jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

BackBlaze has thousands of drives running 24/7, so they have a great deal of real life experience with all kinds of drives.

"SSDs Generally Will Last As Long As You Need Them To

Do SSDs fail faster than HDDs?

That depends on the technology of the drives and how they’re used. HDDs are better suited for some applications and SSDs for others. SSDs can be expected to last as long or longer than HDDs in most general applications."

There is more on their site - on their Blog.

Toment Loc: FL, IL

Interesting
Thanks

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

Can you please post the URL for the information?

juan_uy Loc: Uruguay

This is the link to the blog entry mentioned:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-reliable-are-ssds/

They also publish at least once a year a report of failure rate of the brands and sizes of disks they use.

genesampson

I use both my laptop and desktop with ssd. Boot times 22 seconds. That's why I made the move. Both drives are by Crucial and cloning is a breeze. Just me and didn't really address your question.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Thanks.

Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.

If you’re having a problem with an SSD try this:
Access the BIOS on your computer. Leave it on overnight for 6 or more hours.
Restart your computer & see if any problems clear up.
I had a problem with an SSD, I think it was Crucial, so I called a tech there and he told me to do that.
There’s a technical term for it but I forgot. It does a form of drive optimization.
I did this to an older SSD which I thought was dead and it worked.

Festus Loc: North Dakota

In the last 5 years I have had to replace 4 SSDs, and all have been top rated Samsung drives. It just depends on what kind of luck you have!

Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.

FOUND IT! TRIM and Garbage Collection:

https://www.majorgeeks.com/content/page/everything_you_need_to_know_about_ssd_trim.html

aflundi Loc: Albuquerque, NM

The problem with SSDs are that they are based on flash-memory, which wears out. The built-in wear-leveling, which distributes sector writes, can help in certain use cases, but the way most people out of a data-center tend to use SSDs, they'll wear out fairly fast. Festus's experience is fairly typical for what I've seen.

If you want to use an SSD, set it up either as a cache device or install it at a location where sector writes are relatively rare to get the most effective use from it. Used this way, they can both give fast read access as well as last a long time.

John Solak

I've used SSD's for over 5 years with no problems. I've gone to 4 TB SSD's to handle my pictures and power points. It is amazing but there is a M.2 (M dot two) SSD drive which looks like a stick of computer memory. The fit in a special slot on my laptop and desktop motherboards. They have various SSD sizes up to 2 TB. They made the laptop and desktop really fast. I have pretty much flipped to SSD's from rotating drives. I always bought the better spinning drives which have lasted as long.

sbohne

The first time I became acquainted with SSD was about 7 years ago. I needed a new machine and I bought a DELL XPS laptop from an IT man at Duke University who also was a DELL reseller. He told me about the drive. Back then, a 64GB drive was about $500 (ouch!). He said my old Gateway laptop would last another couple of years if I used the SSD drive and I'd be amazed at how much faster it was. He found me a sample drive and I think I paid about $350 for it. The computer was faster than the day I bought it! Since then, I have had several SSD and zero problems. The price has now dropped to reasonable. The DELL desktop I bought in 2017 came with a 1Tb SSD.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

I've been using Samsung 1 TB SSD's since they were released for the boot disks on three desktop PC's, in two laptops and two external housing. I also use SSD's for boot disk backup on the desktop PC's, ten Samsung 1 TB SSD's in total with no problems or failures to this point.

Mind you, I never had a Western Digital harddrive fail either and I've run some of them for ten years!!

bwa

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

The question of "lasting as long" almost cannot be answered in practical terms. An SSD does have a finite life, even without the possibility of mechanical failure which a hard drive can experience. You may never reach the end of that finite life with your use.

The practical answer to the original question is to backup WHATEVER drive you use and store data on if you value it.

The only hardcore fact regarding ALL storage media is that they can fail, anytime from when they leave the factory, when you least expect it. Or they can last lots of years. Or anything in-between.

If you want assurances that an SSD is "better", define what you mean. SSD performance is faster (booting, file access, shutdown, etc.). SSD is shockproof. SSD is quiet.
SSD is longer lasting? Who knows, in your individual use.

I'm using hard drives in my numerous computers that are twelve years old. I use SSDS too. If a system drive fails I can put the system image I have saved onto a new drive lickety-split. No loss. Or I can install my OS and programs from scratch from the installation media I own and can download easily. I DO NOT store data on my computer hard or SSD drives, so when (not IF) a drive dies, I don't lose anything. All my data going back years lives on an external drive that has three constantly-updated backup drives. When any one of them fails, it just gets replaced, with nothing lost.

Rational1

All SSDs have limited number of write cycles. This number will generally give you a drive life at least equal to a good quality hard drive. The issue for most people is that they fail to set up their computer to use an SSD drive rather than a normal hard drive. This things like defragmenting an SSD will shorten it's life span as the defragging uses some of the finite write cycles when defragmenting the drive or individual files. Some people have their OS set up to defrag on a regular cycle, and every defrag of an SSD drive shortens it's life span.

In general SSDs have a life span as long as a normal magnetic hard drive, but you need to set your computer, operating system, and software to know that the drive is an SSD drive, or the maintenance that is usual for a hard drive will significantly lessen the lifespan of an SSD by using the the write cycles for maintenance activities not intended for an SSD.