[kwlug-disc] OT: SSD disks?

Thu Nov 12 13:35:38 EST 2015

I hit "send" before I remembered to tell you about a guy at work who lost
an SSD.  So yes, I have seen one fail.  He showed it to me; if you shake
it, you can hear the chips rattling around inside.  Not enough solder, I
would suspect.  Obviously poor manufacturing QC, and not necessarily normal
behaviour for an SSD.

On Thu, 12 Nov 2015 at 13:33 CrankyOldBugger <crankyoldbugger at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I have to agree with pretty much all that Chris said, keeping in mind that
> the price difference between HDD and SSD is still a factor for me.  I've
> seen many HDDs fail over the years, but I've yet to see an SSD fail (yes,
> they're still too young to do a proper failure rate comparison).
>
> I just recently replaced the SSD in my Windows desktop client with an
> Adata 512gb SSD for $230 (
> http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=179_1229_1088&item_id=076683).
> I couldn't get Windows install to work with this new drive until I disabled
> SMART on it.  I don't have any clue why that worked.  All of the Googling I
> did for the error I was getting said to turn on SMART, but it was already
> on, so I tried the opposite of what the whole world was saying and sure
> enough, it worked.  I do still get some driver issues (and BSODs) that I
> didn't get before the rebuild, and that SSD is the only hardware that got
> changed.  So draw your own conclusions.
>
> The drive that I replaced, a Samsung 256TB SSD, is still salvageable, if
> you're concerned.  The Windows install on it was so Frankensteined that I
> decided to start over from scratch.  Luckily I have one of those toaster
> drive bays that I could pop the Samsung into to recover any data from the
> drive.  While I was worried that the drive itself failed, it seems to be
> running ok in the toaster.
>
> Back to the original topic, however...  Right now my primary Linux desktop
> client has an el-cheapo motherboard that doesn't offer SATA III so while an
> SSD might help, I wouldn't be able to get the full bang for the buck.  So
> I'm using an older HDD while I dream of rebuilding everything in that
> desktop from scratch.
>
> Also, I have some NAS boxes that use 2, 3 or even 4 TB HDD drives.  I
> imagine it will be years and years before we can get 4TB SSD for what I
> paid recently for 4TB HDD.  So for the time being I'm stuck with HDD for my
> network storage solutions.
>
> My Lenovo laptop came with a 1 TB HDD and a 16gig mSATA.  It's almost
> three years old now.  I use the mSATA as a swap partition (I have 8 gig
> RAM).  I think the jury is still out on whether or not you should use mSATA
> as a swap drive, but I had to use it for something.  I would love to
> replace the HDD in the laptop with a SSD, for all the reasons Chris
> mentioned.  In fact, once I scrape together a few bucks I just might pop
> out the 1TB HDD for a 512 TB SSD, but I'm not sure it will be the same
> Adata.
>
> So you can be sure that once SSD prices drop even more (or the next breed
> of even faster, cheaper drives comes along), I will start replacing my
> aging HDDs as quickly as I can.
>
>
>
> On Thu, 12 Nov 2015 at 12:00 Chris Irwin <chris at chrisirwin.ca> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 11:45:59PM +0000, B.S. wrote:
>> > The real world scenario is - can one, and which, trust these
>> > newfangled SSD drives? And, aside from the is the price different
>> > worth it, especially vis a vis the purported increase in speed
>> > (anecdotal evidence here says no), is the price and capacity
>> > differential over spinning drives worth it / are they more/less
>> > reliable than said spinning drives?
>>
>> If we're counting anecdotes, I'll put mine on record and say that I will
>> never, ever have (or willingly use interactively) a system based on an
>> mechanical HDD again. Hell, even my remove VM (on linode) is backed
>> entirely by SSDs now.
>>
>> SSDs are Faster - yes you might not "notice" anything but boot times
>> when switching to an SSD, but you do notice switching back to an HDD
>> once you're used to it.
>>
>> Also, considering my primary machine is now a laptop:
>>
>> * No moving parts. Spinning a disk at 5400 or 7200 RPM, then skimming
>>   the heads just barely off the surface in a device *that moves* is just
>>   the craziest idea ever. Back when I was a student, the amount of free
>>   pizza I got for replacing dead laptop hard drives was obscene. When
>>   was the last time I had to worry about head parking or drop sensors?
>>
>> * Much reduced power consumption on my laptop (yeah, I couldn't put it
>>   aside :)
>>
>> HDDs are still great for bulk data storage, simply due to price per GB.
>> That's backups, home movies, flac cd rips, videos, etc.
>>
>> > (Putting aside the eco/power consumption elements, here. And never
>> > mind that avoiding single point of failure means you're going to have
>> > multiple/redundant storage, of whatever technology used.)
>>
>> I treat all drives like they are going to fail any moment, also
>> regadless of technology used. This happens. A lot. I have a stack of
>> dead/dying hard drives at home. I only have one dead ssd so far. I
>> currently own and use seven SSDs, and down to seven in-use hard drives,
>> plus my two external backup hard drives.
>>
>> I currently put more trust in SSDs than HDDs. Almost all my HDDs are
>> raid1 pairs because I consider their failures to be exceedingly common
>> (especially any drives purchased in the year or so following the
>> Thailand flooding). All my SSDs are individual drives that I can recover
>> from backups. I'm prepared, but not actively expecting it.
>>
>> > They note that warnings of imminent problems are well exposed, giving
>> > one time to address, to at least as good a level as spinning disks.
>> > Spinning or not, ignore such warnings at your peril.
>>
>> Yes and no. I believe the larger studies (like that by google) found
>> that SMART errors were a reliable forcast for failure, but the lack of
>> SMART errors can not be assumed to indicate a healthy drive.
>>
>> I've had hard drives fail without warning, and gracefully migrated from
>> drives with errors.
>>
>> My failed SSD had no errors before death.
>>
>> > People were backing up to optical media for said permanent storage
>> > that turned out not to be. (Optical media having dyes, and dyes fade
>> > ...) Along the way, the amount of data to be archived seems to have
>> > grown exponentially - thus some of the reason for the growth to the TB
>> > drives we see available today. Given the low SSD capacities vis a vis
>> > these TB drives, they do not seem to fit this purpose. Thus whether or
>> > not they retain their data, when we know the more cost effective
>> > spinning drives do, isn't so important to me.
>>
>> The advantages of SSDs (seek times, throughput, etc) do not apply to to
>> sitting on a shelf, but all it's negatives (mainly capacity & price) do.
>> You just can't beat hard drives right now, regardless of where we fall
>> on SSD reliability.
>>
>> Archival SSD devices are something only SSD manufacturers need to
>> consider right now.
>>
>> Regardless of storage medium, you'll want a way to verify data, even if
>> the drive "works". A filesystem that can do checksums on it's own would
>> be helpful...
>>
>> > Thus, I guess, cloud growth as off-site backup/archival storage. Which
>> > has its own excessive costs, and risks.
>>
>> I currently back up to 2x 2TB hard drives, which are swapped weekly and
>> dragged to work.  If disaster strikes, my recovery estimates involve
>> "drive to work", "buy hard drive on the way home", and "SATA/Disk
>> transfer speeds". I can do the recovery with just a LiveUSB and a
>> replacement drive.
>>
>> With cloud backup, I also have to factor in slower transfer speeds,
>> bandwidth caps (300GB/mo would take me three months to restore all my
>> data), and possibly a *client* I need to install and configure first,
>> which might mean *not* a LiveUSB.
>>
>> For a "normal" user, where a failed hard drive means a magical new one
>> gets installed with a fresh copy of Windows/OSX, cloud backups make a
>> lot more sense.
>>
>> --
>> Chris Irwin
>>
>> email:   chris at chrisirwin.ca
>>  xmpp:   chris at chrisirwin.ca
>>   web: https://chrisirwin.ca
>>
>>
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>>
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