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SSD reliability- post if you've had a failure (or a reliable drive)

B

BlahBlahYouToo

Lifer
Failure rates seem pretty high for a device with no moving parts, as opposed to HDDs which are expected to have higher rates of failure.
I've seen a surprisingly high amount of failures, DOA's, esp. with OCZ SSDs, from forums, newegg reviews, etc.

So post if you have experienced a failed SSD. Include pertinent info such as brand, model, size, how long you've had it...

Feel free to post if you have a reliable SSD as well, provided you've owned it for at least a year.
 
Yes but you have to separate these failures in different types:

- factory weak samples or 'duds'
- failure due to electrical issues in your computer
- ESD (electrostatic discharge) if also possible
- firmware issues
- physical NAND damage

The firmware issues appear to cause the most failures in JMicron/Toshiba SSDs with OCZ brand; these had some issues where in some cases the SSD would 'brick' itself and won't be usable again due to a software (well firmware) bug.

These firmware issues may be attributed to SSDs not being matured yet; firmware issues will die out as the market matures and SSDs get less rough edges. The first generation without TRIM or the JMicron generation kind of sucked.

Regardless; failure shouldn't be a problem at all! You get a new SSD, and you have that tiny data on your SSD backed up on one of your 2TB external backup solutions; right? Of course you have, because you care for your data; so reliability of a HDD or SSD will never cause you to lose data but instead only cause material/financial damage if the warranty period has elapsed; nothing more. An 80GB SSD would be very easy to backup on high-capacity HDDs.
 
sub.mesa said:
Yes but you have to separate these failures in different types:

- factory weak samples or 'duds'
- failure due to electrical issues in your computer
- ESD (electrostatic discharge) if also possible
- firmware issues
- physical NAND damage
Click to expand...

Not really. To the end user, all they care about is whether it works or not out of the box.
If it doesn't work when they pop it in, it's classified as DOA.

It if fails due to user error (whether due to ESD or failed firmware upgrade attempt), then it should not be posted here- or if they decide to, I'm fairly certain the typical AT member will be honest in where the blame lies.

Samples? Who gets those except for reviewers?
From online vendors where most do their shopping, they get OEM or retail drives.

There's no need to classify it any further. It works, or it doesn't, or it was working for a few weeks then took a crap.
 
I've had my Intel X25-M G2 160GB since last fall (about a year now) and it hasn't given me any problems. I've had my G2 80GB since last Christmas and it also hasn't given me any problems.

FWIW, I haven't heard many complaints about Intel drives since the G1's and that one bad batch of firmware for G2's.
 
Some failures are indeed caused in the factory (duds) or in the design itself (firmware), but other failures are caused by the user instead. A bad power supply or ESD is not the fault of the SSD if that leads to failure. ESD can be tricky since this failure can be delayed. In many cases you won't be able to find out the reason for the failure.

The relative low capacity of SSDs compared to HDDs also makes the failure rate less problematic, since you can easily maintain a backup of the SSD.

The real interesting questions will be how reliable SSDs really are when they matured a bit, what actually causes most of the failures and what the ratio is of failures caused by the user and those caused outside of the user's responsibility.
 
I think we should at least seperate FW issues, because while those are annoying for those who are affected, those should be fixed in no time and so don't affect people looking for SSDs.
A easy example would be the intel drives: Lots of bricked drives because of their FW desasters, but other than that rather reliable.

But in the long term I should think that SSDs should be much more reliable than HDDs, flash usually degrades over time, so the SPOF is the controller and that should be less of a problem than all those high density platters and nm accuracy of modern HDDs.
 
Had a 64GB Samsung MLC SSD that I used for about a year and a half. Then one day it stopped being recognized by the BIOS. Controller failure I guess. Unfortunately it was an OEM system pull I bought off eBay, so no warranty.

After that I bought a 60GB Vertex and have been using it for about half a year. No problems yet. And if I have another problem like I did with the Samsung, OCZ should cover it under warranty for three years.
 
Intel G2 160GB for about 6 months and an Agility 2 120GB for a couple months. Haven't had any issues with either one.
 
Intel G2 160GB in the DV7 for about 3 months, no issues. (700GB of writes)
Intel G1 80GB in Desktop for 1 year+ no issues/many slow downs since FW update (3TB writes)
Intel G2 160GB in DM3 for about 2 months, no issues but has 3 realocated sectors. (1.5TB writes)
Intel G2 40GB in work laptop for about 6 months, no issues. (1.5TB writes)

G.skill Falcon (Indilinx) 120GB for 1 Year+, now used as external data drive. Drive hosed my os 3 times. Two times due to wiper tool and once cause it just felt like it. Still works though :\

Supertalent Masterdrive 60GB (Samsung RBB controller) for almost a year. Has issues with ACHI mode in Acer 1810TZ (os fails to recognise the drive on boot), otherwise works fine.
 
Intel G2 80GB, 9774 power on hours, 7.81 TB (yes, I'm a heavy user). Keeps on ticking.
Reallocated sectors: 2
I only have this drive, unless I suddenly get more money (in which case this is going to the laptop and I'm getting something larger for my desktop).
 
had failures w/ 2 128GB 425Kingston drives, 4-5 x18-m intel 80GBs, 60GB C200 micron, and a couple of supertalent 32GB KX2's

this is out of about 1000 units we've sold this year, so not bad
 
I had a failure of a Kingston 64GB SSD, but I hardly blame Kingston, though the store exchanged it for me for free.

I was installing a new 1.0 TB WD Green HDD. When I booted up, I noticed the SSD and one of my other HDDs were not detected in BIOS, and started to smell electrical smoke.

I'm not sure if it were (a) the HDD, (b) the mobo, or (c) the power supply, but the HDDs/SSDs were toast (3 drives!), as well as the mobo. I tried the power supply with another mobo, and it was unreliable. So *everything* was toast, but I'm not sure which was the culprit. Of the three, I'd say the Kingston SSD was least likely the culprit, but was probably the first victim.

I ended up with a nice new system, but it was a PITA to have all those devices go pffft! at the same time...
 
OCZ 120gb (1.3) - 1 year+, no issues
OCZ 30gb X 2 (1.4) - 4 months on one, ~9 months on the other, no issues

I never update firmware. I let the lemmings around here do that first. Once things get stable, I kinda almost start thinking about updating, then I feel a sudden burst of wisdom/laziness and I continue to do nothing.
 
x25-m failure - when it hit a certain sector - dead. copied around the bad sector and no problems. no smart indication of failure. rma'd it.

i'd say out of 10 - 1 failure - within 3 months of deployment - reasonable for consumer level product.
 
BlahBlahYouToo said:
It if fails due to user error (whether due to ESD or failed firmware upgrade attempt), then it should not be posted here- or if they decide to, I'm fairly certain the typical AT member will be honest in where the blame lies.
Click to expand...

This is the biggest problem for these types of things. We have no way of knowing if is is user error, or not. And even if it is user error, lots of times, people won't admit it (or not realize it) and say they didn't do anything wrong.
 
1 x Intel X25-M 80GB G1
2 x Intel X25-M 80GB G2
2 x Intel X25-M 160GB G2

I have them since mid 2009 and no failure.
 
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