SSD's are flaky?

[hendricksjana]

thinkin of gettin an SSD for my boot drive but a friend said they crash a lot and are not that reliable

is this true?

which ones are the most reliable?

 

[MichaelD]

Generally speaking, any SSD based on a Sandforce controller chip MAY have issues. So I stay away from any Sandforce-based SSD. Unless you're obessesed with benchmarks, the additional 4% or whatever percent faster SF-based drives are, you'll never notice in real life.

I know for a fact that Samsung SSDs use Samsung chips and are safe to use. I also believe Crucial SSDs are safe. Typically you won't find the info on what controller chip the SSD uses on retail sites like Newegg. Look for reviews here on AT and other tech sites on whatever SSD you're considering purchasing.

Right now Newegg has the Samsung 830-series, 128GB SSD for $90 shipped (it's on AT Hot Deals...that's where I saw it). That's a great SSD at a good price. I bought one.

 

[bbhaag]

Samsungs are good and so are Plextors. Crucials are good but aging fast. If you stick with the known reliable brands you will be just fine.

 

[TheStu]

I have a year and a half old Corsair SSD in my desktop, no issues whatsoever.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

OCZ, along with a bunch of other no-name, no-support manufacturers, flooded the market with underpriced, failure-prone Sandforce 12xx series based drives. People are still buying fire sale backstock.

The other thing that spooks people is that the memory in an SSD will eventually wear out. In practical terms, it means a boot SSD in your daily driver PC will last 10+ years if it's SLC, 7-10 years if it's MLC, and 3-6 years if it's TLC. But knowing that it WILL INEVITABLY STOP WORKING WITH ALL YOUR DATA... that scares people.

(At least people who didn't already realize the same thing about platter drives. People all die, too, but bring that little chestnut up at a kid's birthday party and see how well it goes over.)

Thing is, that's still longer than most people go between HDD replacements - even for TLC (in the new Samsung 840), and people who have actually tried to wear out an SSD have seen most of them go well past the projected lifespans.

In other news, Prius batteries are going to kill us all.

 

[hoorah]

Right now Newegg has the Samsung 830-series, 128GB SSD for $90 shipped (it's on AT Hot Deals...that's where I saw it). That's a great SSD at a good price. I bought one.

$80 for the next 24 hours

 

[MichaelD]

$80 for the next 24 hours

/faceplam

ALWAYS after I buy something. :'(

 

[AnitaPeterson]

http://forums.anandtech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=47

 

[IGemini]

I have a year and a half old Corsair SSD in my desktop, no issues whatsoever.

Same here. And mine is one of the "dreaded" SandForce SSDs.

 

[JackMDS]

It is a matter of of having flexible thinking and adapting to the changes in technology.

I use on few computers 60GB of whatever is decent on sale.

The 60GB has only the OS and applications, it takes 10 Minutes every few weeks to back it up onto a regular drive in a USB enclosure (I use Acronis True Image).

Every thing else is on regular green large (1TB or more) data drives.

If the OS (SSD) drive goes, it takes 8 minutes to Ghost the backup onto a new drive.

So who cares if after few years (or less) the SDD has to be changed.

 

[mfenn]

The other thing that spooks people is that the memory in an HDD will eventually wear out. In practical terms, it means a boot HDD in your daily driver PC will last 10+ years if it's 5400 RPM, 7-10 years if it's 7200 RPM, and 3-6 years if it's 10000 RPM. But knowing that it WILL INEVITABLY STOP WORKING WITH ALL YOUR DATA... that scares people.

Fixed. :awe:

 

[GrumpyMan]

I've had an Intel 510 for over a year and have never had one single issue. One thing though that is very strange, I can never hear it spin up or spin down when it's working, what's up with that? I think it's broken.....

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I've had an Intel 510 for over a year and have never had one single issue. One thing though that is very strange, I can never hear it spin up or spin down when it's working, what's up with that? I think it's broken.....

I thought that was really eerie when I started using it, but now when I use my laptop which still has a mechanical drive, it really gets on my nerves now.

 

[TheStu]

I thought that was really eerie when I started using it, but now when I use my laptop which still has a mechanical drive, it really gets on my nerves now.

My work laptop drives me nuts with that.

 

[bononos]

thinkin of gettin an SSD for my boot drive but a friend said they crash a lot and are not that reliable

is this true?

which ones are the most reliable?

Its the OCZ brand that you should be most wary off and not just sandforce disks. Intel has switched over to sandforce without alot of problems.

 

[fffblackmage]

I'm still using my two OCZ Agility 60GB SSDs and I haven't experienced any problems with them. None. Still waiting for them to die so I can upgrade.

 

[Ken g6]

It's the OCZ brand that you should be most wary off and not just sandforce disks. Intel has switched over to sandforce without a lot of problems.

True, but Intel is also a special case. They got access to the Sandforce firmware source code, and improved it. That's why Intel Sandforce > all other Sandforce.

@fffblackmage, are those Agility 2's, 3's, or 4's? 2's use a different, SATA2-only Sandforce controller which may be more reliable. 4's use an Indilinx controller.

 

[Paperlantern]

I'm running a couple of the older Samsung 64GB drives from a solid year+ ago. Have em as a RAID 0... it maxes out the Experience Index at 7.9 for drive performance, boots VERY quick, and has been virtually problem free. Aside for a couple of occasions where the system wouldnt boot up and i had to restart again, but honestly i doubt it would have been attributed to the HDDs. SSDs are def worth the investment and will do you well unless you get a lemon.

 

[BrightCandle]

Some manufacturers of SSDs don't manage to produce very reliable drives, but they are still comparatively decent compared to a HDD. Other manufacturers greatly exceed the reliability of HDDs by an order of magnitude.

Most SSDs are more reliable than any hard drive, but they can still fail loosing all your data which means nothing has changed in terms of needing backup.

 

[Blain]

thinkin of gettin an SSD for my boot drive but a friend said they crash a lot and are not that reliable

is this true?

If your friend has been in the storage or PC repair industry for a long time, I would trust his judgement.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

If your friend has been in the storage or PC repair industry for a long time, I would trust his judgement.

That is silly. If he's in the storage or repair industry, then the only drives he sees are the ones that failed. Nobody returns their drive to the neighbourhood computer guy because it's working perfectly.

 

[JamesV]

My Crucial M4 works great, but did have a few hiccups. The first time I tried to install Win7 on it, my PC couldn't find the drive, and the initial install failed. Tried it again, and it worked perfectly... no idea why that happened.

Never had a crash directly related to the SSD though, and it's been reliable as any HDD I've owned so far.

Even with the knowledge that it will eventually fail, I'll gladly take that for the insanely fast load times. Your friend is giving some bad advice imo.

 

[Leyawiin]

Bought an ADATA XPG SX900 256GB SSD about three weeks ago. I don't care if its an off-brand, don't care if its SandForce SF-2281. It was $169.99. That's what finally made me decide to get an SSD. I copied my hard drive over to it (didn't have that much on it). Should it ever crap out I'll just hook my old Western Digital 640GB back up and send it in for warranty. Given the price I bought it at (its now $205) I'm just not going to worry too much about failure.

 

[TheStu]

Bought an ADATA XPG SX900 256GB SSD about three weeks ago. I don't care if its an off-brand, don't care if its SandForce SF-2281. It was $169.99. That's what finally made me decide to get an SSD. I copied my hard drive over to it (didn't have that much on it). Should it ever crap out I'll just hook my old Western Digital 640GB back up and send it in for warranty. Given the price I bought it at (its now $205) I'm just not going to worry too much about failure.

Exactly, and the Sandforce is still incredibly fast. Even the SATA II 'slow' SSD that I have in my desktop is blazingly fast compared to the platter drive alternative.