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Old February 22nd 19, 04:59 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Mark Perkins
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Posts: 110
Default "How Reliable are SSDs?"

On Thu, 21 Feb 2019 18:31:00 -0700, Grant Taylor
wrote:

On 2/21/19 3:19 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
1) do they fail faster than HDDs,


It depends on the workload.

SSDs are write sensitive. So anything that writes a lot of data will
cause them to fail faster.

Most SSDs are rated in how many times a day they can have the entire
drive capacity written. Some drives are a fraction, some are single
digit multiples. I don't think I've seen any that are two digit multiples.


I've never seen an SSD rated that way. I've seen TBW and "years" (the
latter for warranty purposes), but never what you described. Is there a
specific brand that describes 'life' that way? You said 'most', but I
assume it's only one brand.

2) how long can we reasonably expect them to last?"


Again, it depends on the workload.


Well, everyone agrees that writing is more destructive than reading, so
that's why SSD manufacturers provide a TBW rating, total terabytes
written. The actual warranty can be written in such a way as to say that
the drive is warranted until you reach the TBW or the years, whichever
comes first.

You should also be aware of the failure mode. Some drives fail such
that they become read only. Others fail and become a brick. The former
allows you to copy data off. The latter … well I hope you had good backups.


Backups are always a good idea. That didn't go away with SSDs.