Are ssd drives more reliable than mechanical hdd?

kamui4697

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Sep 15, 2009
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i want to replace my ps3 and my desktop primary os hard drives with ssds.will they las t as long or longer than a regular hard disk drive.my hitachi has ran and is still running for the last six years.just want to know if it is worth it.
 
Solution
SSDs have no mechanical parts and therefore they are a lot less likely to "fail" then a mechanical hard drive, although the jury is still out on just how much more reliable they are.

But there are other factors involved for SSD reliability. Unlike magnetic hard drives, SSDs have a finite lifetime beyond which they won't operate. This is composed of two limitations:

- the number of writes done to the drive. Each write "wears out" the flash memory cells a little bit. SSD's do "wear leveling" to ensure that the wearout is evenly distributed. As an example of what this limitation means in practical terms, Intel claims that their drives will last "at least" 5 years if you write 5GBytes per day to them.

- the longevity of stored...

COLGeek

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Comparing SSDs and HDDs in terms of reliability is a little like comparing apples to bananas. While they are both storage devices (fruit) they are different. The SSDs have no moving parts, the HDDs have many. SSDs are fairly new technology, HDDs are very mature. SSDs have different aging issues compared to HDDs and tend to slow down over time. HDDs don't really do that with proper disk maintenance (SDDs with TRIM support minimize the impact).

So, back to your original question....it is too soon to tell given that SSDs are really just coming to market but they look no worse than HDDs for reliability. As for me, I am as alpha-geek as the next geek, but I am staying away fro SSDs for now. For my needs, the speed boost is marginal and I want to see how SSDs hold up. I also want to see the $$$ per GB ratio improve.

Good luck!
 
SSDs have no mechanical parts and therefore they are a lot less likely to "fail" then a mechanical hard drive, although the jury is still out on just how much more reliable they are.

But there are other factors involved for SSD reliability. Unlike magnetic hard drives, SSDs have a finite lifetime beyond which they won't operate. This is composed of two limitations:

- the number of writes done to the drive. Each write "wears out" the flash memory cells a little bit. SSD's do "wear leveling" to ensure that the wearout is evenly distributed. As an example of what this limitation means in practical terms, Intel claims that their drives will last "at least" 5 years if you write 5GBytes per day to them.

- the longevity of stored data. Bits are stored as static charges in the memory cells, and these charges dissipate over time. The information I've seen suggests that you should be able to rely on reliable retrieval of data for something like 10 years.
 
Solution
Just a quick clarification on data longevity - the drive will still work perfectly fine beyond 10 years, it's just that you will probably want to backup and and restore everything before then to refresh the static charges in the cells.

In other words, the 10-year limit is "since the data was written" and not "since the drive was new".
 

cadder

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Nov 17, 2008
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I have read hints here and there that SSD's fail suddenly. I realize there are no moving parts but if any of the circuits fail then it won't work anymore. I would like to know overall what the average failure rate is for SSD's compared to mechanical hard drives.