SSD Annual Failure Rates Around 1.5%, HDDs About 5% 512
Lucas123 writes "On the news that Linus Torvalds's SSD went belly up while he was coding the 3.12 kernel, Computerworld took a closer look at SSDs and their failure rates. While Torvalds didn't specify the SSD manufacturer in his blog, he did write in a 2008 blog that he'd purchased an 80GB Intel SSD — likely the X25, which has become something of an industry standard for SSD reliability. While they may have no mechanical parts, making them preferable for mobile use, there are many factors that go into an SSD being reliable. For example, a NAND die, the SSD controller, capacitors, or other passive components can — and do — slowly wear out or fail entirely. As an investigation into SSD reliability performed by Tom's Hardware noted: 'We know that SSDs still fail.... All it takes is 10 minutes of flipping through customer reviews on Newegg's listings.' Yet, according to IHS, client SSD annual failure rates under warranty tend to be around 1.5%, while HDDs are near 5%. So SSDs not only outperform, but on average outlast spinning disks."
SSD failure rates (Score:1, Informative)
If you have a new Apple notebook it does not matter what the rate is - you can not replace them.
Lose the SSD and you have lost the Retina.
Re:Do the math (Score:4, Informative)
Alright, I'll do the math....
9ms average access times on a 7200RPM spinning drive == ~100 IOPS.
High-end SSD: 100K IOPS.
Yes, a thousand times the number of disk accesses. If you're really a developer, you'll see your compile times cut by a factor of 5-10 (depending on how much CPU power you have to spare). Things load from disk like magic.
You don't buy SSDs for the raw capacity, you buy them for the *fast* access times. Period.
Re:SSD failure rates (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Do the math (Score:4, Informative)
5% of a 4TB HDD that sells for USD$200 is roughly 200 GB = $10.
1.5% of a 4TB HDD that sells for USD$29,000 is roughly 60 GB = $425.
You mean 5% of the space size in GB is that.
Your math is wrong, because you are misinterpreting the statistics. A 1.5% SSD failure rate, with a small number of disks, does not mean that "1.5% of the capacity" fails; if you purchased N 4TB SSD "that sells for 29k"; on average N*1.5% Of those entire SSD drives fail; and if you purchased N 4 TB HDDs that sell for $200, N*5% of those entire HDDs fail.
Due to I/O constraints; when you use HDDs, you don't get to use all your total space, before performance degrades to unacceptable levels, and you have to buy more HDDs; furthermore, all those extra HDDs consume a lot more power than SSDs. The $/IOP is not attractive for HDDs: the vast majority of computer users do not need 4TB HDDs; and will use 100 to 150GB TOPS.
Therefore: SSDs look a lot more attractive, when you discount, or forget the existence of the portion of the capacity that the user cannot use due to performance constraints, or will not use -- due to not needing the space.
Last I checked; you cannot go to Amazon, Newegg or your local supermarket and buy a 200GB hard drive for $10 It is not an option; the least cost new HDD you can pick up is about 60 bucks. However, you definitely can go to Newegg, and buy a new 150GB SSD for about $250.
Also, the Crucial M500 1TB SSD is $600. 4 times that is $2400, not $30,000.
4TBs are for archival purposes, where the hard drive will be powered off most of the time, anyways. The failure rate of 3 TB and 4 TB HDDs is probably much higher than the 5% average, due to the tighter mechnical tolerances and higher density encoding methods required. I believe the 5% figure applies to 1.5TB disks.
Re:Do the math (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, you'd be surprised. The Samsung 840 EVO, a low-cost consumer drive (the high-end is the 840 Pro) that gets down to $0.70/GB, can hit 90K IOPS read on every model, and 90K IOPS write on 500GB models and up.
Sure, older or ultra-cheap drives won't hit that (my new Chronos doesn't get there), but rounding to the nearest order of magnitude will get you 100K IOPS even on medium-end consumer drives.
Re:Poor statistics (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Do the math (Score:5, Informative)
Wait, you are basing the improvements in compile times on one guy's anecdotal results? Well, here's another: when I switched to an SSD at work my compile times were cut by more than half. It was an huge difference in compile time ie. productivity.
It all depends on your codebase and tools, really. He was probably compiling a relatively small codebase, and for all we know his methodology sucked so a lot of it was in the RAM cache. I can tell you for a fact that a clean build on a large code base was drastically improved.
Re:Do the math (Score:5, Informative)
No he's doing the math right -- At an annual failure rate of 1%, you need to replace 1% of your total capacity every year. With an annualized failure rate of 5%, you need to replace 5% of that capacity overall. The averaging is done because over time, it works out, just like insurance. Sure, on any given year *if* a drive fails, you have to pay for the whole thing, but that's not how one accounts for such failures.
Re:Do the math (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Poor statistics (Score:4, Informative)
No.
I just picked up two SSD Drives that have 5 year warranties. I also picked up two Segate HDD's that only have 2 year warranties.
Most HDD's are 1 - 3 years. I have several Segate drives that are 5 year also.
Re:Poor statistics (Score:2, Informative)
The other problem is the write cycle limit on the SSDs, that may or may not be an issue depending upon how you use your computer. But, for those of us that regularly recompile the OS and kernel, an SSD isn't going to stand up to that for very long.
Oh, and SSDs are fast, but they're still tiny. I had to replace a HDD recently and I was able to get a 1TB disk for $75 including shipping, and it's a fairly fast disk as well. I could never have afforded that much capacity with SSDs.
Re:Poor statistics (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, sure, okay. If you're sitting next to your computer, then yeah, maybe you notice. How about the hundreds of millions of drives that are sitting in a rack somewhere, and will only see a human being twice: Once when it gets installed in the rack, and then only when it stops working for whatever reason and a tech is sent out to replace it.
Hmm, my drives send me emails when they start having problems. (And having gotten one of these emails a few years after setting up the drive initially, I was shocked to find it the email arrived in plenty of time. I pleasantly surprised to find the drive and all data still intact, and had time to swap a replacement into the raid).
Why don't you find out how this is handled by people who actually have hundreds of drives to deal with.
If you let them fail before servicing them you are doing it wrong.
Look into: man 8 smartd
Ancient data. (Score:5, Informative)
All this discussion on this and no one has commented that TFA is from 2011??
This article isn't reliable information. It's from when SSDs were relatively new and definitely doesn't apply to the in-the-field results people are seeing in 2013.
Re:Poor statistics (Score:4, Informative)
This sounds like a very specific problem with a certain firmware to me.
It's not an inherent problem with the SSD technology.
Re:No, they can't (Score:4, Informative)
They sell several amounts of already soldered chips on the main board.
Not soldered to the motherboard for the 15" Retina MBP [ifixit.com] and not soldered to the motherboard for the 13" Retina MBP [ifixit.com]. On which Macs is the SSD soldered to the motherboard?
Re:Poor statistics (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Poor statistics (Score:4, Informative)
Hogwash. There are many activities that write far more data on a regular basis to a SSD then compiling a kernel. Hang out in a HTPC forum and many, many people use SSD as storage for live tv buffers that are constantly writing a deleting GB of data every hour they are operating.