Lifetime of an SSD drive

[euro]

My first Solid State Drive (64Gb Corsair) lasted me about a year. Replacement (120Gb OCX Vertigo 2) lasted me now six months. What am I doing wrong???

I read advice on forums not to put page file, but I read blogs (MS president of server division) that Windows 7 is designed with SSDs in mind - just to install and leave....

After it failed I can go trough whole installation from DVD but I can never boot (errors). Is there a low level format fo SSD? Finally I tried with the old SATA HD. Same. Thought maybe bad media (CD). Nope. Are all these (3) drives bad? Can my system be making them bad (mobo, contoroller, power)???

 

[WyomingKnott]

An SSD should last you several years even if you put scratch files, paging file, and a database that's updated every millisecond on it. In all likelihood, you have some other problem.

You did an excellent experiment by doing a reinstall to an old SATA HDD. If that one failed in a few months, too, then either you have phenomenally bad luck or something in your system is chewing up and spitting out drives. I hope that you have external backups of all your data.

You can download and run manufacturer's diagnostics for the three drives you mention. I'm not sure if your problem is corruption of the data on the drive or actual damage to the drive.

 

[Pinhedd]

I suggest that you do a SECURE_ERASE on the SSD, this will reset everything on the SSD and restore some performance. This is crucial if there's a driver or controller problem. Also check to make sure that the firmware is up to date. You can do all of this from the partedmagic liveCD (great rescue tool) which can be obtained here

http://partedmagic.com/doku.php

Many manufacturers offer warranties on their SSDs which exceed 2-3 years. Consider getting an RMA replacement because an SSD should last around 3-5 years, not 6 months to 1 year. If you want an SSD with a long life, get one of the Mushkin Chronos Deluxe or Samsung 830 as these use Toggle NAND flash which has a much longer lifetime.