Is it a platter drive ?

[Andy]

Are you saying that a power failure while writing would cause no loss ?

I think that many SSD's do have issues with power failures and it would payto really research b4 buying.

Results

Just power cycling the drives while no read/write operations were occurringwas no problem, but power cycling them during the read-synchronize-write cycle was incredibly problematic. After 1600 power cycles, the M4 was recording up to 40,000 CRC errors. The Toshiba THNSNH060GCS upgrade kit was able to maintain file integrity if file writes were handled at less than 20MB/sec total, even when writing 64 threads of data. Exceed that rate, however, and the Toshiba drive starts losing data quickly.

 

[Paul]

No.

A SSD will have the same issue as a Spindle Drive in that respect so why
single out a SDD ?

Newer drives have problems then their counterparts and one should always
research "before" purchasing. Most go for the cheapest. The cheapest
will have a higher propensity of data write failures and that could b e
a prt of the reasoning for them being dumped on the market at cheap
pricing.

When it comes to data storage don't get the cheapest. Get the media at
Market Value. Getting the media at less than Market Value may be a Red
Flag at a higher failure rate.

If this bothers you two that much, buy an enterprise
SSD with a Supercap inside. The drive detects advanced
power fail, and runs off the charge on the Supercap.
Until the cache is cleared and everything that needs to
be written out, is written out.

Those drives even include the ability to test the Supercap.
And can report a SMART failure, if sufficient capacity
is not present. This is similar to the test some UPSes do
once a day, a simple capacity test, to see whether the
battery can take a load without collapsing or not.

This is an example. The white thing is the Supercap
on the SSD printed circuit board.

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/storage/OCZ/Vertex3Pro/_DSC9198_sm.jpg

On a consumer version, the same PCB may be used, but the
pads where the Supercap would sit, are blank. And then
you can use a UPS to achieve the same result.

Paul

 

[Paul]

Yeah, it just might be!
And I notice that for desktops, there are apparently some SATA3 SSD kits
available (I think it was Samsung. At this point, I'm beginning to think
that Samsung is the "new Sony" these days. I still recall when Sony TVs
were king...the "nobody ever got fired for buying a Sony" - line comes to
mind

I'm thinking at this point in time, why bother with a hybrid drive, if you
can get a SSD for a relatively affordable cost? (But if someone needs a
500 GB or more drive, I can see the point there)

The only concern I have is how reliable is it (or more accurately, how long
will it last), given its relatively new technology. And I keep thinking
about the wear leveling issue with all the writes that occur on the main
drive, but I may be worrying needlessly about that.

Oh - and the fact that some older editions of some Imaging or Cloning
software may have some "issues" with properly recognizing - and utilizing -
a SSD for these purposes. That may include partitioning software too.

I've already read about some potential issues with this with older editions
of ATI (and perhaps other partitioning software pre-SSD drives) ... like
something about a 63 KB vs 64 KB sector alignment issue, which I still
haven't figured out.

So it sounds like it could be a potential hassle, unless you use a
relatively up-to-date image, clone, or partitioning software package. Buyer
beware.

Samsung makes their own flash.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory [see the V-NAND section]

So Samsung has a bit of an advantage. Think, they're more like WD than Sony.
I don't know how the other companies are compensating for the difference
in tech. (You can stack inside the die, or stack dies on top of one
another.)

*******

As for reliability, I expect the SSD can be erased by ionizing radiation.
But if that happened, chances are you've been erased too

Paul

 

[Paul]

I think you brought up a good point concerning latter version of SATA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

The fact is the rotational speed of the platter and the density of the
molecular magnetic poles were always limiting factors of the drives and
the ability to (1)write or read data. That why you see spaindle drives
with 8MB or 16MB caches. The disk SATA interface may be rated at SATA
II or SATA III but the drive itself wasn't capable of the high speeds.
Now that we are seeing NVRAM being implemented in SSD, a SSD SATA III
will truly take advantage of the bandwidth capabilities the latter SATA
standard provides.

The cache RAM chip on a hard drive, is bigger than that now.
This 3TB hard drive has a 64MB chip. And the
utilities I've pointed at the drive, seem incapable of
listing the "buffer size" - they list it as "unknown".

http://i57.tinypic.com/28h21hs.gif

Paul

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, Bill in Co

The only concern I have is how reliable is it (or more accurately, how long
will it last), given its relatively new technology. And I keep thinking
about the wear leveling issue with all the writes that occur on the main
drive, but I may be worrying needlessly about that.

Personally, I still have reservations about the _manner_ of failure of
SSDs; despite my recent experience [1], I _still_ feel spindle drives
_tend_ to fail with some warning (funny noises, and/or getting slow as
the remapping firmware has to work harder), whereas I have a "gut
feeling" that SSDs can fail suddenly and totally.

Yes, of course, if one is backing up frequently, this doesn't matter (-:
[]
[1] I _did_ recently have a spinning drive fail suddenly and totally.
But when (after trying everything else suggested) I finally bit the
bullet and opened it up (in my company's clean cabinet), I found that
the head(s?) had stuck to the platter (which thus wasn't spinning at
all); when I freed them, it all came back to life and I was able to get
most of the data off. (No, I'm not using that HD now - it does show up
as having a large, and possibly growing, number of bad sectors. But
large is still a small percentage.)