MWLL on an SSD

[sleepysheep]

Yeah, I don't count before SSD went more public mainstream. Ofc before then the tech was meh.

Never heard anything bad about SSD, lots of hear say but nothing concreate. That doesn't mean SSD don't have their problems or that mine will not die whenever it feels like it.

Fact is, once you go SSD you won't go back Not saying you should use them for mass storage, or even in raids. But just for OS and some important programs/games and it's sweet.

While SSD are a bitch to recover from, most people would just backup the SSD if the data was that important or not stick anything important on SSD in the first place. And in the end this applies just as much to HDD, people back up HDD all the time, I don't see why SSD should be an exception.

While their lifetime may shrink as they get faster, but they can in theory last a very long time currently and I would like waaaay more speed even if that means they live alot shorter life. At least till they manage to find a way around this problem (or something replaces SSD which I know tech out there already has).

Super duper fast SSD would make my loading times go from 2 seconds to 0....Even the current top SSD would almost do this >.< WTB games with better textures

[MagicSquirrel07]

My biggest problem isn't the frequency of "horror stories," it's more along the lines of how difficult it is to recover from them.  When something goes wrong with an HDD you can virtually always get your data back, often with software on your own computer and a weekend of nonstop scanning.  If that doesn't work it's $700-1500 with free shipping both ways.  With SSDs it's the other way around, data is almost never recoverable and when it is the cost is often more than data recovery on a large RAID array.  Having performed my fair share of data recovery, that just doesn't set right with me.  Having said that, I will agree that my experience has definately biased me against the technology

Can you just clarify what your issue actually is with SSD's and reliability? All through this thread you have been talking about write cycles getting smaller, now you say data is never recoverable... If the cells become read only that is the very definition of recoverable.

I have never heard a horror story about SSDs being any less reliable than mechanical disks.  In fact raid arrays of mechanical disks quite quickly get statistically likely to die on you as you add more drives (not saying that many fail in real life). 

The thing with SSD's is they only store replaceable data.  Nobody keeps their entire family photo albums on SSD for instance.  Most things put on SSDs can be easily reinstalled.

[Mitchpate]

Can you just clarify what your issue actually is with SSD's and reliability? All through this thread you have been talking about write cycles getting smaller, now you say data is never recoverable... If the cells become read only that is the very definition of recoverable.

Cells becoming read-only is the absolute best case scenario in terms of SSD failure.  That's the equivalent of SMART warning of an HDD failure in time to actually do something about it.  I think I've seen that happen twice, it's extraordinarily rare.  I'd hazard a guess that very few of the RMA's for SSDs fall into that category, which I guess is a good thing because Intel no longer warranties it.  If anything else fails, be it the controller, faulty firmware, or if there's any failure due to electrical issues, the data is effectively unrecoverable.  To get it back, you have to remove and manually dump each chip then recombine the data chunks, similar to how professional labs recover RAID arrays.  If a NAND chip fails the data actually is gone because the recent speed gains were made possible by effectively creating a mini-RAID0 on the SSD, reading/writing across up to 10 chips or clusters in parallel.

I have never heard a horror story about SSDs being any less reliable than mechanical disks.  In fact raid arrays of mechanical disks quite quickly get statistically likely to die on you as you add more drives (not saying that many fail in real life).

Which is good because they don't.  Using statistics to push weak science is why we have half the problems that we do.  It's why so many ISP networks are horribly oversubscribed.  Truth is when you have run a 32 disk RAID array you can lose multiple disks and never have any data loss.  Hell I ran a RAID5 on my gaming computer for years and when a drive failed (power supply dropped the drive) I played TF2 while the system rebuilt the array.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're any less reliable than HDDs but I honestly don't believe they're any more reliable either.  A well built mechanical drive can last a decade and I have no doubt a well built SSD will do the same.  As it stands today, HDDs tend to fail more gracefully and SSDs tend to fail with no warning.  Of course, HDDs can develop mechnical problems with no warning as well.  Both drives have their own set of weaknesses.

The thing with SSD's is they only store replaceable data.  Nobody keeps their entire family photo albums on SSD for instance.  Most things put on SSDs can be easily reinstalled.

Maybe for you but when joe blow buys a new computer from HP or Dell with an SSD, they ARE keeping unreplaceable data on it.  Most people that use them aren't going to move the pagefile or junction directories across drives, they're just going to use them like they've always used them.  They're going to store movies, music, and photos on it.  Don't forget that people that know wtf is going on with computers only represent a tiny fraction of the total population of users

[sleepysheep]

Then joe blogs should of backed up all the photos and music just like with a normal hdd

All this talk of ssd has made me really want to upgrade my ssd. 120gb is really pissing me off its just too small sigh. One can hope I get lots of christmas money lol.

[MagicSquirrel07]

The thing with SSD's is they only store replaceable data.  Nobody keeps their entire family photo albums on SSD for instance.  Most things put on SSDs can be easily reinstalled.

Maybe for you but when joe blow buys a new computer from HP or Dell with an SSD, they ARE keeping unreplaceable data on it.  Most people that use them aren't going to move the pagefile or junction directories across drives, they're just going to use them like they've always used them.  They're going to store movies, music, and photos on it.  Don't forget that people that know wtf is going on with computers only represent a tiny fraction of the total population of users

Unless "joe Bloggs" has too much money to burn he will not be storing photos and videos on SSD.  In fact every SSD system I have ever seen commercially for sale has had a mechanical data drive installed as well.  The SSD would not have the capacity for installed programs as well as file storage, maybe in the future they will and then it may become a grey area, but for now they don't.
I can fully believe the world is full of people that will keep important data on an SSD, but it is not sensible to do so from a technical and common sense perspective.  You don't need to know how the drive works and what will and won't be recoverable in the event of loss to work out that you should be using the larger capacity mechanical drive for long term storage.

And on the subject of smart warning you about drive failure, if you actually keep an eye on it it does in my experience... I have had 2 failed hard drives, both report a warning from SMART data, and both I took the data off while it was still semi alive due to this.  Could just be my experience of course as I have not really had the large scale drive experience you speak of.

Also as an aside with failure of the drive electronics you speak of, could you not just replace the controller board in the drive / hook up the entire array of nand chips and pull the data off it without much hassle?  This does not seem that difficult to me in theory, however I do not know how tied in all the circuitry is on the drive.  But I would imagine there are plenty of ways of recovering the data from a "bricked" drive without taking each nand chip off individually.

[ratbuddy]

Really depends what's wrong with the drive, but we're getting a bit sidetracked.

Long story short, SSDs do not magically die from simply using them, and they offer a major boost over a spinner.

[Mitchpate]

Then joe blogs should of backed up all the photos and music just like with a normal hdd

And I fully agree, every data storage drive should be backed up.  I routinely back up even my USB thumb drives.  The problem is that SDDs are sold to people as being signficantly more reliable than HDDs and even if we pretend that's true it doesn't negate the need for backups but the average consumer will believe that it does.

Unless "joe Bloggs" has too much money to burn he will not be storing photos and videos on SSD.  In fact every SSD system I have ever seen commercially for sale has had a mechanical data drive installed as well.  The SSD would not have the capacity for installed programs as well as file storage, maybe in the future they will and then it may become a grey area, but for now they don't.

Dell and HP both sell laptops that come with 256GB SSDs.  That's plenty large to use in that fashion.

And on the subject of smart warning you about drive failure, if you actually keep an eye on it it does in my experience... I have had 2 failed hard drives, both report a warning from SMART data, and both I took the data off while it was still semi alive due to this.  Could just be my experience of course as I have not really had the large scale drive experience you speak of.

You are extremely lucky.  I think part of the problem with that is OEM BIOS may not warn like it's supposed to.  It would account for why virtually every bad HDD I've seen gave no warning, even with failure types that should have given plenty of warning.  I've only had 1 HDD die on me and it didn't give a SMART warning but it did gradually die over a 3 day period so I managed to get some of my data off.

Also as an aside with failure of the drive electronics you speak of, could you not just replace the controller board in the drive / hook up the entire array of nand chips and pull the data off it without much hassle?  This does not seem that difficult to me in theory, however I do not know how tied in all the circuitry is on the drive.  But I would imagine there are plenty of ways of recovering the data from a "bricked" drive without taking each nand chip off individually.

From an engineering standpoint it should be that simple but apparently it isn't, according to data recovery labs anyway.  With HDDs you always had to have an identical model logic board with identical model chips, basically a board from the exact same "batch" that your drive was from.  These typically cost as much as a brand new HDD.  The problem is that each board addresses the media a little differently and how sectors are mapped across the drive is stored on the logic board.  When sectors are found to be bad and remapped, that remapping is stored on the board, so even if you replace a logic board with an identical model you still can't be 100% certain that the data you're accessing is the actual data or if the sector was deemed bad and remapped.  Since SSDs are constantly moving sectors around due to wear loading, and considering the complex RAID0 architecture, I can only imagine they exacerbate that problem.