"Why I Will Never Buy a Hard Drive Again"

On 8/9/2018 8:56 PM, Paul wrote:
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.

No, WE don't. WE...meaning consumers...care about RESULTS.

The stuff you mention below is relevant to manufacturers, not consumers.
When I buy a car designed to run on city streets and I drive that car on
city streets, I care about one thing. Did I get to my destination?

If my alternator quits, I see a red light. I may decide to reduce power
consumption as much as I can. I will likely get to my destination.
I will almost always get to someone who can help. It will get fixed
and life goes on.

If my car just decides, to STOP DEAD and require that I buy a new one,
simply because the alternator exceeded some life prediction, sorry, you
have to abandon your cargo too,
I'm gonna be ****ed!

I'm not bitching about wearout. I'm bitching about a vendor decision
that might make the collateral damage MUCH worse than it needs to be.

If it's simply a matter of data retention ability of some number of cells,
the device should function 'till the last one dies, then give me easy
ways to recover what isn't dead.

In the case of a SSD, it's not at all clear who uses what strategy
to what degree. "Trust me, we got good stuff...secret stuff...but
it's good stuff."


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.

MTBF as a number is easily misunderstood. It's been almost 30 years
since I did a calculation, and I don't want to start now,
but...as I recall, some relatively large number of devices
are expected to fail within the MTBF. IIRC, it's like
30% or so?

I figgered someone would challenge, so I looked it up. I got it
backwards:

Once the MTBF of a system is known, the probability that any one
particular system will be operational at time equal to the MTBF can be
estimated.[1] Under the assumption of a constant failure rate, any one
particular system will survive to its calculated MTBF with a probability
of 36.8% (i.e., it will fail before with a probability of 63.2%).[1] The
same applies to the MTTF of a system working within this time period.[5]

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.

I disagree.
Warranty is a sales tool.
Sometimes, it's mandated by law.
Sometimes it IMPLIES that your product is better
than the competition.
Sometimes, the consequences of failure far outweigh
the cost of the device. A tire that falls apart may
cost the vendor $50 to remedy, but the lawsuits
surrounding the 50-car pileup it caused can be
astronomical.
Vendors make tradeoffs between cost of doing it
right vs cost of failure. It's all part of the balance
sheet...the cost of doing business.

A few vendors just fix what broke.
Most find a way to blame it on you so they don't have
to fix it. The length of the warranty is largely
irrelevant.

That's just the way the world works.

Another problem with MTBF is the lack of useful data.
Back in the day, we could get numbers for individual devices.
But what about the vendor six levels deep in the manufacturing
process who mis-calibrated the reflow oven by a few degrees
and built in a failure mode for the 100 solder connections?
There's too much statistical data from too many places.

Don't get me started on the fact that devices don't exist
in a vacuum. The probability of breaking your phone by sitting
on it is far higher than the probability of a manufacturing defect
caused crack. It's not a warranty issue, but it still don't work
no more. Length of the warranty or MTBF number is irrelevant.

The fast pace of new technology is also a big issue. By the time
you could determine the failure rate by testing, the product has
been replaced by a newer version several times. Accelerated
life testing is good, but still seriously flawed for new
technologies that we barely understand.


So...MTBF calculation == good.
Counting on that to save your ass is inadequate.
Warranty length is mostly independent of that number.

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

Are we having fun yet?

On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 21:52:38 -0700, mike wrote:


In the case of a SSD, it's not at all clear who uses what strategy
to what degree. "Trust me, we got good stuff...secret stuff...but
it's good stuff." That's just the way the world works.

So...MTBF calculation == good. Warranty length is mostly independent
of that number. Everyone knows. Are we having fun yet?

--

It is: Because of the advent of 3D NAND technology the focus now has
changed unto an industry-wide push on inferior TLC memory. Less
inferior TLC would be, in the corrective sense, how that reads from a
print on the outside packaging. And, quintessentially, that same
aggressive NAND technology, behind TLC, as well drives the obsequious
"new and improved" for a MTBF, Total Terabytes Written, over X years
of the stipulated warranty. As they say. . .for the part of
remaining secrets is to remain so until they aren't. Industry also
holds the trump card: People emphatically will buy into inferior TLC
because sum costs are cutting anything prior by a huge margin.
Industry knows, psychologically, human nature that cheapshots of the
world will unite. When and as they do, subsequently, the empiric
collectivism will emerge to provide accompanying skews on usage and
failure, onuses, and reviews, although perhaps no differently than
might be the same formulations to subjectively employ, from decades of
metadata characteristics already present, whereby an attempt is
provided to make an informed decision on a mechanical HDD purchase.

Psychologically, above industrial reference is psychoid stock
investment talk. On my part, I could bet completely opposite -- that
people of the world will say horse crap to this advertising -- and
walk away from TLC SSDs. I could literally bet the shirt on back,
everything, and be left sitting on a curb if I lost the bet. Or
become the next richest, on another scenario, and buy the crown of the
King of Siam;... People will buy into TLC, literally crawl over on
another to be able to get at it first, like the good little marketing
paradigms they in fact are.

That's the plain plan for someone looking for a few hundred acres and
a mansion to build.

It's a matter of how fast you really want to go with Solid State NAND:
It comes in two popular flavors, cabled to or breadboarded into the
motherboard bus architecture for your convenience. And in
relativistic terms of pure speed it leaves platters in a cloud of
dust.

On 08/11/2018 04:52 AM, Flasherly wrote:
On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 21:52:38 -0700, mike wrote:

Are we having fun yet?


No. And I have to tell you no through Flasherly's post, because you,
lowercase mike, were added to my kill filter last night, and your post
has been deleted already. You're a cliche, with nothing useful or
interesting to say. I haven't seen "chaos" for a while, but your tired
"Are we having fun yet?" continually reappears.

On Sat, 11 Aug 2018 07:52:25 -0400, Flasherly
wrote:



....aggressive NAND technology, behind TLC, as well drives the
obsequious "new and improved" for a MTBF, Total Terabytes Written,
over X year of the stipulated warranty. As they say. . .for the part
of remaining secrets is to remain so until they aren't.

.. . .

Here's a good example of that progress "in the workings"...
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...ew,5446-5.html

With Tom employing a contributing writer evaluation for the direction
Samsung is positioning its EVO/EVO Pro marketing stratagem -- both to
2/3-bit TLC/MLC against V-NAND technology -- as is now presently
opening to the broader market of brandname availability, then
mentioned, beyond Crucial and Western Digital, a few months ago, and
over how short a time will enact sweeping changes across marketing
dynamics.

Tomorrow, 8/12 NewEgg will begin sales promotions the EVO (non- MLC
Pro)
https://slickdeals.net/f/11926535-sa...e-drive-ssd-85

Amazon may in some elective follow in suit, ensuring their continued
dominance by competitive "price-matching". Also note from the former
article -- besides the original warranty specs, failure
characteristics, and up to a "fool-proof to your doorstep", 10-year
warranty (on Samsung premier enterprise products) -- how, notably with
3rd-party listings, user reviews surfacing, that may be confounded a
case, if the warranty is industrially marginalized to multinational
registration areas, (sic) if it were then bought in the US but the
registration assigned to Europe at potentially entirely different and
conditional qualifications Samsung may engage.

Dominance which in fact may well already account for Amazon's baseline
policies, regarding 3rd-party distribution tactics (for example rife
on Ebay), which have already proven Amazon overall a superior
proactive consumer presence in light of NewEgg's once dominate but now
relative financial demise over the past decade.

Closer, but again by no means conclusively stated for an early stage
and entry point for several other brandname players only now beginning
to provide depth to alterative iterations of the V-NAND platform;- as
if it mattered: Samsung is the veritable Titan to understanding a
SSD... .

On Sat, 11 Aug 2018 13:34:06 -0700, dogs wrote:

"Are we having fun yet?" continually reappears

.. . .
Have fun then streaming with your WEBcasts, but be careful: Some I've
encountered will attempt to hijack you for a server. Happy Trails,
Dog.

On 8/11/2018 4:52 AM, Flasherly wrote:
On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 21:52:38 -0700, mike wrote:


In the case of a SSD, it's not at all clear who uses what strategy
to what degree. "Trust me, we got good stuff...secret stuff...but
it's good stuff." That's just the way the world works.

So...MTBF calculation == good. Warranty length is mostly independent
of that number. Everyone knows. Are we having fun yet?

--

It is: Because of the advent of 3D NAND technology the focus now has
changed unto an industry-wide push on inferior TLC memory. Less
inferior TLC would be, in the corrective sense, how that reads from a
print on the outside packaging. And, quintessentially, that same
aggressive NAND technology, behind TLC, as well drives the obsequious
"new and improved" for a MTBF, Total Terabytes Written, over X years
of the stipulated warranty. As they say. . .for the part of
remaining secrets is to remain so until they aren't. Industry also
holds the trump card: People emphatically will buy into inferior TLC
because sum costs are cutting anything prior by a huge margin.
Industry knows, psychologically, human nature that cheapshots of the
world will unite. When and as they do, subsequently, the empiric
collectivism will emerge to provide accompanying skews on usage and
failure, onuses, and reviews, although perhaps no differently than
might be the same formulations to subjectively employ, from decades of
metadata characteristics already present, whereby an attempt is
provided to make an informed decision on a mechanical HDD purchase.

Psychologically, above industrial reference is psychoid stock
investment talk. On my part, I could bet completely opposite -- that
people of the world will say horse crap to this advertising -- and
walk away from TLC SSDs. I could literally bet the shirt on back,
everything, and be left sitting on a curb if I lost the bet. Or
become the next richest, on another scenario, and buy the crown of the
King of Siam;... People will buy into TLC, literally crawl over on
another to be able to get at it first, like the good little marketing
paradigms they in fact are.

That's the plain plan for someone looking for a few hundred acres and
a mansion to build.

It's a matter of how fast you really want to go with Solid State NAND:
It comes in two popular flavors, cabled to or breadboarded into the
motherboard bus architecture for your convenience. And in
relativistic terms of pure speed it leaves platters in a cloud of
dust.

Thanks for trying to input.
There's likely some good stuff in there, but after a coherent sentence
or two, you devolve into gibberish. I have no idea what you're trying
to convey. It hurts my head to even try.
I am amazed by the linearity and consistency of the devolution.
A work of art, just not as helpful as it could be.
I guess we are having fun.

On Wed, 8 Aug 2018 20:37:01 -0500, Lynn McGuire
wrote:

"Why I Will Never Buy a Hard Drive Again"

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ch...ves,37563.html

"It’s been years since I was willing to work on any PC that boots from a
mechanical hard drive. Once you get used to the snappy response times
and speedier gameload times of an SSD, going back to a hard drive feels
like computing through a thick layer of molasses."

Lynn

If you were buying a 'large' drive now, what would you buy? SMR seems
like something to be avoided, so if I want a drive in the 8-10-12+
range, what's available?

Not just asking Lynn, anyone can chime in.

On Sat, 11 Aug 2018 21:26:50 -0700, mike wrote:

Thanks for trying to input.
There's likely some good stuff in there, but after a coherent sentence
or two, you devolve into gibberish. I have no idea what you're trying
to convey. It hurts my head to even try.
I am amazed by the linearity and consistency of the devolution.
A work of art, just not as helpful as it could be.
I guess we are having fun.

No problem. See the second post, perhaps the expert/Tom's SSD review
may help with not being able to accept much, if not a whole of the SSD
premise. I enjoy the stuff, owning and running now one of the first
flatpanels made and among the oldest that's still running. It's still
in the investment charts under the BRILLIANT symbol. Also as well
likely to be gibberish, but that flatpanel and company, originally a
$2000 32" backlit TTL, was a real wild ride on the tailend of an
investment hellcat. It takes a small offshoot company to do that,
focused and tightly contained by a product, one that's going to take
off like there's no tomorrow. At least if going out on the deep end
for killing the sky's-limit in technological investments. Forgive me
the analogy if I find these SDD improvements exciting;- even with the
smaller makers of SSD as offsets, ADATA, MICRON, & etc., I wouldn't
expect near the "upstart" potential or degree of focus on an
inevitability, flatpanels once pose over cathode ray tubes, by
comparison to SSDs. Still -- that SDD speed is intrinsically nice.
Any actual information imparted, think of it aside an inclination in
ongoing preparations for another I'll probably purchase, as much due
to a pure absurdity of TLC costs;- who knows, maybe I'll get lucky
with newer restructured V-NAND in a MLC variant, instead of TLC. But,
yes -- I agree and think mechanical drives are also fun, with the
exception there will be no guessing allowed. It had better be done
right, with mechanical drives costs serving now for a brunt of data
backup, or the whole of the point to operating a Personal Computer is
going to be a forgone conclusion, possibly better deferred to a
handheld from such as Google cloud services.

Mark Perkins wrote:
On Wed, 8 Aug 2018 20:37:01 -0500, Lynn McGuire
wrote:

"Why I Will Never Buy a Hard Drive Again"

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ch...ves,37563.html

"It’s been years since I was willing to work on any PC that boots from a
mechanical hard drive. Once you get used to the snappy response times
and speedier gameload times of an SSD, going back to a hard drive feels
like computing through a thick layer of molasses."

Lynn

If you were buying a 'large' drive now, what would you buy? SMR seems
like something to be avoided, so if I want a drive in the 8-10-12+
range, what's available?

Not just asking Lynn, anyone can chime in.

PMR is still used to sell "premium" products, and
a Google search is likely to find units using PMR.
The marketing department knows the value of PMR,
and "leaks" the info to bump sales.

https://www.kitguru.net/components/h...rive-review/2/

On some lesser products of unknown parentage, you're
forced to use deductive reasoning. If you see a
4TB drive in a 0.8" high enclosure, with what
seems like two 2TB platters (datasheet doesn't
list platters), then you can kinda guess it's SMR.
SMR caching is now better than it was.

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads...tters.2525313/

You even have to be careful now, with your HDTune
usage. Do test runs in both Win7 and Win10 and
compare, before publishing. As a recent Win10 release
seems to be pulling the rug out from underneath
HDTune 2.55. When attempting to identify PMR versus
SMR, you can't let yourself be distracted by Windows 10
behaviors.

Paul

On Sun, 12 Aug 2018 03:36:08 -0400, Paul wrote:

Mark Perkins wrote:
On Wed, 8 Aug 2018 20:37:01 -0500, Lynn McGuire
wrote:

"Why I Will Never Buy a Hard Drive Again"

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ch...ves,37563.html

"It’s been years since I was willing to work on any PC that boots from a
mechanical hard drive. Once you get used to the snappy response times
and speedier gameload times of an SSD, going back to a hard drive feels
like computing through a thick layer of molasses."

Lynn

If you were buying a 'large' drive now, what would you buy? SMR seems
like something to be avoided, so if I want a drive in the 8-10-12+
range, what's available?

Not just asking Lynn, anyone can chime in.

PMR is still used to sell "premium" products, and
a Google search is likely to find units using PMR.
The marketing department knows the value of PMR,
and "leaks" the info to bump sales.

https://www.kitguru.net/components/h...rive-review/2/

On some lesser products of unknown parentage, you're
forced to use deductive reasoning. If you see a
4TB drive in a 0.8" high enclosure, with what
seems like two 2TB platters (datasheet doesn't
list platters), then you can kinda guess it's SMR.
SMR caching is now better than it was.

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads...tters.2525313/

You even have to be careful now, with your HDTune
usage. Do test runs in both Win7 and Win10 and
compare, before publishing. As a recent Win10 release
seems to be pulling the rug out from underneath
HDTune 2.55. When attempting to identify PMR versus
SMR, you can't let yourself be distracted by Windows 10
behaviors.

Interesting, thanks. I guess I'm not the only one thinking it's best to
avoid SMR for everyday general use, although if I'm reading correctly,
SMR isn't as much of a dog now as it was when it was introduced. They've
probably figured out and optimized the caching algorithm.