Reliability of PC Flash SSDs? 467
An anonymous reader writes "SATA and IDE flash solid-state disks are all the rage these days — faster and, allegedly, more reliable than traditional spinning-rust disks. My organization dipped its toe in the flash-disk waters, buying a handful for some PC and Linux boxes. Out of 8 drives from various manufacturers, 3 have failed in the space of four months! Some are reporting bad blocks, others just crapped out and stopped responding entirely. (And no, this isn't a wear-leveling issue, nor were these machines in particularly harsh environmental conditions, nor were all failed drives from the same manufacturer.) So I ask you, the readers of Slashdot: what has your experience been like with basic, consumer-grade SATA or IDE flash drives? Are they failing for you too, or are we just unlucky? It's starting to remind me of the claims about long-lifetime compact fluorescent light bulbs that, in reality, have turned out to be BS!"
Same type of experience here (Score:5, Interesting)
I have avoided investing any money into those types of drives for that very reason. As a small business owner I see customer units come in that make use of those types of devices and I see a lot of failure. I'm still being patient.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
We've not being seeing widespread failure of Ipods or other keydrives, even though they use the same F-RAM technology. I'm kinda surprised to hear any reports of failure in the new solid state PC drives, unless it's an issue of making the cells too small to be reliable.
Aside - I have two traditional hard drives in my PC. They've been spinning almost-nonstop since 2003. Any idea how much longer I have until they crash?
Aside #2 from the Summary -
- The savings on CFLs is trivial. I might switch my bulb fr
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Donate time, not money [wikispeedia.org]
CFL reliability (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me of some religious types. "If it ain't in the book, I don't believe it."
There's a big difference between religion and relying on a reasonably unbiased testing company like consumer reports.
Your bias against CFLs approaches religion more. I think it was last month that we had quite the discussion about them.
BTW, I just had my first CFL blow on me - it still produced a visible glow, but no longer lit like the 100W equivalent it's supposed to be. It was in the bathroom, and a transplant from the time I lived in an apartment. It saw at least 5 years of usage, it predated the time I started writing the install date on the base in permanent marker.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My first CFL which cost about $25 when I first got it (1990s) is also still working. It's the *current* CFLs that are being cheaply made($3 or less) which often die less than a year after purchase, or else provide POS dim lighting.
.
>>>There's a big difference between religion and relying on a reasonably unbiased testing company like consumer reports.
Yes that's true, but if you've got 1 million people scattered around the nation complaining about premature CFL failures, it's kinda foolish to sit th
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I've got two 60 watt bulbs in my kitchen ceiling, side-by-side. One is the standard incandescent and the other is a 15 watt "equivalent" CFL. You can tell just by looking that the CFL is not as bright even after an hour of usage.
Plus when it's cold, the incandescent is immediately bright while the CFL is so dim you can look directly at it, and not have to squint. It's turned-on but essentially dark. All my Philips CFLs are like that.
Re:Same type of experience here (Score:4, Informative)
While nothing is ever a certaintly -- a tool for your OS that inspects SMART data from your drives' electronics would answer that question, at least from a trend perspective. I like smartmontools [sourceforge.net], but you may prefer something else, or it may not be applicable for your OS.
See Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] for some background information on SMART, and what it can tell you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
- The savings on CFLs is trivial.
You're missing the really good part of using CFLs; they make it practical to quadruple indoors lighting. Go from 1 60W bulb to 3 20W CFL's and you get significantly more light, making for a nice change in darker climates. And compared to using 400W, 60W actually becomes a significant saving. Of course, it doesn't actually reduce electricity use...
The warm up time is also less of a problem if you use multiple CFL's. With enough powerful ones you quickly get more light than th
Dimming works fine... (Score:3, Informative)
...you just have to buy quality stuff. About 10 years ago, we bought five standing lamps, each with 3x32watt dimmable bulbs. The electronics in the lamp are specifically designed to dim CFLs, and the CFLs are designed to be dimmed. The total price for each lamp (they are nice lamps) was several hundred dollars. However, in 10 years, we have replaced only one bulb. The warm-up time is negligible and the light quality is excellent.
Hot-wire bulbs are a throw-away product. You just can't look at CFLs the same
Re:Dimming works fine... (Score:4, Insightful)
That is, unfortunately, absolutely right: you do not save money with CFLs. For that matter, any energy savings is also questionable, once you account for the energy used in production, not to mention disposal.
We have CFLs for various reasons. For example, the big CFL lamps mentioned in the post above are in rooms that are often used by 20-40 people. With that many bodies, they already get too warm. Without CFLs, we would need some 2000 watts of lighting - that would be intolerable.
In the end, forcing CFLs is yet another political scam. So is just about anything touted for its energy conservation potential. Energy is the lifeblood of civilization - we ought to see how cheaply we can generate more of it, not shave pennies like misers.
Re:Dimming works fine... (Score:5, Insightful)
you do not save money with CFLs.
Tell that to my electric bill, which dropped roughly 25% when I switched to (almost) all CFLs. And as for lifespan, I still have half of my original set of them fully functional (almost a decade ago now). And quick tip, don't just buy twenty of them and replace all your lights en masse, do it as they burn out (otherwise, you've thrown away a perfectly good $0.50 bulb).
For that matter, any energy savings is also questionable, once you account for the energy used in production
Yup. You caught 'em. All those evil corporations actually sell their products at a loss compared to the cost of energy required to produce them - Because your statement implies exactly that. Same for all those naughty solar panels, dontchaknow. And yes, I appreciate all too well how massively unfairly the utilities favor corporate customers over mere humans - But even considering that, if GE could make more reselling electricity than selling CFLs, don't you think they would?
not to mention disposal.
Ahh, the specter of all that spooooky mercury. That 100% recyclable mercury. Along with the 100% recyclable phosphorus coating the 100% recyclable glass. And the (merely) 99% recyclable fiberglass and plastic in the base, don't forget that.
Yes, CFLs have their shortcomings - And most people get them totally wrong (with the exception of how poorly they work with dimmers, that alone holds true). They start right up, they only take a few seconds to reach full brightness, they do save money, they do last 10x (or more) longer (though they do admittedly have a slightly higher out-of-box failure rate), they come in full-spectrum versions (and something incandescents don't, they come in germicidal versions as well). They even come in every common form factor now, from candelabra to GX53 (I learned that part when I discovered my new house had all candelabra-base lights).
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Oh spare us the smug patronizing; you're western european I'm assuming, it's the only area where everyone thinks they are experts on American culture. Not expert enough to know that the CFL was invented by Americans (as was the modern hybrid car) though.
The rest of the lamps are
Re:Same type of experience here (Score:4, Informative)
There's a reason incandescents didn't have a problem there: they operate using hot and neutral. They pay no attention to ground. Neither does the dimmer switch deal with ground. Ground is a safety issue for humans.
And CFLs operate exactly the same way. There is no ground connection on a CFL, just hot and neutral. They can't break due to a "bad ground" because they never touch ground.
It's like saying your car gets bad gas milage because the diesel fuel in the truck parked next to it was contaminated.
CFL fail miserably when using X10 controllers. They seem to have some current pulse that occurs after turnoff that makes the X10 controller think you are trying to turn the light back on using the local switch. Press X10 off -- click -- light off -- click -- light on! Press off again -- click off -- click on! It's like a video game, how many times do you have to press "off" to get them to stay off, and how short can you get the 'on' times to be?
That, and the extremely short lives they have compared to simple incandescents, make them a pain in the ass and poor replacements. I like the european guy who talks about us americans and our "extravagant lifestyles" because we use incandescents. Using a 50 cent light bulb for ten years compared to ten (mercury containing) CFLs in the same place is extravagant?
eee ssd (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
So far I'm happy with the 32GB RIDATA that I upgraded my 900 with. I probably should have gone with the SATA version rather than the PATA version, but my wife resents every penny I spend on computer related stuff.
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Re:eee ssd (Score:4, Insightful)
Same problem here. The 4G SSD in my eee 901 went bad the 2nd month. I sent it to Asus and they replaced it. The new one has been working since, but I don't store any critical data on that PC.
I'd also like to see optical media go away. Burns take too long, are too likely not to work on another drive or even the same drive, have one little bad spot that spoils everything, and drives go bad all the time. I'll take SSDs over DVD-RWs. Wish more Linux distros were set up for easy installation onto and from flash memory drives.
I bought a dozen of those LED night lights. That's a much cheaper way of trying LED lighting than going for regular lights. 4 of them failed early. Their brightness varies hugely even between the same models. That's life for beta testers. Have had better luck with CFLs. Only one early failure so far, and it wasn't real early-- lasted 5 years. Manufacturers have done a very poor job of informing people that most CFLs do not work with dimmer switches. Last time I went looking for a CFL for dimmers, I couldn't find one. Took a while to go through the fine print on all the models and confirm that none could hack a dimmer switch.
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For once I don't feel bad about buying early and getting a 7** eee, as I haven't had any problems with its SSD, although I do most of my writes to SD cards.
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Same here, my 701's 2 years old now and running fine despite going through a dozen kernel compiles.
I was thinking of getting the newer model but it seems there's a complaint about almost every component inside it. I can live with the small screen and short battery life, at least until ARM netbooks take off.
chipset inside and utilization? (Score:4, Interesting)
your not saying what chipset and what kind of usage you did.
if you are going to put a MLC drive for a gentoo distribution which is compiling 24/7, you will kill it in no time
if you got first gen micron chipset... you will have bad experience too
try again with indilinx or intel drive with SLC and come again
Re:chipset inside and utilization? (Score:5, Informative)
Hi, I was the guy that posted the original question. Thanks for your response. I didn't give details simply due to space constraints. The drives were:
1. FHM16GF25H = Super Talent MasterDrive 16GB under linux
2. Transcend TS32GSSD25-M under Windows/XP
3. Patriot Warp v2 32GB under Ubuntu 8.04 with ext3
The machines were not super heavily loaded (i.e., no compiles 24/7), and we did the "obvious" things like turning off atime updates to the filesystems, etc.
Re:chipset inside and utilization? (Score:5, Informative)
I'd be more looking at the fact that all of those are JMicron based controller drives and are shitty examples of SSD's in the first place.
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=17 [anandtech.com]
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When you buy Intel or Seagate or Maxtor SSDs and they fail, then I'll take note.
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Those are all bad SSDs, get an intel or OCZ drive instead.
That's what happens when you try to go cheap.
Re:chipset inside and utilization? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently, the JMicron controller that's been faulted for at least two of the drives in questions is also found in 3 OCZ SSDs. At least, that's what anandtech reports, and they've been very good with these kinds of investigations in the past.
I'd suggest to apply the same technique that should be applied to all new technologies: get a thorough understanding of the technology and the involved manufacturers before buying one. And any price that's too good to be true probably is - cutting edge technology never is cheap, and SSDs are still cutting edge technology.
Certain Manufacturers are Doing It Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Thank you. The brands/models were the critical piece of information.
You're probably aware that SSD's have been in the server space, at a very different price point, for a few years now, without any extraordinary reliability debacles. To some extent, this is a case of getting what you pay for. I did a moderate amount of research on SSD drives, relying especially on the independent review sites, and quickly eliminated all of the brands you described.
As is frequent in fairly new markets, there are a few smaller and less well-run companies trying to dive in, and their first customers get to beta test their v0.* and v1.* offerings.
The prevailing wisdom seemed to me (and to people like i.e. Torvalds) that Intel was far and away the top of the heap in terms of performance and reliability, and some drives based on a newer Samsung controller (i.e. OCZ Summit) were a perhaps credible alternative. Other brands were clearly struggling to even be in the game, with frequent firmware updates and outright debacles (i.e. Indilinux, Micron) and we're in the process of shaking out who will make it and who will not.
I have only fielded a few consumer-grade SSDs over about the same amount of time as you, but going with Intel's G1 and G2 MLC products has so far yielded zero failures.
If you are already in the market for an SSD, and you are ready to spend premium money for premium performance, you should go the whole distance and go with Intel, the current market leader. See also the latest news on these models. [tomshardware.com]
Don't Defrag (Score:4, Informative)
Make sure you turn of the scheduler for defragging in Windows or whatever OS you are using. Defragging those types of drives will effectively kill them.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't Defrag (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Don't Defrag (Score:5, Informative)
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SSD can benefit from defragmentation. This because of the READ/WRITE MULTIPLE ATA commands, which transfer X blocks in a row. Of course the blocks need to be in a row then, hench the defrag.
The final speed increase will be pretty limited, but it could help. I would still recommend against it tough.
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Ok, there's no speed advantage, but...
Is there a lifespan advantage to be had from moving all your files around the SSD once in a while?
eg. You could move the least-used cells to the most-used cells to even out the wear.
Re:Don't Defrag (Score:5, Informative)
Any {dr}ecent controller does wear leveling
Re:Don't Defrag (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't Defrag (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that "[]" is commonly used in writing to denote a change from the original word (whatever it was was) to "drecent," not "decent or recent". Using {} makes more sense because it denotes that you're doing something unusual that's not supported in normal English writing. Personally, I would've gone with "{d,r}" as the AC suggests or "(d|r)."
Re:Don't Defrag (Score:4, Informative)
Windows 7 is SSH friendly (Score:5, Interesting)
A moot point maybe since everyone agrees already..
But I noticed that Windows 7 detects SSD (even in a RAID config with the on-board ICH controller) and automatically turns off defrag on them.
Nice !
The 60 and 120GB drives (Score:4, Interesting)
in my everyday desktop are working fine since January, and they are the most used drives of the system, the smaller one being used to boot the system and store programs, the other storing program data and some DBs.
If you are talking about 3 that failed... (Score:4, Insightful)
then to say "Some are reporting bad blocks, others just crapped out and stopped responding entirely..." is misleading.
You know the numbers, so tell them. If the total is 3, then you can't use a plural for two separate types of failures "some this, others that". That is just logically impossible if the number of failures is 3. Think about it.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
then to say "Some are reporting bad blocks, others just crapped out and stopped responding entirely..." is misleading.
You know the numbers, so tell them. If the total is 3, then you can't use a plural for two separate types of failures "some this, others that". That is just logically impossible if the number of failures is 3. Think about it.
I think all of us understood what the poster meant.
Think about it.
That's a condescending thing to say. Whenever someone says "Think about it", it's always with the air of superiority - as if they have this insight that the lesser people haven't seen or unable to see.
My response to that order is "I'll spend every waking moment thinking about it." - then I forget about it.
Re: (Score:2)
Off-topic comment: "Think about it" does not indicate insight that others can't see or don't have. On the contrary, it indicates that the insight is something derived from something that you already have, and that you can reach just like everyone else.
Re:If you are talking about 3 that failed... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If you are talking about 3 that failed... (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, he's right.
"Think about it." *is* condescending, and completely unnecessary to make your point. Think about it.
Manufacturers / Drive Info (Score:5, Insightful)
FWIW, I have 2 of the Intel Drives and 1 OCZ drive and I haven't seen any problems.
Re:Manufacturers / Drive Info (Score:4, Informative)
Hi, I was the guy that posted the original question. Thanks for your response. I didn't give details simply due to space constraints. The drives were:
1. FHM16GF25H = Super Talent MasterDrive 16GB under linux
2. Transcend TS32GSSD25-M under Windows/XP
3. Patriot Warp v2 32GB under Ubuntu 8.04 with ext3
The machines were not super heavily loaded (i.e., no compiles 24/7), and we did the "obvious" things like turning off atime updates to the filesystems, etc.
Re:Manufacturers / Drive Info (Score:5, Insightful)
No problems here... (Score:2, Interesting)
Linus says... (Score:5, Interesting)
He sorta knows what he's talking about more often than a random average slashdotter.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
All Linus did was provide *initial quality* of the gadget. That tells us nothing about long-term user. Perhaps his shiny new Intel drive will fail next year.
Aside -
I have two traditional hard drives in my PC. They've been running almost-nonstop since 2003. Any idea how much longer I have until they crash?
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Content blocked by your organization
Reason: This Websense category is filtered: Sex.
URL: http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/10/so-i-got-one-of-new-intel-ssds.html [blogspot.com]
WTF?!
Linus updated it 5 months later (Score:5, Informative)
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http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001304.html [codinghorror.com]
With ssd right now, the manufacturer makes a big difference in quality and reliability.
I Don't think they have been proven yet. (Score:2)
Like with the CF bulbs, cheap = not good. (Score:4, Insightful)
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When stuff has come down in price over time because of improved manufacturing et al, it will usually have a fairly good quality (see cheap ATA drives), when it starts cheap it will have a high failure rate because not enough was invested in manufacture/design/testing.
tl;dr Cheap new stuff, last less time than Cheap old stuff, news at 11
Reminds me of... (Score:2)
Sounds like you are unfamiliar with what a product warranty is for. Complex products (especially new ones) are going to fail at a pretty good rate. If it breaks, get it replaced. This serves you (you get a new, working one) and the vendor (they get to figure out why it broke and avoid it in the future.)
I could dig up a dozen recent "reviews" of traditional hard drives where the reviewer claimed an outrageous failure rate. Yep, magnetic platter disks just aren't ready for prime time, just like compact fl
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Of course, it also means the vendor gets a copy of whatever is on the drive... Confidential company information, personal data, furry pr0n...
Re:Reminds me of... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, it also means the vendor gets a copy of whatever is on the drive... Confidential company information, personal data, furry pr0n...
Clever, in a completely unrelated way. What if a company (say they were operating out of a country not completely allied with the US) were to create a SSD device that had logic to "incapacitate" itself at some rate after it had been used to store enough information, before the warranty had expired, and not often enough (across the population) to raise suspicion. The disk could be a sort of new age Trojan horse, sneaking in, and back out with valuable, undetected all the while.
Re:Reminds me of... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's an obvious reason why it won't work for classified stuff; if a disk on the classified network fails it doesn't go back for warranty repair, it gets smashed with a sledge hammer and then melted with thermite and the failure rate is taken into consideration when deciding to buy from that manufacturer again.
Most companies have less strict rules, however. You could quite easily write a disk controller that would scan for keywords in every block that was written and fail after a key phrase had been used a certain number of times. This would mean you'd only get failures on disks used for storing commercially sensitive information.
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So? if they were to look at it or use it in any way they would shortly stop getting orders.
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One of 7 Transcends (Score:5, Interesting)
I have 7 Transcend SATA SSD's, 3 32GB and 4 192GB, one of the 192GB drives is flakey, random bad blocks and file curruption issues of files that had been fine but gone bad and have not been written to since their creation some months ago. I've reloaded it several times but eventually had to remove it from service because of its poor reliability.
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My experience with transcends has been they are absolute crap. This is based on a sample of a mere three devices, but none of them worked properly. One lasted only an hour or so, the other two were spectacularly slow. I've also had bad experience with transcend sd cards, one in my first Canon was just way too slow. It was faster than the uber crappy adata that came with the camera, but still not fast enough to record video reliably.
I bought 4 Sandisk sata 5000s to use in a raid0 and they were ok, but even i
BS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad troll. I read the fine article linked in this claim. The claims are not BS... there have just been problems with the supply-chain doing cost-cutting, and with people using cheap CFLs inappropriately. It's important to note that the Energy Star ratings board has been retesting CFLs and revoking use of the label for CFLs that fail to meet the standard.
It's not BS... it just needs some refining. Don't use CFLs on a dimmer switch. Don't use them in poorly ventilated enclosures. Don't use CFLs in fixtures you turn off and on a lot.
A little bit of consumer education goes a long way... but unfortunately so does FUD like the submitter's.
just wait for LED bulbs (Score:5, Interesting)
LED bulbs are going to render CFL bulbs a flash in the pan
no toxic mercury, no 30 second wait to dim up completely after turn on, not nearly as fragile, lasts much longer, nicer white glow, similar very low energy usage...
but currently, they are a little pricey and their lighting wattage is low
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/coming-soon-a-40-watt-led-light-bulb/ [nytimes.com]
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Yup, LEDs will be great, but they're not there yet. Meanwhile, I've been happily using CFs for about ten years (closer to fifteen if you count the fact that I switched the bulbs in my room at my mother's house before I left home). I'd be surprised if they haven't been largely supplanted by LEDs in ten years, but that's still 25-30 years of use. Not bad when you consider that incandescents with the current design were only introduced in 1964, so have only been around for a bit over twice as long. Hardly
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LED bulbs are going to render CFL bulbs a flash in the pan
no toxic mercury, no 30 second wait to dim up completely after turn on, not nearly as fragile, lasts much longer, nicer white glow, similar very low energy usage...
but currently, they are a little pricey and their lighting wattage is low
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/coming-soon-a-40-watt-led-light-bulb/ [nytimes.com]
Sorry, I replaced all my incandescents more then 4 years ago and was really happy with the results. Still not happy with the cost of the LEDs. So just go ahead a replace those incandescent lights and wait on the LEDs. I will still be cheaper in the long run.
And if you're thinking the LEDs don't contain toxic materials; you should do a little research on GaAs and other environmentally friendly semi-conductors.
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I've been looking like crazy, since the guy that remodeled the house I just bought loved Recessed can lights and dimmer switches. Right now, the only bulbs I see that come close in the LED range cost about $120 each. The CFL dimmables are crud, their lowest setting is still something like 75% of max brightness, so they are very bright when the dimmer is all the way down. I need a replacement LED "can light" in the $30 dollar range, before I can do anything about them. And the ones I have actually seen in
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Also, don't use in rooms with showers.
I use CFL, and the ones in dry rooms last a long time, but the ones I put in my bathrooms kept dying. Humidity shortening the life of CFLs is a known problem.
I've since switched to halogen bulbs in the bathroom and they work better for me with some power savings over normal incandescents.
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I think your data sample is missing something (Score:4, Insightful)
My first response would be: "What type of computers are these being used in? Desktops? Servers? Laptops? Netbooks?"
My second response would be: "What systems settings have been changed so the OS is properly set up for an SSD drive?"
My third response would be: "What exact make and model drives are we talking about here?"
All of this is important in determining whether this is just another typical anecdotal ask slashtards to make me feel better type question, or whether you are seriously asking.
Without specifics, this is nothing more than a waste of time.
If all of the failed drives are of a specific manufacturer's netbook mini pcie based 4GB SSD drives, and all were having the same basic issue, then it's really an indication of a problem with one manufacturer's drives, and not SSD's as a whole now isn't it?
It's like saying all 1.5TB rotational hard drives suck and lose data becuase at one point seagate had tremendous firmware problems with their 1.5TB hdd's.
If on the other hand, it's several different drives, in different environments, from several different manufacturers and across several physically different types of SSD's (mini pcie, full size, etc) utilizing several different types of RAM and several different controllers, then it would suggest a more widespread problem.
You don't even have a large enough data sample to begin to answer these questions.
Me personally, I've got SSD drives in everything from my home desktop, to my work laptop, to a couple of small file servers, to two different Dell Mini 9's running aftermarket Runcore SSD's
All have been in use for at least a year (the work laptop is actually a Dell xps m1330 that is almost 2 years old and has a 64GB Samsung SSD in it).
All are working flawlessly and show no signs of dieing.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The original poster didn't ask you to debug his problem or theorize why he drives failed. He asked you a very simple question: what have your experiences been like with flash drives? You don't need any of the data you're asking for above to do that.
My SSD died yesterday (Score:3, Interesting)
haha (Score:2)
Nice troll.
You link to a story that has nothing to do with the question. Man, this is sloppy even for /. 'editors'.
The article is using examples of incorrectly manufactured bulbs that fail to spread FUD.
I couldn't help but notice they don't compare it to the failure rate of cheap incandesents.
I have never replaced an IFL and I have been replacing my non-dimming regular bulbs for over 5 years and have only replaced one, and that was because I put it in a dimmer to see what would happen.
Guess what? it's a per
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Did you read the article you linked to (registration only, but if you google for the URL then follow the link it works because NYT doesn't require registration of the referrer is Google)? It says that CF lightbulbs do generally save money and last longer, but a few Chinese manufacturers were cutting costs and using substandard components, meaning that the bulbs didn't last long. Fortunately, they all come with something like a ten-year guarantee, so if they fail as early as the anecdotes in the article we
No problems (Score:2)
I have had one on my notebook computer for 1 1/2 years so far with daily usage, no problem whatsoever.
How apropos. (Score:2)
Re:Early days for consumer SSDs (Score:5, Informative)
you mean the real world support for TRIM in Windows 7 and supported in Indilinx and Intel controllers?
the one that has been recently tested out on Anandtech and shown to have very positive results?
oh yeah, that one.
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There's no public trim on the Intel controllers yet.
Do you mean the experimental trim support in the beta Indilinx firmwares that caused data corruption when your computer went into sleep? Great! Those drivers got pulled for obvious reasons.
The offline 'trim' doesn't count btw, it's not using the trim command and you have to run it manually periodically rather than it running automatically when the disk's idle.
Trim will be great but don't pretend it's available.
Yes there is (Score:2)
As of this morning. It's a couple stories down on the /. front page.
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However, I'm not sure how your post is on topic since your slow USB HD experience has very little to do with the longevity of SSD's ?!?
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Lowes. I can't stand the light they give off, so I only use them on the outside garage fixtures that our neighborhood covenant requires that I leave on all night. (They're on a light-sensing switch.) Despite the promises, they manage to only last about a year or two. While this is dreadfully short of their supposed life, it's a lot longer than the couple of months that conventials were lasting in the same fixtures, which is why I switched. I guess external applications don't count.
Light Sensing Switch -- there's your problem... (Score:5, Informative)
I only use them on the outside garage fixtures that our neighborhood covenant requires that I leave on all night. (They're on a light-sensing switch.) Despite the promises, they manage to only last about a year or two.
There's your problem, light sensing switches (and dimmers) will absolutely destroy most CFLs. I'm surprised they lasted over a year. Your typical light sensing switch isn't equivalent to a regular light switch that flips on and off based on the amount of light.
There's a couple of problems with photosensor switches. First, around dusk and dawn it may flicker on and off, which shortens the life of CFLs (but not cold-cathode CFLs, which are ok with rapid cycling). Second, even when completely "off", many photosensor switches will leak a bit of current, which may mess with your CFL's electronics, anything less than full-on / full-off is bad. Third, some photosensors and dimmers may have built-in "bulb saver" features meant to extend the life of incandescents -- they may pass the current through a diode or negativetemperature coefficient (NTC) thermistor (which again will kill CFLs).
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I had one catastrophic bulb failure - the glass actually burned up or something. Big brown stain on it and it ceased to function suddenly.
Aside from that every bulb I've had coming up on 3 years now is still in commission or was decommissioned for a higher intensity bulb. I am now up to using 120w equiv (30w) bulbs. in some places. 100w equiv in others, and 60w (13w) for outside nighttime lighting. Even exposed to the elements (in a housing) these bulbs still last a long time.
I was really surprised recentl
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The bulbs were purchased about 18 months ago, so I assume they were "modern".
I hated them. They were slow to start, and had a terrible pink cast to them until they warmed up over 5 to 10 minutes. I was both surprised and glad that they lasted less than a year (maybe 1500 hours on them).
To be fair, I do have
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So how many billions of dollars will U.S. and EU citizens waste trying to get their wiring up to spec? Sounds like the typical "penny wise; dollar foolish" paradigm. Rather than helping save money or the environment, I predict CFLs will end-up being worse.
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If they're smart, and like all the standard electronic amenities that most people do, they'll spend the money. It isn't just CF bulbs that die early from poor power sources. TVs, DVD players, stereos, PCs, and any other electronic device can all meet early deaths because of dirty power. Many people don't even realize this and just think they're "cursed" when buying electronics. It'd be interesting to see someone do some research to see how much money is lost every year do to prematurely destroyed electr
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I live in an area that isn't serviced by an electric company, so I have a small solar array. My power is always a perfectly clean 117 volts at the wall (at least until my inverter fails, I guess). I still have all of the CF bulbs I bought 15 years ago at $30 each. A friend who has normal electrical service bought some of the same ones at the same time, and none of them lasted more than three years. So, yeah, electrical quality is important.
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I have used Philips and GE - both have an average lifetime of around 9 months in my applications.
Brett
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I have 3 Lights of America CFLs laying right next to me. They started flickering only a few months after install, and died less than a year later. They should have lasted at least 5 years according to the warranty.
My GE CFLs come on nice-and-bright but they are limited in usage, because they are "swirls" and most of my lights don't accept swirls. They require traditional round bulbs.
My Philips CFLs provide that nice round bulb, but they are slow to reach full brightness, which is rather annoying. The 60
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I've had about half of mine fail so far. Mind you, I bought them about ten years ago, so I'm quite happy with that failure rate. I generally have to replace one every 6-12 months. I'm not sure when the last failure was; the electricity company sent me two through the post about a year ago and I haven't used either of them yet, so it must be over a year, but that's quite unusual. This is in a house with wiring from the '50s (which is badly in need of replacing).
They do lose brightness over time, howeve
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It really depends on the brand of the bulb. I've had a few Philips that were bought in the 90's, used every night dusk till dawn outside, and they lasted 10+ years. In our school dorms, I replaced a few spots in the common area with a few of the older looped (not squared-off) Ikea 11W'ers. Light's are on 24/7/365. 6 of the 8 are at 2+ years now, that's almost 20,000 hours, on -already used- bulbs.
We replaced all the hall lights in the dorms with 13 watt and 20 watt CFL's, for a total of about 45 bulbs. All
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Well, a lot of people get crap stuff from Wal-Mart or so. Philips actually makes good stuff. I have some Philips LED spotlights and although they are expensive ($30/bulb) they are great (about the same as a halogen) and they last while I have heard many stories about people getting $5-10 bulbs that are blue, don't give off any light and burn out in less than a year.
It's always the crappy companies that give new technology a bad rap. The same goes for smartphones, a lot of people I know don't like smartphone
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I realized some of Apple's ads were a bit questionable, but I didn't think any of them went quite so far as to claim Microsoft's software actually kills people.
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"PC" was synonymous with IBM clone a LONG time ago actually.
PC only really got conflated with "microcomputer" or "home computer" once most of the other options died off.
OTOH, a contemporary Mac really a "PC" in any aspect of the term.
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You bought new tech from WALMART of all places and then are surprised when the tech doesn't perform well.
Time for a reality check there.
The Walmart version of something was "cheap" but it failed quickly. Imagine that.
The moral of the story isn't not to buy new tech but not to buy ANY tech from Walmart.