mike wrote:
On 8/9/2018 4:28 AM, Paul wrote:
Bill wrote:
mike wrote:

How's the reliability?
I'm still reading that they fail catastrophically without warning.

I've heard that the reliability of SSDs far exceeds that of the
mechanical hard drives (for, in fact, an obvious reason--no moving
parts). The "trim" software for my Intel SSD even provides an
indication of the drive's reliability (I'm not sure how well that
works). I do regular backups too.

You're the perfect customer for an SSD.

You're mixing up reliability and wear life.

I beg to differ. When the drive QUITS WORKING, that's end of life.
Doesn't matter what caused it.

We have to be careful to separate the component parts though.

Some aspects of the electronics you use, can never be
all that good. They could never last "forever". The
best power converter they could make at work, was
around 10 million hours MTBF. The guys who did that,
were pretty product of their tiny gadget.

The bathtub shaped curve, assumes failures are random,
and are a function of the "quality" or the "architecture"
of the item.

Having an actual wearout behavior, that is not
a random phenomenon. That's predictable.

Say I start writing my brand new M.2 motherboard SSD at
2.5GB/sec. And I do that all day long, day after day.
These devices don't have enough wear life, to make it
all the way to the end of the warranty period while
doing that. If you do that to the drive, grind it into
the ground, all the retailer has to do, is check the
wear life and point out to the customer "you wore it out,
it didn't fail as such". You would be denied warranty
relief at retail level or at factory level.

The warranty covers the "random stuff". The stuff
that went into the MTBF calculation. Everyone knows
that like toilet paper, the number of write cycles
is limited. If a customer burns them up, they won't
be providing a shiny new drive for the customer
to burn up a third, fourth, or fifth time.

If it's determined a customer abused a product,
then there's no warranty. Maybe your credit card
provides more extensive product insurance, but
the normal retail relationship mainly covers
product defects. And wear is not a defect.
It's an expected parameter a customer
can control, by not doing too many writes
per day...

If I buy a gallon of paint at Home Depot,
apply it to the walls, when the can is empty
I can't run to the store and go "Defect! Defect!
This can is empty. I blame the hole on top."
The warranty might cover a failure of the
chemical composition (maybe the drying
accelerator agent is missing and the paint
never dries for you). But simply using up
the quantity of materials in the can, doesn't
entitle you to a "infinite refill". I can't
paint the Brooklyn Bridge with one can of
paint.

Paul