPS-protected environments, your SSD can have Unexpected Power-Loss.

You can easily verify this with an SSD which includes the variable 'Unexpected Power-Loss count' in its SMART output. Many quality SSDs do. Even with a UPS or without actual power failures, your SSD will have power failures.

A power failure from the perspective of an SSD is any loss of power without a prior 'STANDBY IMMEDIATE' ATA command sent to the drive, to prepare for sudden power loss. If power loss occurs outside of these parameters, the SSD has the potential to become corrupt and even stop working working altogether if the mapping tables were sufficiently damaged.

What you really need is a safe SSD; one protected with a capacitor array like the Intel 320 or Crucial M500. All the other consumer SSDs are prone to corruption and basically are designed to fail and become corrupt because sudden power-loss is a normal operational parameter the SSD just has to be able to cope with in consumer-usage scenarios.

I have a samsung 840 pro....looks like I am screwed then

 

[Doomer]

2 of my comps have SSDs. The last month I've lost power about 4 times during thunderstorms. I suffered no ill effects whatsoever. Untill reports from ordinary users start pouring in about SSD's trashed by power outages, I call BS.

 

[imagoon]

Unfortunately, this is not true. Even in UPS-protected environments, your SSD can have Unexpected Power-Loss.

You can easily verify this with an SSD which includes the variable 'Unexpected Power-Loss count' in its SMART output. Many quality SSDs do. Even with a UPS or without actual power failures, your SSD will have power failures.

A power failure from the perspective of an SSD is any loss of power without a prior 'STANDBY IMMEDIATE' ATA command sent to the drive, to prepare for sudden power loss. If power loss occurs outside of these parameters, the SSD has the potential to become corrupt and even stop working working altogether if the mapping tables were sufficiently damaged.

What you really need is a safe SSD; one protected with a capacitor array like the Intel 320 or Crucial M500. All the other consumer SSDs are prone to corruption and basically are designed to fail and become corrupt because sudden power-loss is a normal operational parameter the SSD just has to be able to cope with in consumer-usage scenarios.

This isn't any different that spinning disks with cache. I am not sure that is "designed to fail" more than just "uncommitted writes will be lost." In this case, uncommitted writes can include the mapping table.

 

[Eug]

What you really need is a safe SSD; one protected with a capacitor array like the Intel 320 or Crucial M500.

And now the Seagate 600 Pro too.

Too bad the Seagate uses so much power at idle. Over 1 Watt.

 

[GlacierFreeze]

And now the Seagate 600 Pro too.

Too bad the Seagate uses so much power at idle. Over 1 Watt.

But in the grand scheme of things, is 1 watt really that much? In comparison to 840 bar graphs sure, but doesn't really seem like that big of a deal. Extra dollar a year in desktop, dozen less minutes in laptop? Think the more important issue would be whether it gets regular firmware updates. Not a bad drive besides that question mark.

 

[Eug]

A dozen less minutes in a laptop is a big deal, esp. when you may only have 4 hours to begin with. In fact, I'd say it's a deal-killer for a laptop.

For a desktop, it's irrelevant.

 

[Remobz]

A dozen less minutes in a laptop is a big deal, esp. when you may only have 4 hours to begin with. In fact, I'd say it's a deal-killer for a laptop.

For a desktop, it's irrelevant.

Good, then its irrelevant to me then.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Pros: Speedy, but nothing to distinguish it from any other SSD that I can see.

Cons: Fails to recover from power outages. Every time (and I mean every time, 4 for 4) there is a power outage with the computer it on, the bios has trouble recognizing the SSD. I bought 2 of these for 2 different systems and both systems saw this. Usually a few boot cycles and it sees it again but last time it seems to be dead for good.

Looks like UPS is a must for desktop