Are you installing many SSD drives?

[NYJimbo]

I have no faith in the real world MTBF on SSD drives, at least not yet. You would think by now this would not be an issue, but look at all the people using SSD drives and complaining that "I turned on my computer this morning and......"

[16k_zx81]

Ive steered clear of them up until now due to the relative newness of the technology and the general buzz of unreliability that seems to have surrounded them.

A couple of weeks ago I started doing installs, and have been very pleased with the results.

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I had a Acer Aspire One that I put an Intel SSD into, (this was the first machine I installed one on). Loaded up W7 Starter, and got into OS, expecting bells and whistles - only to find the performance ABYSMAL.

The machine kept 'waiting' for about 30-40 secs after each mouse click. It was useable, but slow as hell and frustrating to use.

Anyway, did a reboot, problem persisted.

Decided to browse the Intel site to see if there was a tuning tool.

Downloaded the Toolkit from there, which recommended a couple of tweaks, which I allowed.

After that it ran like a bat out of hell (well an Atom-based bat out of hell, which is not very quick, but a hell of a lot faster than it was with a phys hard disk)

moral of the story was that the 'plug and play-ness' of this model (330) was not too great. Once tuned, it delivered the goods. Now I know to 'tune' if I see this issue again.

BTW, Im not knocking the 330, which has an extremely good rep. Just noting this quirk in case anyone else encounters it.

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Interested to see other comments here. Particularly on brand choice.

Of course the ideal thing for us as techs would be some objective data on brand-comparison failure rates.

Im not quite sure where information like that would be available though, if at all.

I still sorta worry about the failure-rate aspect, given the history of the devices. Hopefully this was a immaturity issue, and not an inherent quality of the technology. Plain(er) sailing from here?

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I installed one in my Work Desktop yesterday - an OCZ

Picked up a free copy of Paragon 'migrate to ssd' a couple of months ago, and this was my first try using it.

http://www.paragon-software.com/tech...ate-OS-to-SSD/

Pretty much a no-brainer. I guess the thing I wanted to see was a seamless migration with no hiccup on first boot. Which it delivered.

Very happy with the performance bump on the Desktop (965 AMD) - its pretty fast now, particularly boot times, which were annoying me prior. Really a big improvement over the phys 1TB I was using, in all respects.

[gazza]

I think most SSD drives will give you the speed hit over the old SATA IDE drives but it is reliability that we want.

With so many SSD makers on the market it makes drive selection very difficult especially if price is a factor. I found the NCIX Tech Tips Youtube Channel www.youtube.com/user/NCIXcom very helpful, give good info on the latest drives that are on the market.

According to their own figures the Intel and Crucial have the lowest RMA figures out of all the SSD's they sell and they sell most all brands and a lot of them. I know Intel offer a five year warranty on the 520 series and have their own migration/alignment tool supplied by Acronis. So for now I will pay a little more and stick with the Intel 520.

[HFultzjr]

Originally Posted by Larry Sabo

Interesting, and scary. Any brand of SSDs more/less reliable than the others? I am reluctant to recommend replacing failed drives with WD blue or green drives and have been totally put off Seagate drives after seeing them fail within weeks of replacement. WD Blacks are all I'll recommend until I find something more reliable for consumer PCs/laptops. I will refuse to install an RMA drive any more unless the client signs a waiver.

Hello,

In my opinion, "reliable" drives are a thing of the past.
If SSD's are not anymore reliable.......what's the next solution?
I'm frustrated beyond belief with hard drive issues.

For what it's worth....WD black seems to be the only thing resembling "reliable".

[16k_zx81]

Playing devil's advocate, on the subject of reliability:

Lets say the install is on a DESKTOP computer, new build.

Just about every desktop is going to have at least one physical drive in addition to any SSD.

Seems there are the the obvious methods from here of:

1. creating an image of the ssd to the phys drive for recovery if there is an issue with the OS

2. setting up auto sync between the ssd and the phys drive for any saved data

3. implementing a cloud backup system for important data

But this would be the sensible approach regardless of the types of disks involved.

As techs we know to treat ANY storage medium as though its going to fail (which it will, inevitably, over time).

So Im not sure in this example that the SSD implementation is really that different from best practice with phys disks, is it?

.

[Larry Sabo]

You're right, Jim. It's laptops that present the conundrum, unless they have 2 drive bays, which most don't.

[16k_zx81]

I still dont see the issue being that complex. Yes there's a couple of extra hurdles using external / cloud to achieve the same precautionary measures, but these are still well within the realm of affordability and useability for the average end-user. Seems to me our job is still just eductation and consultation, which presumably all of us know how to do from previous experience

[Adept PC Repair]

I've had little problems with the samsung F range for desktops, i use one myself.

SSD's are proven to be less reliable on a source on the internet.

Pretty sure that Intel SSD's had the lowest failure rate, so go with them.

[Aescaepulus]

Sitting on the fence with SSDs for now. Their cost, MBTF, and overall usable lifetime vs HDD need to be addressed before I go recommending them in my builds.

I install them per customer request, but on a personal level I'm just not in that big a hurry to spend more money just to see a faster boot (45 seconds on my current builds is just enough time to grab a cup of coffee, don't you know), and a few milliseconds faster app load time won't increase my productivity any.

If I had ADHD, lot's of money, and a willingness to replace drives every year or so, I'd plug a couple into my machine, but for now I'm waiting a few years.

[16k_zx81]

Originally Posted by Aescaepulus

Sitting on the fence with SSDs for now. Their cost, MBTF, and overall usable lifetime vs HDD need to be addressed before I go recommending them in my builds.

I install them per customer request, but on a personal level I'm just not in that big a hurry to spend more money just to see a faster boot (45 seconds on my current builds is just enough time to grab a cup of coffee, don't you know), and a few milliseconds faster app load time won't increase my productivity any.

If I had ADHD, lot's of money, and a willingness to replace drives every year or so, I'd plug a couple into my machine, but for now I'm waiting a few years.

Actually its quite a bit more time-saving than that for larger app load times

The warranty coverage for SSD's is pretty much the same as hard drives - 3 years seems to be the standard.

This thing about 'failure rate' - does anyone want to put up some actual data thats current?

Seems to me a lot of this perception is a layover from earlier drives that were 'immature' in terms of the development of the technology. Yes, early on they were a bit rugged, but is that still really the case?

The fact is you can walk into any laptop retail outlet and get a pretty wide selection of models that feature SSD's - advantages including speed and much longer battery life.

Surely this is an indicator that this is now no longer 'enthusiast technology'?