Are SSDs comparable to HDDs for reliability and is there published research on this?
Also are all SSD manufacturers at a similar 'reliability level'?
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4No, not all drives are created equal.– user3463Sep 11, 2009 at 15:02
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1We've made a blog post about maximizing the lifetime of your SSD.– Tamara WijsmanMay 10, 2011 at 14:47
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4The answers here are mostly outdated, with the latest information from September 2009.– slhckAug 18, 2011 at 16:11
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2I'd like to know the latest figures. We are currently taking a dive and putting 16 SSD's into a RAID unit in production, with multiple global spares on a RAID 6 for extra protection.– Brain2000Jan 31, 2012 at 19:28
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Some research on reliability of hard drives and SSD: github.com/linuxhw/SMART/blob/master/README.md– linuxbuildFeb 19, 2018 at 10:46
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5 Answers
SSD is so new in the market that while there are published research, it is currently all theoretical conjectures. I refer you to some here.
SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance"
Are MLC SSDs Safe in Enterprise Apps?
Anandtech's Review of the Intel-X25M
There are many others online, you can do a search (sorry, too many to list all down here) and find out more also. However, the gist of all articles is SSDs are more reliable than hard disks, and should last a good 20 years at least not counting performance degradation.
The answer to your other question of similar reliability level among SSD manufacturers is a resounding "No!". SSD manufacturers find various ways to cut costs by using cheaper NAND chips, controllers, QC process. Go for brand names like OCZ, Intel and Samsung - they are so far considered the most reliable on the SSD list.
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1My only comment was going to be that they are so new that we will not see real-world lifespans and reliability tests for a good bit. I would hope that they would be better than HDD but you never know. Sep 11, 2009 at 15:06
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@Dave Drager : +1 for your comment, entirely agree that it's too early to tell if SSDs will even sprout tentacles and take over the world 5 years from now.– calibanSep 11, 2009 at 15:11
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Also, for OCZ SSDs, only go for the Vertex or Summit series - the Agility series uses cheap NAND chips and controllers.– calibanSep 11, 2009 at 15:21
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OCZ has their new Agility EX series which looks pretty nice spec wise. Do these fall under the 'cheap' category along with the regular Agility series? Sep 11, 2009 at 15:39
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1Sooo, it's a year later, and many people have found their SSD's aren't lasting that long. This answer now sounds more like someone on the SSD bandwagon than someone with an objective perspective. I think this answer needs to be updated quite a bit. See: codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/…– ajbdevMay 8, 2011 at 7:29
Are SSDs comparable to HDDs for reliability and is there published research on this?
No, they're not comparable. SSDs are shock proof which itself puts them light years ahead of any platter hard disk.
And here's a statistic for the average lifespan of various data storage media:
Platter hard disks: 3-6 years
Magnetic tape: 10-20 years
Floppy disks: 1-5 years
Optical disks: 10-100 years
Static memory (such as SSDs): 50-100 years
Stone tablets: up to 10.000 years
Source: Wikipedia (for the stone tablets :) and ZDnet (for the rest).
Of course your mileage may vary, depending on the use. The one fact in favor of platter hard drives are the relatively low costs compared to SSDs, robustness and performance comes at a price. And from personal experience I can tell: The SSD beats the platter hard drive hands down, in terms of speed and reliability.
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not at all, just the storage density of 0,001 kbit/kg is a bit of a showstopper :)– Molly7244Sep 11, 2009 at 16:04
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2I think the reason ZDNet is giving static memory such a high lifetime is that it is not considering use. Static memory has a limited number of read/write cycles. If you write to it, put it away for 50 yrs, maybe it will still work. Use a SSD for 50 years? I don't think so. Sep 11, 2009 at 16:20
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Jeff Atwood (co-creator of Stack Exchange and this very site) wrote an article stating that SSDs are NOT as reliable as the other answers here suggest. He mentions a friend who has had eight SSDs fail on him in just two years!
I do wonder if that person's failures had some other unknown cause in common - maybe a bad power supply feeding them the wrong amount of electricity or something? But it's an important data point anyway.
answered Jun 1, 2011 at 17:54
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I read this too, then asked my local computer store who say they have a higher return rate for non-SSDs. He reckoned returns due to SSD failures were about 3%. But he was probably trying to make a sale so who knows...! Jun 2, 2011 at 1:13
First off, there are issues involving the available SSDs out on the market. The biggest being the degradation of performance over time. Anandtech has a great article on the subject so I won't delve into the subject matter.
My personal take on "reliability level" is (for the time being) a wait-and-see proposition. SSDs while blazing fast are still very new to the market. Different manufacturers employ different techniques (explained in the article) on the flash chips themselves and this in turn creates different pros and cons.
If you're looking towards and SSD to be comprable to regualar HDD, odds are no. Are they fast and oh so wonderful? Yes. But if you're looking to buy an SSD now and hope for reliability, I'm afraid their track record isn't so good for now. Give them a few quarters/years and SSDs will eventually replace the old platter hard drives, but it won't happen for a while.
It depends on environmental conditions and usage. I expect that it'll be on average around 10 years, which is the claimed lifespan of flash memory.