How much more reliable are SSDs compared to HDDs?

[PositiveProton]

I'm building a computer for recording music for my dad, and previously, he lost all of his work because all of his (all 3 of them, not even kidding) external drives died.

 

I'm planning on setting up two 500 GB drives in RAID 1, so he'll have some kind of failsafe, and also a 128 GB SSD for storing finished pieces.  I'm going with an SSD, because I've been told they don't fail.  Is this true?

 

EDIT: Yeah, I know, back up your stuff.

[naca1227]

Pretty reliable, just don't defrag them. Always remember to back up your stuff

[Godlygamer23]

They're significantly more reliable as there's no moving parts. If it happens to get dropped, it's less likely to break, and if you shake it while in operation - nothing will happen. SSDs do fail, but they're less likely to fail. SSDs also don't require defragging, and if you defrag it, it'll reduce its lifespan.

[extremescouter]

They are much less likely to fail, as they have no moving parts, and tend to have much longer warranties, which mean the companies stand behind their products. However, like always you need to back up your data. Whether it is a ssd or hard drive, you still need a backup. You can't fully trust a single drive to never fail, so you always need a back up. 

[Angelz&Airwavez]

This is true, SSD's are way more realiable than HDD's. The setup your talking about would work great. But if you want your pc to truly be fail safe, i would reccomend purchasing a 64gb ssd just for windows. This will make your fathers computer  very reliable. 

[Stav Kats]

Day and night.

First of all, you dont need to be afraid of dropping it, or even moving it while it is on.

Secondly, SSDs never fail, only if you re-write 5-10GB per day they will eventually run out of writing cycles.

Lastly, no mechanical parts moving.

If those are not enough, I don't know what it is.

Hope it helped.

[rashdanml]

Some newer SSDs are rated at 20GB/day of writing for 5 years. I was surprised to see that number personally. Think it's the OCZ Vector.

That said, if you avoid frequent write/erase cycles, it'll last a very long time. I've left my 128GB running only the OS and some major programs (Photoshop, Solidworks, MATLAB, just for the slightly faster load times) and right now, it's at 42/128GB in over a year. 28 of that was the OS.

[adhisakti]

If it is good condition's SSD, it will be more reliable choice for your storage. But if something wrong with your SSD, it is so hard to recover your data. Last time I bought a Team Xtreme S3 120GB SSD for my client, it dies after 3 days and I need to RMA these thing. If you have a harddrive sometimes you can still read your data and backup it ASAP before you do RMA, i have this situation when I bought WDC 160GB HDD, first it goes bad after 3 month, got replacement, aaand it goes bad again after 1 week, then I replace it with a Seagate HDD and it works until now.

[ha1o2surfer]

I write 30+GB a day to my SSD  and my OCZ is still going at 25TB host writes. My Current Plextor 512 M5P Extreme is at 8TB, both very awesome drives