SSD or traditional HD more reliable for programming environment?

[scottat]

Which is more reliable for a programming environment where I'm very frequently building, testing and transferring files?

SSD or traditional HD?

is there a particular brand of SSD or traditional HD that is most reliable?

I assume RAID 1 of whichever is most reliable is that much better reliability?

 

[Elixer]

Well, both types of devices can, and will fail.
I don't think there is a metric to measure 'most reliable'. For some people, it is HDs, for other people it is SSDs.

While RAID 1 is more fault tolerant, it isn't a excuse to not backup the device in question.

 

[Voo]

First of all: I sure hope you're storing your data on a SVN server or something similar (not just for backup reasons) and the real question is "How do I keep the downtime as low as possible?". Because if not, go start with that before worrying about the little details.

Now that that's out of the way, the best numbers we have (and those are getting a bit old in the tooth by now) show that Intel SSDs have by far the lowest return rates, followed by the rest of the bulk independent of SSDs/HDDs except for 2tb 7.2k rpm drives which are way worse.

RAID1 is easy: If you have disks with failure rate p using RAID1 lowers the failure rate to p^2. Note that this is only if your disks fail - Raid1 will do absolutely nothing if you have a power loss, a virus or anything else that corrupts data.

 

[scottat]

Thanks guys, I do backup everything. All of my important files except code are in a dropbox folder. My code is "regularly" sync'd with an SVN repository. This weekend I happened not to have committed for several days and lost a lot of time 🙁. But I also no longer want to waste time reinstalling an OS either. Though maybe it's good to refresh every once in a while, I'd like to be the one choosing when...

So Intel SSDs in a RAID 1 configuration seems to be the way to go...

 

[LokutusofBorg]

If you have the money/budget, then yes, two SSDs in RAID 1 is ideal.

I've been running a 120GB Vertex 2 in my Dell at work with a 1TB Seagate (came stock from Dell, I reinstalled on the SSD) and have had no problems with reliability or issues of any kind. I can compile our entire codebase 5 to 10 times faster than other devs that have the same computer sans the SSD. I also run all my SQL databases (~30GB) from the SSD and use the 1TB for backups and all generic data. Works great and I've been very happy with it.

An SSD for a dev workstation is far and away a worthwhile investment.

 

[Emulex]

most SSD are not raid compliant. no TLER/cER like properties. better to run raid-0 and backup imo.

or jbod and backup.

 

[nanaki333]

most SSD are not raid compliant. no TLER/cER like properties. better to run raid-0 and backup imo.

or jbod and backup.

hopefully that will change once we learn the secret to ocz passing TRIM through to their revodrive 3 series 😀

 

[Emulex]

raid controllers are being made as we speak with enhanced i/o CUT-through mode (faster cache) and trim support - no doubt. hp ibm (lsi) - hold tight as the drives come out for enterprise the controllers then consumer boards will follow.

 

[PandaBear]

I think both are reliable enough for these tasks, they are not demanding when compare to database or server related works.

I'm currently running a software (windows 7) raid between 2 OCZ Vertex 2 (34nm) of 100GB total. The performance over a mechanical HD is night and day difference. My build time of a large project drop from 2 hr 30 min to 1 hr 45 min when going to single drive SSD, then drop again to 1 hr 15 min when going to dual SSD raid 0.

To save you time, you can "mount" a volume as a directory in windows so you don't have to reinstall or change anything in the path.