SSD failure and lifespans??

ozyboyross

ozyboyross

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I have just ordered the windows 8 upgrade with the current deal that's on and paid extra for the DVD copy from Microsoft so I can upgrade to 64bit (hoping ill see an improvement) and I was thinking about upgrading from my 5200rpm HDD to a SSD....

My laptop is a dell and has two HDDs so I was planning to just replace the primary c drive with an SSD for my OS and program's to run from!

But since googling them I've read various things suggesting there prone to failure! Eventually grind to a halt and are only good for 10,000 write cycles per cell! Which ain't that much really!

So what's the deal?? Anyone know?? Are the new ones better?? Is there one you "must" have??

And will I really notice a difference on what is a nearly 5 year old dell?? It's not a bad spec but it is an older machine!
 
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Wow that's a lot of scaremongering you've been reading.. ;)

I wouldn't say they're any more prone to failure than a mechanical. Set up correctly (trim and ahci enabled, hibernate and defrag disabled etc) they should last years, more so that the laptop itself.
 
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I thought as much but I have no experience of SSD and the thought of failure scares me lol! What a good SSD then? Any brands or specs that are a must?

Will I see a benefit? I've got a core2duo p8600 and 4gb of ram and dedicated 512mb graphics if that helps?
 
Try reading this article on AnandTech to get an idea of the lifespan of different types of memory used in SSDs.

AnandTech said:
Even though we have showed more than once that the endurance of today's MLC NAND based SSDs is more than enough for even enterprise workloads, the misconception of SSDs having a short lifespan still lives.
Click to expand...

To summarise that page, even with the 'worst' (in terms of durability) type of NAND currently used in consumer SSDs you should still expect to get around ~20 years of writing 10GB per day on a 256GB drive. Of course, if you write a LOT more than that per day then the lifespan will come down, but in reality it's not a real concern for most users. Plus, when you actually run out of life on the drive you can still read from it. So, in 20 years time when your SSD packs in, connect it up using some antique hardware to your holobox and copy across your pics :)

In all seriousness though, take a look at the Samsung 830/840 and read some reviews comparing it to other drives. Anything by Samsung/Intel/Plextor/Crucial that's been manufactured in the last year or so should do you well in terms of performance and lifespan. Failure rates of certain drives (especially early models and some from manufacturers who didn't/don't perform enough testing) used to be very high, but stick with something Samsung/Intel/Plextor/Crucial and you should be OK.
 
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Too many scare stories around but they have definitely improved now.

I personally went for SanDisk Extreme as they already specialise in DSLR memory.

Samsung are also very highly regarded.
 
Thanks for all the advice guys! It's only going to be my boot drive as such as I have a separate hdd in my laptop for storage!

Ill try and find a good deal on one of the suggested SSDs then :-) hope there as good as everyone says!! Even in my old machine lol

Is the advice of going for bigger than you need still applicable to avoid rewriting to the same cell as often?

Or would a 60gb be fine??
 
I'd say go for at least a 128GB drive - even if you don't think you'll use more than half of it. You get better write performance from larger drives, as well as longer lifespan. I don't know if we're allowed to link to retailers from here, but you should be able to find a 128GB Samsung 840 basic drive for around £80. Also, some of the newer drives aren't made in capacities under 120/128GB any more, so you might not have the choice of a 60/64GB drive.
 
I have a 128gb as my OS and programs drive and it's only roughly 50% full, using Windows 8 64bit, Photoshop CS6, Lightroom, plus the usual VLC, Chrome, etc.
 
Samsung 830 is considered the one to go for - they make all elements of the SSD themselves.
The scaremongering centres around the fact most other well regarded and known RAM manufacturers using Marvel and Sandforce controllers in their drives.
OCZ and a few others have been really caught out with the issue - so it just goes to prove you can't always rely on a known brand purely on the strength of its name.

If you stick with Samsung/Crucial for the cost (Intel pretty much dearer with no performance benefit), then you'll be fine for many a year.

I'm trying to hold out until the 256s hit £100 mark before putting one in the iMac.
 
I use a variety of OCZ drives (Vertex 3, Agility 3, Vertex 4) and after a firmware update on the early Vertex 3, haven't had any issues.
 
I got a SanDisk SDSSDX-240G-G25 240GB Extreme SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5in Internal Solid State Drive from Amazon last year for a home build and the speed has been excellent.

Just a thought but what SATA does your laptop support?
 
gman said:
I got a SanDisk SDSSDX-240G-G25 240GB Extreme SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5in Internal Solid State Drive from Amazon last year for a home build and the speed has been excellent.

Just a thought but what SATA does your laptop support?
Click to expand...

After an hour of google and various freeware I believe my laptop is SATA 2 :-)
 
No point getting a SATA3 one I guess lol. This is what caused me to build a new computer, although my old one (Dell XPS Desktop) was still fast for my purposes (being a Quad Core Extreme processor etc) the motherboard only supported SATA1 and I really wanted a SATA3 HD plus I wanted fast Ram which my old MB also didn't support.
 
gman said:
No point getting a SATA3 one I guess lol. This is what caused me to build a new computer, although my old one (Dell XPS Desktop) was still fast for my purposes (being a Quad Core Extreme processor etc) the motherboard only supported SATA1 and I really wanted a SATA3 HD plus I wanted fast Ram which my old MB also didn't support.
Click to expand...

Yeah I can't go any further than the 4gb of ram I've already got with my set up!

To be honest I want to build a desktop but I've been unemployed for two months so money's tight! Hence the cheap SSD upgrade and windows 8!
 
I'd still recommend going for a SATA3 drive, even if your motherboard is SATA2. You won't be able to get the absolute top performance (particularly sequential) from it, but you'll still benefit from higher performance in random read/write (which is the main area where SSDs trounce HDDs) and you'll get the improvements that go along with newer technology. Of course, you should still see a significant performance improvement 'even' from a SATA2 drive, but if you can stretch to the ~£80 for a Samsung 128GB 830/840 I don't think you'll regret it.
 
Ebuyer and amazon seem to do the best prices for drives.
 
Also try Scan and Aria. Most of them will offer similar prices, but occasionally you'll find one that's £5 or so cheaper.
 
Ebuyer are the best people to buy from. Especially SSD's as you can usually contact them regarding the warranty. Btw, if you want to know the failure rate of an SSD.. just pay attention to the MTBF rate (Meantime before failure). It's an estimation based on the manufacturers testing on the drive for the amount of hours it can run before it will balls up a write or read action. It's something crazy like 3 million usually.

SSD's are the way forward. I'll recommend the one I have in my iMac. It's a Crucial Force 3 GT. Dual boots OSX/Windows 7 and can swap fully into either OS in less than 10 seconds. Beautiful!
 
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