Solid State Drive (SSD)

[palandri]

Solid State Drive (SSD) hard drives have been out for a while. They are pricey and I have read a lot about failures and firmware updates, so I have shied away from them.

I have an older Asus laptop that I am always screwing around with and trying different distributions of Linux on. I found a SanDisk 120GB SATA II Solid State Drive for $130 and decided to give it a try on my laptop. I wasn't expecting it to be really fast with SATA II

I installed it and i can't believe how fast it is. The OS installed really quick and i have a 10 second boot time now. I hope it last, but i am keeping my old WD 320GB hard drive just in case of failure.

 

[Judge_Daniel]

I've always wanted to try one, but I'm both too cheap and scared, lol. Alright, maybe not so much scared as lazy. I think I might just buy my next computer custom-made with one installed. That is going to be a while, though, as I am still in love with my Dell Studio XPS.

 

[palandri]

I am still hesitant to put one in my main computer. I do some online PC gaming and I would hate to load it all up, only to have it crash later. If my laptop SSD crashes it's no big deal. I'll just toss the the WD 320GB drive back in it. There's nothing important or critical on my laptop.

 

[anon(5335877)]

I'm planning to get one soon, now's not a bad time. Meanwhile, I think normal HDDs are still quite expensive due to the Thailand floods.

I think as long as you get a decent brand SSDs can be reliable.

 

[palandri]

I'm planning to get one soon, now's not a bad time. Meanwhile, I think normal HDDs are still quite expensive due to the Thailand floods.

I think as long as you get a decent brand SSDs can be reliable.

Which brands do you think would be most reliable?

I thought SanDisk would be fairly reliable for a SSD. Most comments about it were positive, but I still saw comments like:

...Failed after 1 month and 6 days!!!...Failed after short ownership...Started a drive transfer and made it to 67%.... PFTTT no more hard drive...

 

[Reflexx]

I'd love to try it too. But for the OS. Put all programs and docs on a regular hard drive.

I haven't investigated it much though. So I wasn't aware of the issues you're speaking of. Though I don't know why SDDs would be any less reliable than any other form of flash memory.

 

[anon(5335877)]

Which brands do you think would be most reliable?

I thought SanDisk would be fairly reliable for a SSD. Most comments about it were positive, but I still saw comments like:

...Failed after 1 month and 6 days!!!...Failed after short ownership...Started a drive transfer and made it to 67%.... PFTTT no more hard drive...

Actually, I have no clue lol. I think Intel is generally perceived to be reliable, and most enterprise people use those, but it's hard to say exactly which SSDs are reliable because there isn't as much data on SSDs compared to HDDs.

I would read this though:

Best SSD HDD | Hardware Revolution

They rate SSDs on reliability, though they do admit they are estimating.

Ratings are calculated based on website reviews, the wonderful AnandTech?s SSD Tool, failure rates published by Marc Prieur on hardware.fr, customer reviews and specifications. These are estimates, but at worse, they shouldn?t be off by more than one point.

Looking at the chart though, it appears Crucial, Mushkin, and Samsung make reliable SSDs. Sandisk also has one SSD in the chart rated 10 in reliability--the Ultra 120GB. I don't know if that's the exact one you have.

 

[anon(5335877)]

I'd love to try it too. But for the OS. Put all programs and docs on a regular hard drive.

I haven't investigated it much though. So I wasn't aware of the issues you're speaking of. Though I don't know why SDDs would be any less reliable than any other form of flash memory.

I'm actually wondering why too. I know SSD cells can only be written to a limited number of times, so what the drive does is load leveling--it writes to different parts of the drive to spread out the wear, making the drive last longer. The fact that cells only have a limited number of writes is why you should NEVER defragment a SSD.

But that's usually not the reason SSDs fail, actually I think most of the problems are with the controller failing or some sort of firmware problem. Either way, whether you use a HDD, a SSD, or both, you should ALWAYS back up your data. I can't stress that enough, many people don't until after their drives fail and they lose all their files.

How do SSDs fail? - AnandTech Forums

 

[palandri]

Actually, I have no clue lol. I think Intel is generally perceived to be reliable, and most enterprise people use those, but it's hard to say exactly which SSDs are reliable because there isn't as much data on SSDs compared to HDDs.

I would read this though:

Best SSD HDD | Hardware Revolution

They rate SSDs on reliability, though they do admit they are estimating.



Looking at the chart though, it appears Crucial, Mushkin, and Samsung make reliable SSDs. Sandisk also has one SSD in the chart rated 10 in reliability--the Ultra 120GB. I don't know if that's the exact one you have.

Thanks for the link. That SanDisk SSD is the one that I have. I am glad it's rated a 10.

 

[anon(5335877)]

Thanks for the link. That SanDisk SSD is the one that I have. I am glad it's rated a 10.

Haha, looks like you made the right choice then!