Patriot Torqx SSD 10 year warranty

[VirtualLarry]

I saw in another thread the mention of a 10-year warranty on Patriot memory Torqx SSDs.
I cannot find verification of this. Patriot's web site here only says 5 years.

But at the top of this review, it says 10 years.

Which is right? I would be more inclined to trust Patriot's web site.

If it is indeed a 10-year warranty, that's probably what I'll get, but I'm disappointed that their "Flash memory support" page has nothing for their SSDs. Seeing as how this SSD uses the Indilinx Barefoot controller, I would hope that it too would be getting GC and TRIM support. (Unless that's somehow an OCZ exclusive.)

Edit: here is the page for Torqx products, with a linked page containing firmware updates.
It also does specify a 10-year warranty, but only a 5-year data-retention spec. So the drive will operate for 10 years, but your data will disappear after 5?

 

[Spikesoldier]

your last link states 10 year warranty right on patriot's site.

the first link 5 years is for flash memory products, not solid state drives. patriot warps have the two year, and torqx initially came with a three i believe, but patriot decided to extend that period to ten years, and also applies for all drives, including those sold with the old warranty.

i guess you can call and ask if you really want to get it from the horse's mouth

 

[bbarry]

Due to the way SSDs work (and flash memory in general). Your data is unlikely to last in an unused drive for more than a couple of years (flash is not a good archival storage medium). If the drive periodically runs current through the storage medium then your data is safe though (ie if you have it plugged in). This is the same for usb thumb drives too.

The 10 year warranty on the drives is probably even a bit tight. The drives should last a lot longer. Companies could probably easily get away with lifetime warranties (25 years) on these things without getting any significant warranty claims.

For most of the drives if you had a worst case scenario of constant write/erase cycles every second of every day the average time it would take for the drives to fail is over 5 years. Given that you are highly unlikely to hit even 10% of that use case scenario the drive should last long past the next time you consider upgrading it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: bbarry
Due to the way SSDs work (and flash memory in general). Your data is unlikely to last in an unused drive for more than a couple of years (flash is not a good archival storage medium).

I didn't know that. Does that mean that I need to "refresh" my flash drives, and SSDs, every couple of years? I find it strange that flash is so unreliable.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: bbarry
Due to the way SSDs work (and flash memory in general). Your data is unlikely to last in an unused drive for more than a couple of years (flash is not a good archival storage medium).

I didn't know that. Does that mean that I need to "refresh" my flash drives, and SSDs, every couple of years? I find it strange that flash is so unreliable.

There is no "refresh" method for flash cells like there is for the contents of dram/sram cells.

The degradation that bbarry is referring to is that caused by cosmic rays and other background radiation events which over time cause an incipient background of charge creation processes that can occur in the cells of your flash device. Generically these events are dubbed "soft errors".

Over time enough of these charge-bursts occur to cause the integrity of the files on the drive to be compromised.

It is no different for hard-drives, tapes, etc. Same phenomenon at play, your storage medium interacting with the energy contained in a cosmic ray.

http://www.newscientist.com/bl...ic-ray-alerts-for.html

A solution for guarding against SER is to have multiple copies of your archived materials, preferably stored at lower altitudes than higher altitudes, and if possible separate them by latitude as well.

If you are concerned about losing your data from SER on flash drives (or spindle) then you should be even more concerned about the prospects of losing your data due to the much higher probability of burglary, fire/water damage, and standard electrical-related damage from dying PSU or other electronics connected to the output side of your PSU (a GPU blowing can fry your SSD, etc). There is no shortage of things to be worried about if you really want to venture down that road.

Having physically separated backups is the easiest way to begin to eliminate some of those threat vectors.