[kwlug-disc] SMART for SSDs

Khalid Baheyeldin kb at 2bits.com
Wed Jul 29 23:43:41 EDT 2015


On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 11:24 PM, B.S. <bs27975 at yahoo.ca> wrote:

> * IIRC, threads involving Khalid and his / this specific SSD and his
> unhappiness with this particular defective model noted a spectacularly bad
> product that entirely fails (even reading) far sooner than reasonable. IIUC
> the issues with this model was substantially a one off for SSDs, not
> expected to appear in others. Particularly nothing more recent? (It's just
> too bad Khalid happened to be one of the unlucky victims. There was great
> unhappiness in the land ...)
>

Some clarifications, and history:

The OCZ Vertex 4 SSD that I have did not fail (yet). Initially, I got it
maybe 3 years ago to test MySQL performance on SSD. It did not show
improvement perhaps because of other bottlenecks in the server (SATA
controller?)

I was hesitant to make it my main laptop drive, because of the bad
reputation for that model (whether it is true or not).

So, it was on a shelf for a long time. Then a year ago, I needed to revive
a laptop with a decent/recent CPU, but broken hinge, to make it a
transcoding machine (for the PVR videos). That SSD was lying around, so I
used it.

The transcoding was not done to/from the SSD. The SSD was just for root,
programs, logs. All the videos (original and transcoded) were done on
external USB 3.0 drives.

Then my 7 year old laptop's Toshiba 500GB disk died without warning (can't
remember if I checked SMART or not). So, I replaced it with a Seagate 500GB
that I used for backup a couple of years back.

When that Seagate's SMART data showed it is not in the best of health, I
changed it with the SSD, since it has endured for a year without issues.

The transcoding machine got a used 2.5" Hitachi/Apple spinning disk to put
in the transcoding machine.

The other thing that encouraged me to move to the SSD I had was the
endurance study, which as Lori said, is 200 TB of writes.

http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

I also have daily backups of my laptop's home directory, so losing a drive
will just mean downtime, not data loss.

All that made me switch to the SSD that I had on the shelf for so long.
-- 
Khalid M. Baheyeldin
2bits.com, Inc.
Fast Reliable Drupal
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Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. --  Edsger W.Dijkstra
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. --   Leonardo da Vinci
For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
wrong." -- H.L. Mencken
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