What are the downsides of a solid state drive in comparison to a traditional hard drive?

From Quora,
Franklin Veaux, Technology enthusiast, mad engineer, and tech startup
founder.

Money. SSDs are way, way more expensive than spinning rust. You can
get a 2 terabyte spinning rust drive at Costco for $39. A 2 terabyte
SSD is hundreds of dollars.

Longevity. An SSD wears out. Every time you record information to it,
you damage the memory cells. This problem is getting worse, not
better. MLC drives wear out faster than SLC drives. The newest TLC
drives wear out even faster. Drive manufacturers do all sorts of
under-the-hood trickery, like moving information around on the drive,
to help ensure all the cells wear evenly.

Data recovery. As a result of this wear leveling, the operating system
doesn't necessarily “know” where the information is stored on the
drive; the drive controller and the drive itself keep track of that as
they move files around to help make the drive wear evenly. If you're
in a situation where your disk directory is corrupted or you overwrite
the partition map or something, data recovery programs may not work.
It is much easier to recover information from a spinning rust drive
than an SSD.

Information retention. If you save files on a spinning rust drive and
on an SSD, stick them both on a shelf, and walk away, the information
on the SSD will slowly evaporate as the charge leaks out of the
floating gate transistors. Come back in five years and your spinning
rust drive will likely be fine. Your SSD, on the other hand, may have
incurred significant data loss, and there's a chance everything on it
will be corrupted. Again, this problem is worse for newer drives.

On 06/11/2017 01:53 PM, Lucifer Morningstar wrote:
From Quora,
Franklin Veaux, Technology enthusiast, mad engineer, and tech startup
founder.

Money. SSDs are way, way more expensive than spinning rust. You can
get a 2 terabyte spinning rust drive at Costco for $39. A 2 terabyte
SSD is hundreds of dollars.

Longevity. An SSD wears out. Every time you record information to it,
you damage the memory cells. This problem is getting worse, not
better. MLC drives wear out faster than SLC drives. The newest TLC
drives wear out even faster. Drive manufacturers do all sorts of
under-the-hood trickery, like moving information around on the drive,
to help ensure all the cells wear evenly.

Data recovery. As a result of this wear leveling, the operating system
doesn't necessarily “know� where the information is stored on the
drive; the drive controller and the drive itself keep track of that as
they move files around to help make the drive wear evenly. If you're
in a situation where your disk directory is corrupted or you overwrite
the partition map or something, data recovery programs may not work.
It is much easier to recover information from a spinning rust drive
than an SSD.

Information retention. If you save files on a spinning rust drive and
on an SSD, stick them both on a shelf, and walk away, the information
on the SSD will slowly evaporate as the charge leaks out of the
floating gate transistors. Come back in five years and your spinning
rust drive will likely be fine. Your SSD, on the other hand, may have
incurred significant data loss, and there's a chance everything on it
will be corrupted. Again, this problem is worse for newer drives.


Hi Morningstar,

I am cc'ing the w7 group, as the info applies to them too.
Note is cross posting police: Bite Me!

Indeed a nice analysis.

SSD cons: they break, especially the cheap ones,
completely dead and non-recoverable.

SSD pros: additively FAST


If you want to use an SSD, here are some of my guidelines:

First, do not use SSD's if you are infected with CABDs.
CABDs, also know as Cheap Assed Buzzard Disease (the "B"
might not stand for "Buzzard"), will affect your outcome
in a disastrous manner. And you know who your are!


If you don't care about your data, find one on sale.
There are times when your just don't care about things,
like cache.


If you care, a good quality SSD will greatly outlive
a mechanical drive.

As for "good quality", avoid Intel drives.

From extensive research, I have found Samsung to be
the best ones as far as I can tell. The ones
I have used (not a lot so far) have been boiler plate.
Their clone utility is so easy to use it is BORING.
Their tech support is America based and is unbelievably
good.

Next, analyze your usage.

For low usage, get a commercial drives: 850 EVO etc..

For intense usage or if you just want a long lived drive,
get an enterprise drive: SM863a for lots of writes; PM863a
for lots of reads.

my 2 cents,
-T

Lucifer Morningstar wrote:
From Quora,
Franklin Veaux, Technology enthusiast, mad engineer, and tech startup
founder.

Money. SSDs are way, way more expensive than spinning rust. You can
get a 2 terabyte spinning rust drive at Costco for $39. A 2 terabyte
SSD is hundreds of dollars.

Longevity. An SSD wears out. Every time you record information to it,
you damage the memory cells. This problem is getting worse, not
better. MLC drives wear out faster than SLC drives. The newest TLC
drives wear out even faster. Drive manufacturers do all sorts of
under-the-hood trickery, like moving information around on the drive,
to help ensure all the cells wear evenly.

Data recovery. As a result of this wear leveling, the operating system
doesn't necessarily “know” where the information is stored on the
drive; the drive controller and the drive itself keep track of that as
they move files around to help make the drive wear evenly. If you're
in a situation where your disk directory is corrupted or you overwrite
the partition map or something, data recovery programs may not work.
It is much easier to recover information from a spinning rust drive
than an SSD.

Information retention. If you save files on a spinning rust drive and
on an SSD, stick them both on a shelf, and walk away, the information
on the SSD will slowly evaporate as the charge leaks out of the
floating gate transistors. Come back in five years and your spinning
rust drive will likely be fine. Your SSD, on the other hand, may have
incurred significant data loss, and there's a chance everything on it
will be corrupted. Again, this problem is worse for newer drives.

The SSD industry is still young. And sooner or later, something
will replace Flash.

http://techreport.com/review/27909/t...heyre-all-dead

Paul

On Mon, 12 Jun 2017 06:53:22 +1000 "Lucifer Morningstar"
wrote in article

From Quora,
Franklin Veaux, Technology enthusiast, mad engineer, and tech startup
founder.

Money. SSDs are way, way more expensive than spinning rust. You can
get a 2 terabyte spinning rust drive at Costco for $39. A 2 terabyte
SSD is hundreds of dollars.

Longevity. An SSD wears out. Every time you record information to it,
you damage the memory cells. This problem is getting worse, not
better. MLC drives wear out faster than SLC drives. The newest TLC
drives wear out even faster. Drive manufacturers do all sorts of
under-the-hood trickery, like moving information around on the drive,
to help ensure all the cells wear evenly.

All drives wear out, just in different ways. And "under-the-hood
trickery" has been stock-in-trade for HD manufacturers for decades.
Nothing shady.

Data recovery. As a result of this wear leveling, the operating system
doesn't necessarily ?know? where the information is stored on the
drive; the drive controller and the drive itself keep track of that as
they move files around to help make the drive wear evenly. If you're
in a situation where your disk directory is corrupted or you overwrite
the partition map or something, data recovery programs may not work.
It is much easier to recover information from a spinning rust drive
than an SSD.

If the operating system doesn't know where data is stored you're in real
trouble. I don't believe this claim to have any basis.


Information retention. If you save files on a spinning rust drive and
on an SSD, stick them both on a shelf, and walk away, the information
on the SSD will slowly evaporate as the charge leaks out of the
floating gate transistors. Come back in five years and your spinning
rust drive will likely be fine. Your SSD, on the other hand, may have
incurred significant data loss, and there's a chance everything on it
will be corrupted. Again, this problem is worse for newer drives.
NVRAM retention studies peg data longevity at 100 years. My experience
with old HD's is that they deteriorate in storage in a few years, even if
kept cool, dry, etc. .

I am on my second SSD. Both were/are used as the system drive for my
Windows desktop PC. The first one worked fine, and really sped up my system
boot up and app launch times. Then I tried to upgrade to Win10. I am not
saying that the upgrade did anything in particular, it is just that that is
when my SSD decided to bite the big one. After a second reboot, it actually
disappeared from my system totally. Did not show up under Device Manager or
Disk Management. I still had about nine months to go on my warrenty, but
when I went to submit a claim, I found out that the manufacturer had
arbitrarily dropped all support about three months before this happened.

So flash back to this spring. I decided I really wanted the speed back so I
purchased an 850 EVO 258gb drive. Installed fine, migrated from my hard
drive fine, and runs great. I have no complaints, but I do watch the SMART
data a little closer to see if any disk errors are showing up. I also have
become more religious about backing up the drive. I keep an online copy on
an HDD in my system, as well as back up to one of my WD Passport external
drives.

From what I found in my research before I took this step again, SSDs have
come a long way in the last four years or so since I bought my first one.
But still, I only have system software on the SSD, so that if I have to
rebuild a system drive I won't lose anything I can't get back from
Microsoft. And as I said, I pay more attention to the SMART data from the
drive, and back up more religiously, especially before any major upgrades
or installs. Also, I only bought enough SSD to easily support my Windows
system drive, and any VMs I might set up. If I had an application that
required the speed of an SSD to run properly, I too would be looking at the
rather expensive Enterprise SSDs, and would be automating my backups on a
daily basis.

Only you can decide what you want to use an SSD for, and if the benefits
justify the additional expense. But as a system drive, they are nice. My
Windows 10 1607 boots in less than a minute. I can live with that.

On 06/11/2017 07:12 PM, Jason wrote:
My experience
with old HD's is that they deteriorate in storage in a few years, even if
kept cool, dry, etc. .

I've noticed that too. Plus the grease on the bearing
hardens up.

T wrote:
On 06/11/2017 07:12 PM, Jason wrote:
My experience
with old HD's is that they deteriorate in storage in a few years, even if
kept cool, dry, etc. .

I've noticed that too. Plus the grease on the bearing
hardens up.

They use everything but the kitchen sink for the lubricant.

I was expecting to find "polyol esters", as those have
been around for a while.

http://www.google.com/patents/US20090033164

The essence of a good patent application, is "leaving
it all to the imagination".

Part of what they're trying to do, is reduce NRRO on the
motor spindle. FDB motors switched from "fixed on one end"
to "fixed on both ends, but still pumping lubricant". And
it's hard to say whether this "embodiment" is intended for
motors fixed at one end, or for both types. My latest WDC
drive was a disappointment, in that it sounds (during shutdown),
like they've switched back to motors "fixed on one end",
with disastrous acoustic effects. You should never hear
noises from hard drives, if you expect them to last a long time.
It sounds like the FDB spindle is grinding as it slows
down and the lubricant pressure drops. The shaft of the
motor is patterned, so that when it spins, it pumps.
And you can hear that "pattern" grinding on shutdown.

The FDB motors also include an anti-oxidant, which is
something that other applications of polyol might not
be including. There was also some sort of free radical
scavenger added to the platter lubricant, so the
lubricant layer won't suffer chemical breakdown.

To imply "it's just grease" is an understatement. It's
a blend of 11 different herbs and spices.

Paul

On 06/11/2017 11:12 PM, Paul wrote:
T wrote:
On 06/11/2017 07:12 PM, Jason wrote:
My experience
with old HD's is that they deteriorate in storage in a few years,
even if
kept cool, dry, etc. .

I've noticed that too. Plus the grease on the bearing
hardens up.

They use everything but the kitchen sink for the lubricant.

I was expecting to find "polyol esters", as those have
been around for a while.

http://www.google.com/patents/US20090033164

The essence of a good patent application, is "leaving
it all to the imagination".

Part of what they're trying to do, is reduce NRRO on the
motor spindle. FDB motors switched from "fixed on one end"
to "fixed on both ends, but still pumping lubricant". And
it's hard to say whether this "embodiment" is intended for
motors fixed at one end, or for both types. My latest WDC
drive was a disappointment, in that it sounds (during shutdown),
like they've switched back to motors "fixed on one end",
with disastrous acoustic effects. You should never hear
noises from hard drives, if you expect them to last a long time.
It sounds like the FDB spindle is grinding as it slows
down and the lubricant pressure drops. The shaft of the
motor is patterned, so that when it spins, it pumps.
And you can hear that "pattern" grinding on shutdown.

The FDB motors also include an anti-oxidant, which is
something that other applications of polyol might not
be including. There was also some sort of free radical
scavenger added to the platter lubricant, so the
lubricant layer won't suffer chemical breakdown.

To imply "it's just grease" is an understatement. It's
a blend of 11 different herbs and spices.

Paul

Hi Paul,

Are you old enough to remember th4e "Mini scribe" hard
drives (5, 10 MB)? Our nickname for them was "Mini scratch".
On the finger nail down the chalk board!

-T

T wrote:
On 06/11/2017 11:12 PM, Paul wrote:
T wrote:
On 06/11/2017 07:12 PM, Jason wrote:
My experience
with old HD's is that they deteriorate in storage in a few years,
even if
kept cool, dry, etc. .

I've noticed that too. Plus the grease on the bearing
hardens up.

They use everything but the kitchen sink for the lubricant.

I was expecting to find "polyol esters", as those have
been around for a while.

http://www.google.com/patents/US20090033164

The essence of a good patent application, is "leaving
it all to the imagination".

Part of what they're trying to do, is reduce NRRO on the
motor spindle. FDB motors switched from "fixed on one end"
to "fixed on both ends, but still pumping lubricant". And
it's hard to say whether this "embodiment" is intended for
motors fixed at one end, or for both types. My latest WDC
drive was a disappointment, in that it sounds (during shutdown),
like they've switched back to motors "fixed on one end",
with disastrous acoustic effects. You should never hear
noises from hard drives, if you expect them to last a long time.
It sounds like the FDB spindle is grinding as it slows
down and the lubricant pressure drops. The shaft of the
motor is patterned, so that when it spins, it pumps.
And you can hear that "pattern" grinding on shutdown.

The FDB motors also include an anti-oxidant, which is
something that other applications of polyol might not
be including. There was also some sort of free radical
scavenger added to the platter lubricant, so the
lubricant layer won't suffer chemical breakdown.

To imply "it's just grease" is an understatement. It's
a blend of 11 different herbs and spices.

Paul

Hi Paul,

Are you old enough to remember th4e "Mini scribe" hard
drives (5, 10 MB)? Our nickname for them was "Mini scratch".
On the finger nail down the chalk board!

-T

At the time, all we got was 5MB and 10MB Seagates.

Hard drives were initially quite a novelty. I got one
of the first batch, and it took the place of using 8"
floppy drives. But in our next generation, I couldn't
really tell you what capacity HDD those had. As far as
I can remember, everything on site was "full height"
drives. So we didn't jump generations on drives.

Things we sampled over the years:

8" floppies (full height, with 120V AC for the motors)
8" floppy (half height, DC powered)
5.25" Seagates
8" disk (various brands, mostly lab experiments)
14" disk (departmental server, "it has to work!")
9 track tape (for departmental server)

We had one strange problem with the early drives. We
could detect a background error rate. My boss at the time
was a sharp guy, and he figured out the electrical noise
from the switching power supply, was getting into the
HDD controller board. Once the parts were re-positioned
inside the computer case, the problem "went away".

And we had a few failures. I ended up trying to do a
data recovery for someone on one of the drives (I had to
edit and recompile our recovery utility from source,
to do it). And my buddy next door, the disk subsystem
was his baby, and he got to look at a lot more of them.
Disks back then used a stepper to move the heads in and out,
so the mechanics of the things were "pretty crappy".
About as high tech as a "ZIP drive" :-) But when all
you had before that was floppy drives, anything new
"looks like the space age".

And quite unconsciously, I was putting duplicate copies
of documents on my shiny new hard drive, as well as the
departmental server. I guess for some reason, I didn't
really trust the stuff all that much. The departmental
server on the other hand, it was backed up on tape.
And that was the only backups we did, was put the server
on tape. If your desktop croaked, it was reinstall time.

Paul

On 6/12/2017 2:12 AM, Paul wrote:
T wrote:
On 06/11/2017 07:12 PM, Jason wrote:
My experience
with old HD's is that they deteriorate in storage in a few years,
even if
kept cool, dry, etc. .

I've noticed that too. Plus the grease on the bearing
hardens up.

They use everything but the kitchen sink for the lubricant.

I was expecting to find "polyol esters", as those have
been around for a while.

http://www.google.com/patents/US20090033164

The essence of a good patent application, is "leaving
it all to the imagination".

Part of what they're trying to do, is reduce NRRO on the
motor spindle. FDB motors switched from "fixed on one end"
to "fixed on both ends, but still pumping lubricant". And
it's hard to say whether this "embodiment" is intended for
motors fixed at one end, or for both types. My latest WDC
drive was a disappointment, in that it sounds (during shutdown),
like they've switched back to motors "fixed on one end",
with disastrous acoustic effects. You should never hear
noises from hard drives, if you expect them to last a long time.
It sounds like the FDB spindle is grinding as it slows
down and the lubricant pressure drops. The shaft of the
motor is patterned, so that when it spins, it pumps.
And you can hear that "pattern" grinding on shutdown.

The FDB motors also include an anti-oxidant, which is
something that other applications of polyol might not
be including. There was also some sort of free radical
scavenger added to the platter lubricant, so the
lubricant layer won't suffer chemical breakdown.

To imply "it's just grease" is an understatement. It's
a blend of 11 different herbs and spices.

Paul

Can you cook chicken with that?

To answer your question.

Buy Samsung SSD Pro with 10 year warranty.
Worth the price.

But this totally dependent on what you are putting it into.

I have replaced HDD in three laptops. I use 250G SSDrives.
One got a little speedup and lower power consumption.
One got a good speedup.
The third got at terrific speed up.

Why ? It depends on the chipset in the PC. Samsung provides software
to optimize the installed SSD and some optimizations will not work based
on the chipset of the PC.

So beforehand it is hard to tell if an SSD will benefit speed-wise.

On 12/6/2017 4:53 AM, Lucifer Morningstar wrote:
From Quora,
Franklin Veaux, Technology enthusiast, mad engineer, and tech startup
founder.

There is nothing wrong about speed and cheap!

But if you insisted to find bad things about SSD, it's ELECTRICITY!
There is never cheap and clean electricity if you consider the
manufacturing process.

--
@~@ Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
^ ^ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.39.3
�借貸! ��騙! ��交! �打交! �打劫! �自殺! 請考慮綜� (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_...sub_addressesa

PAS wrote:
On 6/12/2017 2:12 AM, Paul wrote:


To imply "it's just grease" is an understatement. It's
a blend of 11 different herbs and spices.

Paul

Can you cook chicken with that?


Why, I never thought of that.

Paul

AIOEUser wrote:
To answer your question.

Buy Samsung SSD Pro with 10 year warranty.
Worth the price.

But this totally dependent on what you are putting it into.

I have replaced HDD in three laptops. I use 250G SSDrives.
One got a little speedup and lower power consumption.
One got a good speedup.
The third got at terrific speed up.

Why ? It depends on the chipset in the PC. Samsung provides software
to optimize the installed SSD and some optimizations will not work based
on the chipset of the PC.

So beforehand it is hard to tell if an SSD will benefit speed-wise.

When a laptop only has SATA II ports,
you can't get SATA III speed from it.

No amount of Samsung software can fix that.

The sustained transfer rate, is limited by the
interconnect type.

SSD drives don't need positional optimization,
because "the seek time is zero". The Flash has
a seek time of around 20uS. With SATA protocol,
maybe the time averages around 100uS. The drives
already are working internally, to consolidate data
at the flash page level.

About the only remaining optimization for a
drive, is to "Re-TRIM" it. I think some toolboxes
have an option to scan the existing file systems,
and mark areas which are known to not contain data.
That increases the pool of spares, to give good
(like new) performance levels on the next series
of writes.

Paul

On Sun, 11 Jun 2017 16:53:15 -0700, T wrote:
I am cc'ing the w7 group, as the info applies to them too.
Note is cross posting police: Bite Me!


"So let it be written, so let it be done."

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...