Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote:


Has it gotten to the point now that SSDs are considered to be just as
reliable, long term, as the standard hard drives, even with all the
consequent writes and rewrites (also potentially limiting the SSDs
"longevity")? (I mean when used as your main drive)? But maybe SSDs
still haven't been out quite long enough to yet assess their long term
reliability and longevity.

It's gotten to the point you can use them.

They don't insta-brick like they once did.
The user "John Doe" had one insta-brick on him.

They're still potentially susceptible to power events.
Check the SMART table, to see if "the drive thinks
you've been abusing it". There's a field for that
(abrupt power loss). For example, even if I safely
remove an SSD connected to a USB to SATA 2.5" adapter,
the SSD counts my unplugging the cable after
Safely Remove as an abrupt power loss. It should not
do that, if the command was making it through the
protocol layers properly. (The drive should have been
placed in a "spun down" state.)

You still need to back them up.

Don't leave your data files on one. Leave
your OS on the SSD, move your data files to the
HDD. The "end of life" of an HDD today, is much
more gentle than the "brick state" an Intel SSD
drive enters at the end of its wear life counter.
Intel will allow neither read nor write, when the
computed amount of write cycles is exceeded.
Samsung will likely allow the drive to continue,
so you could, say, do a last backup. Intel SSDs
don't allow even that. Dig a hole in the back
yard, and throw your Intel SSD in the hole, when
that happens. "No data recovery for you."

Always research the "end-of-life" behavior of any
SSD you buy, so your backup strategy has you covered.

Paul

Sounds like the most conservative approach still is to use a regular HDD.
(And when you said just leave the OS on the SSD, I'm not sure if you were
including the Program Files too, but I'm guessing you were). But the way
SSDs fail (as a brick) sure is concerning, at least to me. And I've had
that happen on a flash drive.