Closer to a spinning drive - consumer SSD reliability tested

[williamcll]

A recent paper released from the university of toronto with the help of NetApp details the reliability of consumer SSDs from 1.4 million drives out of three manufacturers in 18 models, results include:

Infrequently used drives are more likely to require a replacement.

Some drives tend to break down within the first year.

SLCs are no more reliable compared to MLCs.

Higher capacity drives are more likely to break down.

Quote

Most large scale studies have focused on hard drives, or on SSDs in cloud data centers. The former still account for the huge majority of all stored data, and have become amazingly reliable as well as cost-effective. But SSDs have made substantial inroads in the enterprise as well, with all flash arrays providing massive performance in compact and energy-efficient packages. That's what this study examines. While there have been studies of SSD reliability in cloud data centers, their results aren't applicable elsewhere. Cloud vendors don't generally use standard SSDs - when you buy 100,000 at a pop, vendors give you what you want - nor do they use the RAID protocols common in enterprise gear. And the SSDs they do employ are in system architectures that include optimizations not available to array vendors.

 

The study covers almost 1.4 million drives from three different manufacturers, 18 different models, 12 different capacities, and four flash technologies, (SLC, cMLC (consumer-class), eMLC (enterprise-class), and 3D-TLC). Rich data, provided from NetApp's automated telemetry, includes drive replacements (including reasons for replacements), bad blocks, usage, drive age, firmware versions, drive role (e.g., data, parity or spare), and a number of other things. These drives are installed in NetApp enterprise storage systems running their ONTAP OS, typically with data center mounting, cooling, and power conditioning. The SSDs are performing in near-ideal environments, rather than the vagaries of, say, notebooks or business PCs, so reliability differences can be attributed the SSDs, not customer infrastructures.

 

The best news, which was the biggest worry when SSDs came out a decade ago, is that flash wear out is a non-issue. Even after 2-3 years, less than two percent of the rated life is consumed on average. Even the drives in the 99.9th percentile have consumed only 33 percent of their rated life.

Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/ssd-reliability-in-the-enterprise/

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/fast20-maneas.pdf
Thoughts: SSD reliability has really improved a lot over the years, but it's still a good idea to keep your drives backed up or run on a RAID.

[Fasauceome]

2 minutes ago, williamcll said:

SLCs are no more reliable compared to MLCs.

Noice.

 

[Curufinwe_wins]

https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead/

 

Reminds me of this. Even their TLC tested drive (of 2014 vintage) made it to almost 4000 drive writes (240 GB SSD with over 900 TB written)

[ARikozuM]

Well... 

 

I thought this was gonna be about a SSD spinner thing for us old enough to know what a hard drive was... 

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

Reasons why i have trust issues. i don't think i'll ever move to SSD storage anytime soon. 

[RejZoR]

15 minutes ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

Reasons why i have trust issues. i don't think i'll ever move to SSD storage anytime soon. 

Even if SSD's are no more reliable than HDD's, there is no denying they are WAY faster. Both in sequential and random access speeds. Besides, how many people bought SSD because it was suppose to be "more reliable"? Plus, they have other benefits like less heat (I remember how much cooler my ACER Aspire One was with Intel's 80GB SSD than with regular HDD that it came with). And there are also other reliability benefits like immunity to mechanical shocks which is super useful for laptops.

 

Just run Crystal Disk Info as resident app so it monitors SSD or HDD at all times and chance of having drive just dying on you out of the blue becomes tiny. I've been on SSDs for years, almost from its beginnings with those Intel 80GB drives that were one of first best performing SATA drives after all the JMicro failures. Then I had 128GB M4 drive in my other laptop, then 256GB SSD in next laptop and now I'm again on 3rd laptop with SSD. Desktop has been running Samsung 850 Pro 2TB for several years now. There is no way I'll ever be going back to HDD. I did buy a HDD recently, but for bulk storage only. It's a 5400 RPM Barracuda 8TB. Coz I wanted it to be super quiet and it is. And all it stores are big files like videos, backup ISOs and stuff like that. That they are still useful for. Everything else, SSD all the way.

[GoldenLag]

1 hour ago, williamcll said:

SLCs are no more reliable compared to MLCs

Its worth noting that SLC data is from drives deployed in 2010-2012. 

 

And only some of the 2-bit MLC dats is from 2009-2012.

 

So as far as i can tell we dont have newer SLC drive data unless i missed something. 

[RejZoR]

Also old SLC drives were simply done with brute force. They compensated lack of wear leveling by having super durable NAND. Today, even QLC drives can last significantly longer than first SLC's thanks to clever SSD controllers.

[williamcll]

4 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Its worth noting that SLC data is from drives deployed in 2010-2012. 

 

And only some of the 2-bit MLC dats is from 2009-2012.

 

So as far as i can tell we dont have newer SLC drive data unless i missed something. 

When was the last time you've seen a new consumer completely SLC SSD?

[GoldenLag]

26 minutes ago, williamcll said:

When was the last time you've seen a new consumer completely SLC SSD?

Never. 

 

Im just pointing out that the data only covers SLC flash that is 8 years old or more. And its not entirely comparable across all MLC datapoints as those are of newer hardware. 

[KaitouX]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Plus, they have other benefits like less heat (I remember how much cooler my ACER Aspire One was with Intel's 80GB SSD than with regular HDD that it came with).

For me the biggest benefit to SSDs is the silent operation, in my system the loudest component by far are my HDDs. Unfortunately SSDs are still way too expensive to be used as mass storage, my current 23TB of storage(was 27, but 1 4TB HDD failed.) would cost ~$2300 at the current $100/TB for the cheapest SSDs which is a lot more than the $420 for 24TB of the cheapest 8TB HDD, and that is ignoring the need for more Sata ports which would increase the cost if it required to get expansion cards.

[RejZoR]

Just now, KaitouX said:

For me the biggest benefit to SSDs is the silent operation, in my system the loudest component by far are my HDDs. Unfortunately SSDs are still way too expensive to be used as mass storage, my current 23TB of storage(was 27, but 1 4TB HDD failed.) would cost ~$2300 at the current $100/TB for the cheapest SSDs which is a lot more than the $420 for 24TB of the cheapest 8TB HDD, and that is ignoring the need for more Sata ports which would increase the cost if it required to get expansion cards.

Silence too. I can't tell you what kind of massive problems I had picking up HDD to be used for mass storage next to SSD after years of being exclusively on SSD. To my luck, this 8TB 5400 RPM Seagate Barracuda is so quiet I don't hear anything even when under heavy load. I'd go insane if I'd have to hear clicking and grinding ever again. Which was among important reasons why I've gone full SSD like 4 years ago on my desktop PC. Samsung 850 Pro 2TB was over 800€ back then, but I still consider it a great purchase which will serve me for many more years to come I hope.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Even if SSD's are no more reliable than HDD's, there is no denying they are WAY faster. Both in sequential and random access speeds. Besides, how many people bought SSD because it was suppose to be "more reliable"? Plus, they have other benefits like less heat (I remember how much cooler my ACER Aspire One was with Intel's 80GB SSD than with regular HDD that it came with). And there are also other reliability benefits like immunity to mechanical shocks which is super useful for laptops.

 

Just run Crystal Disk Info as resident app so it monitors SSD or HDD at all times and chance of having drive just dying on you out of the blue becomes tiny. I've been on SSDs for years, almost from its beginnings with those Intel 80GB drives that were one of first best performing SATA drives after all the JMicro failures. Then I had 128GB M4 drive in my other laptop, then 256GB SSD in next laptop and now I'm again on 3rd laptop with SSD. Desktop has been running Samsung 850 Pro 2TB for several years now. There is no way I'll ever be going back to HDD. I did buy a HDD recently, but for bulk storage only. It's a 5400 RPM Barracuda 8TB. Coz I wanted it to be super quiet and it is. And all it stores are big files like videos, backup ISOs and stuff like that. That they are still useful for. Everything else, SSD all the way.

i have a lot more trust in getting a HDD recovered than an Nand Flash storage honestly. it's just not worth risking speed for safe access. hence i'll never go SSD for archiving.  not until something changes drastically. in innovation of SSD tech 

[KaitouX]

29 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Silence too. I can't tell you what kind of massive problems I had picking up HDD to be used for mass storage next to SSD after years of being exclusively on SSD. To my luck, this 8TB 5400 RPM Seagate Barracuda is so quiet I don't hear anything even when under heavy load. I'd go insane if I'd have to hear clicking and grinding ever again. Which was among important reasons why I've gone full SSD like 4 years ago on my desktop PC. Samsung 850 Pro 2TB was over 800€ back then, but I still consider it a great purchase which will serve me for many more years to come I hope.

In my case it's not like the HDDs I have are extremely loud or something like that, for the most part they are quiet 5400 RPM drives, but the rest of the PC is so quiet that the HDD become too noticeable, and it doesn't help that I hate noise and am more sensible to it then a lot of people(the reason why I built a quiet PC in the first place).

Here's the drives that are currently on my PC: 4TB WD Green(had 2, 1 failed, this one is also dying but I still use it as a drive for temporary files), 8TB WD White Label(MyBook shucked), 8TB Seagate Barracuda(DM004, shucked from Expansion external enclosure) and 2 2.5" HDDs(Toshiba 1TB and Seagate 2TB). The loudest is the 8TB from Seagate, with the WD White in second place, than comes the WD Green, Toshiba and the quietest is the 2TB Seagate, but they're all louder than the loudest fan in my PC.

I personally would love to build a full SSD based build, but the cost is way too much to justify it for mass storage, and sacrificing the mass storage isn't something I want to do.

[SeriousDad69]

57 minutes ago, KaitouX said:

For me the biggest benefit to SSDs is the silent operation, in my system the loudest component by far are my HDDs. Unfortunately SSDs are still way too expensive to be used as mass storage, my current 23TB of storage(was 27, but 1 4TB HDD failed.) would cost ~$2300 at the current $100/TB for the cheapest SSDs which is a lot more than the $420 for 24TB of the cheapest 8TB HDD, and that is ignoring the need for more Sata ports which would increase the cost if it required to get expansion cards.

This is how people start building NASes and visting r/datahoarding lol, loud HDDs you want to put in a different room.

[SeriousDad69]

5 minutes ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

i have a lot more trust in getting a HDD recovered than an Nand Flash storage honestly. it's just not worth risking speed for safe access. hence i'll never go SSD for archiving.  not until something changes drastically. in innovation of SSD tech 

A good way to archive your really important stuff is 50-100GB bluerays. They're really small and there's some that claim to last 1,000 years, but I doubt anyone will ever be able to confirm that lol. I have a couple encrypted copies, have some in my car and some at my parent's house.

[KaitouX]

11 minutes ago, SeriousDad69 said:

This is how people start building NASes and visting r/datahoarding lol, loud HDDs you want to put in a different room.

I tried to put my PC on a different room, but had issues with cable routing(thick brick walls are used where I live, which makes going through walls kinda hard). But now I don't even have a separate room that I can put a PC/NAS on so unfortunately that isn't something I can do at the moment, hopefully I will be able to do it in the future, or hopefully SSD are going to become cheaper than HDDs and make the PC silent without having to move it.

 

[SeriousDad69]

1 minute ago, KaitouX said:

I tried to put my PC on a different room, but had issues with cable routing(thick brick walls are used where I live, which makes going through walls kinda hard). But now I don't even have a separate room that I can put a PC/NAS on so unfortunately that isn't something I can do at the moment.

 

In that case I'd get an external hard drive dock that can turn the drives off so they'd only be on when I needed them.

[Curufinwe_wins]

19 minutes ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

i have a lot more trust in getting a HDD recovered than an Nand Flash storage honestly. it's just not worth risking speed for safe access. hence i'll never go SSD for archiving.  not until something changes drastically. in innovation of SSD tech 

Well tbh, even HDDs are a way less reliable offline archival storage solution compared to tapes.

 

But as long as you keep SSDs powered, they are still dramatically more reliable for recovery because even with the same MTBF, they recover so much faster...

 

Ofc, if you don't keep them powered, don't use SSDs lol. Regardless, I archive to HDD for non-local backup, and probably will for the forseeable future.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

11 minutes ago, SeriousDad69 said:

A good way to archive your really important stuff is 50-100GB bluerays. They're really small and there's some that claim to last 1,000 years, but I doubt anyone will ever be able to confirm that lol. I have a couple encrypted copies, have some in my car and some at my parent's house.

yah i don't trust DVD media more than SSD's lol, i have a incredibly high amount of failure rates on DIsc media. ever tried to copy a file from a disc after few years and it just wouldn't copy and keeps on spinning? 

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

Just now, Curufinwe_wins said:

Well tbh, even HDDs are a way less reliable offline archival storage solution compared to tapes.

 

But as long as you keep SSDs powered, they are still dramatically more reliable for recovery because even with the same MTBF, they recover so much faster...

 

Ofc, if you don't keep them powered, don't use SSDs lol. Regardless, I archive to HDD for non-local backup, and probably will for the forseeable future.

i don't care HDD's are less reliable i care that they are cheap storage solution with high rate of recovery compared to other storage medium, given how many years people have been trying to recover HDD's compared to SSD's or DIsc media, there's no 2 ways about it. best way is to make a copy on an SSD and an HDD i guess, but again, getting large volume SSD's are not worth the hassle 

[KaitouX]

1 minute ago, SeriousDad69 said:

In that case I'd get an external hard drive dock that can turn the drives off so they'd only be on when I needed them.

That might be something to look at, but I think that unless it was controlled by software it would be kinda annoying to turn it on when I need as I keep my PC in the other side of the room.

It would be nice if Windows had a way to turn on/off internal drives manually, and not only on that "Turn off if inactive after X minutes" that makes the Explorer take ages to open every time because it turns on all the HDDs, even if I'm accessing some specific one or only looking at shortcuts to those HDDs(but not accessing them).

[Unixsystem]

I just skimmed through the PDF in the OP, and unless I'm misunderstanding something it seems that a large percentage of the errors are ones where the drive still works but reports and error and recommends replacement. Still not a great thing, but if it means that you still have a chance to get the data off even if you aren't running in RAID. I haven't had many HDD failures in my life (knock on wood) but my understanding is that generally most HDD failures are on the catastrophic side. SMART may catch some errors if you're lucky, but if the drive dies then you're pretty much SOL unless you're willing to pony up for a data recovery service. 

 

Someone correct me if I'm reading the data wrong, it just seems to me that even ignoring all the other benefits of SSDs, they are still going to be a lot easier to manage even if they do begin to fail. And as always it's kind of a moot point since everyone should at least have a backup and ideally also redundancy in their setup. 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

3 hours ago, Rohith_Kumar_Sp said:

i have a lot more trust in getting a HDD recovered than an Nand Flash storage honestly. it's just not worth risking speed for safe access. hence i'll never go SSD for archiving.  not until something changes drastically. in innovation of SSD tech 

Depending on being able to recover data from any kind of failed drive is like playing Russian Roulette with all but one of the chambers loaded. Having a solid backup scheme is far more reliable and far les expensive than data recovery, which is a crap shoot at best.

 

Depending on operating conditions, SSDs can be more reliable than HDDs.

[Pickles von Brine]

26 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Depending on being able to recover data from any kind of failed drive is like playing Russian Roulette with all but one of the chambers loaded. Having a solid backup scheme is far more reliable and far les expensive than data recovery, which is a crap shoot at best.

 

Depending on operating conditions, SSDs can be more reliable than HDDs.

I can attest to this. The number of drives I got in that were not recoverable or were difficult was annoying. SSDs I had a very low success rate of recovering. Generally 1 out of every 10 recoverable SSD could be done to any usable degree. Keep in mind, these are failed SSDs. Not mounting right, locking up etc. Generally they were nand failure, firmware failure or controller failure. File system does not count. 

Oh and if the drive is running a sandforce controller and it fails, recovery is not possible. Period. The controller encypts the data onto the nand and the keys are stored in the controller itself. Dead controller = no data.