Do SSDs lose data?

[Tencryn]

I was watching the Mineral Oil stream and I was reminded of the time my SSD became corrupted due to a power cut which required a complete wipe of the drive to get it working (at least to my knowledge).

 

I've had a few power cuts prior to having any SSDs and there were never any corruptions on the drives. I wanted to know if SSDs were more susceptible to data loss and I didn't find the answer I was looking for. Instead, I was surprised to see as the first result in Google "SSDs can lose data in as little as 7 days without power" and the second result being "Your SSD won't lose data if left unplugged after all". I don't know what the truth about this is but I did see mentioned that SSDs can get to a point where the data is temperature-dependent. I have to admit, I don't really understand. Both of these articles were posted in 2015.

 

I originally had a 250GB SSD as my boot drive with a 1TB HDD. Due to the corrupted SSD, I installed a 160GB HDD specifically for pictures, music, documents and other things. Both of the HDDs were at least 8 years old and worked without issue. I did recently just replace the 160GB HDD with another 250GB SSD for all my documents and some games. I plan on replacing the 1TB HDD with an equivalent sized SSD which would primarily be used for storing videos. I'm not sure if it's a long term solution but money is pretty scarce so it will have to do. I have a Corsair 760T V2 case and with two hard drives, the door would buzz with the vibration and I couldn't figure out how to prevent that plus with SSDs consuming less power and a smaller form factor, I thought SSDs over HDDs were a good choice if money wasn't an issue.

 

So what is the deal with data loss? If I go on vacation and don't use my PC for a month, will I lose any data? Are HDDs better with storing data over SSDs? How long should I go before replacing an SSD (Samsung 850 and 860 EVO)? 

 

Thanks in advance for any replies and apologies if I waffled on a bit - I wanted to explain the situation I'm in and why I decided to opt for SSDs.

[Origami Cactus]

Always have multiple backups. 

The samsung 860 is a good ssd, so it shouldn't have a problem, but i would have a 4/8tb external hdd (dirtcheap nowadays) and just connect it every once in a while and backup your stuff.

 

If you want to view the health of your ssds and hdds use crystaldiskinfo, it will show it in an easily understandable manner.

 

My ssd is 3 years old and it is still at 99% health, so if you have a quality ssd dont worry,

[Electronics Wizardy]

Can they lose data, yes, but they should be the same or better than hard drives for most uses.

 

Power loss is never good for drives and data in gereral

 

SSDs can lose data if power off, but it won't be a issue for almost all normal users. The 7 days thing is only true if all the writes on a ssd are used and the tempature is way outside of normal.

 

Make sure to have backups, thats what keeps your data safe.

 

Id keep a ssd until its too small or fails.

[Eastman51]

3 minutes ago, Tencryn said:

I was watching the Mineral Oil stream and I was reminded of the time my SSD became corrupted due to a power cut which required a complete wipe of the drive to get it working (at least to my knowledge).

I'm fairly certain any type of storage can get corrupted through a variety of different ways (power loss, crashing, unexpected disconnections, etc). But whether or not it happens is more dependant on what that storage device is doing at the time of the event (saving data, loading data, etc).

7 minutes ago, Tencryn said:

I originally had a 250GB SSD as my boot drive with a 1TB HDD. Due to the corrupted SSD, I installed a 160GB HDD specifically for pictures, music, documents and other things. Both of the HDDs were at least 8 years old and worked without issue. I did recently just replace the 160GB HDD with another 250GB SSD for all my documents and some games. I plan on replacing the 1TB HDD with an equivalent sized SSD which would primarily be used for storing videos. I'm not sure if it's a long term solution but money is pretty scarce so it will have to do. I have a Corsair 760T V2 case and with two hard drives, the door would buzz with the vibration and I couldn't figure out how to prevent that plus with SSDs consuming less power and a smaller form factor, I thought SSDs over HDDs were a good choice if money wasn't an issue.

SSDs use less power, don't make much noise (especially vibrations), and are faster; but because they have limited writes, HDDs are, at least theoretically, better at long term storage. If you need lots of storage, HDDs are a much better choice (better $ per TB); for example a 1TB WD Blue SSD is $135 while a 4TB Toshiba HDD is ~$100. But of course, backups are extremely important. Everyone should backup their data (if they deem it important in some manner, at least) because you never know when a drive could get corrupted or fail outright. Multiple backups is ideal, but not necessarily required. In the end, what kind of drive you buy is up to you; there are pros and cons to both.

 

A tip on solving your HDD vibration problems, I'd try sticking some small pieces of rubber between the hardrives and the mounting mechanism. The rubber should absorb most of the vibrations and reduce noise.

[Tencryn]

5 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

If you want to view the health of your ssds and hdds use crystaldiskinfo, it will show it in an easily understandable manner.

Thanks for this suggestion. I checked it out and my oldest SSD is at 100% with 7877 hours of use. For some reason, it reports my 1TB HDD as only 2109 hours of use despite it being in the system as long as the SSD has, and in a system prior to that since 2010. Would I be right in assuming the "Power On Hours" does not include idle time? A drive without the OS installed on it wouldn't be used as much as the drive with the OS. All 3 drives are sitting between 20 and 30 Celsius which I believe is pretty normal. My 860 is running at 22, 850 (with the OS) running at 29 with the 1TB hard drive running at 27. If the health status of any drive drops to 99%, does that mean it still works fully but just has less writes left?

 

I will get my hands on an external drive for back-up. I had one many years ago which required mains power but it... just stopped working. I just never replaced it. I will make this a priority.

 

22 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Power loss is never good for drives and data in gereral

Yes, but I wondered if SSDs were more susceptible to corruption but now that I think about it, if an important system file hasn't finished writing then of course there may be boot issues. I did purchase an uninterruptible power supply since the corruption as I didn't want to risk losing all my data and having to go through the painful process of data recovery again. Fingers crossed that I'm all good when it comes to power interruptions and surges.

 

9 minutes ago, Eastman51 said:

A tip on solving your HDD vibration problems, I'd try sticking some small pieces of rubber between the hardrives and the mounting mechanism. The rubber should absorb most of the vibrations and reduce noise.

Thanks for this suggestion. I didn't think of this.

[Eastman51]

2 minutes ago, Tencryn said:

Yes, but I wondered if SSDs were more susceptible to corruption but now that I think about it, if an important system file hasn't finished writing then of course there may be boot issues. I did purchase an uninterruptible power supply since the corruption as I didn't want to risk losing all my data and having to go through the painful process of data recovery again. Fingers crossed that I'm all good when it comes to power interruptions and surges.

uninterruptible PSUs usually help avoid data corruption in the event of brownouts or blackouts. Always nice to have one of those.

3 minutes ago, Tencryn said:

Thanks for this suggestion. I didn't think of this.

No problem. My case (Fractal Design Define R6) came with rubber mounts for 3.5" drives; and had special cutouts on the drive sleds to mount the rubber pieces.

[Eastman51]

sorry, the forums got glitchy and duplicated a post

[Tencryn]

A side question.

 

I notice quite a few external drives are using 2.5" which do not require mains power but they do run slower. I found a couple Seagate drives and despite both being 5,400 rpm, the 3.5" transfers at 210 MB per second VS the 2.5" transferring at 110 MB. I believe this is most likely because USB power isn't enough to power a 3.5" drive while providing adequate transfer speeds.

 

Would a mains powered drive be a better option (aside from transfer speed) over a USB powered drive?