#345789 - 17/06/2011 03:22
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: mlord]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 12/02/2002
Posts: 2298
Loc: Berkeley, California
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Buying SSDs came up at Velocity today, and got it's own 5 minute presentation during the plenary presentations that's well worth watching. (PG-13, Language) Buy an SSD if you value your own time. You don't understand what you're missing, and you should be be backing up anyways. It's not about reliability, it's about huge speed improvements. I also love that my laptop isn't a vibrating gyroscope anymore, even though it had never bothered me before.
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#345791 - 17/06/2011 12:08
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: matthew_k]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 09/08/2000
Posts: 2091
Loc: Edinburgh, Scotland
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MkIIa, blue lit buttons, memory upgrade, 1Tb in Subaru Forester STi
MkII, 240Gb in Mark Lord dock
MkII, 80Gb SSD in dock
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#345793 - 17/06/2011 14:25
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: frog51]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/07/1999
Posts: 5546
Loc: Ajijic, Mexico
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Very interesting indeed. The really good info is in the comments afterward. I've used SSDs. I know what they're like, and for laptops I would use nothing else on account of the greater physical robustness.
But I can't agree with the "Crazy/Hot" scale. The fact of the matter is, outside a few corner cases, SSDs for desktop storage don't provide any particularly useful performance advantage. OK, your system boots faster. This will add up to entire minutes saved up over an entire year!
I will lose more time to having to replace faulty disks, restore from backup, and redo work lost since the prior backup, than an SSD will ever save. The SSD will save a few second a day. The failure will cause downtime of several days. That's simply not a good trade-off.
I mean, sure, if I were compiling Linux kernels or Chrome all day, every day, then yes, I would probably get a net time win from using the SSD. But I'm not; nor are most people. Continuous high levels of random I/O just aren't a common workload.Yes, it would be nice to have my computer boot up more quickly, but I just power it up before I take my shower in the morning, and it's ready for me when I need it with no loss of my time. Better performance? An SSD isn't going to speed up my internet connection, and just how much faster do I need my spreadsheets to re-calcs? (To my eye they appear to be instantaneous already.) I guess I'm a Luddite at heart, but to me living with an SSD brings to mind the legend of the Sword of Damocles. I'll pass, for now at least. tanstaafl.
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"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"
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#345798 - 17/06/2011 15:43
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: tanstaafl.]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
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There's more to using an SSD than just making your boot process faster. Someone who claims the opposite has clearly not been using one (for long).
Overall, it makes the whole computing experience 'snappier'. Programs load faster. The computer responds quicker. Remember the time when you could get significant speed improvements with your PC simply by adding more RAM? It's comparable to that, but more so.
Do I absolutely NEED an SSD? Of course not. Do I prefer using an SSD? You betcha!
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#345801 - 17/06/2011 16:14
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: BartDG]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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There's more to using an SSD than just making your boot process faster. Someone who claims the opposite has clearly not been using one (for long). Very much agreed. My main use of SSD drives is for non boot purposes on the desktop side. At my previous employer, the SSD was dedicated to any heavy I/O workload, usually associated with building or running a game. The only system I have that boots from an SSD is my work provided laptop. And I have to say if a restore procedure from a disaster is going to lead to downtime measured in days, the backup process is flawed. If my SSD at my previous job tanked, I'd be back up and running in an hour, tops. If my main system boot drive in my desktop at home failed (currently not an SSD), it might take a few hours, depending on the speed of my restore off my NAS. Backup is more then just making a copy of your data, it's also about ensuring you have the ability to get back to work quickly when disaster does strike.
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#345804 - 17/06/2011 16:40
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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An SSD essentially saves you all the time you'd otherwise spend looking at your PC while it doesn't seem to be doing a lot with the disk light on. If your workload doesn't often put the disk light on for seconds or minutes at a time, you might not see the advantage from moving to an SSD. If, conversely, you do software development, particularly Windows software development in Visual Studio, it'll save you a ton of time every day.
Peter
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#345807 - 17/06/2011 17:42
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: peter]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
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Heck, if you're still running MS-Windows in this day and age (for whatever "reason"), then just the endless virus-scans that cripple the machine will become non-factors with an SSD in there.
Cheers
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#345810 - 17/06/2011 18:34
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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Very funny
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#345813 - 17/06/2011 21:12
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: peter]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/07/1999
Posts: 5546
Loc: Ajijic, Mexico
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If your workload doesn't often put the disk light on for seconds or minutes at a time, you might not see the advantage from moving to an SSD. Exactly. None of my data is on my system drive, so an SSD won't have a significant impact on throughput. Programs will load faster, but even with my technologically ancient IDE hard drive Excel loads in 1.4 seconds, MS Word takes 1.8. I see no likelihood of increased internet speed just because my storage device has no moving parts. And yes, I could restore functionality to my computer after a catastrophic system drive failure (is there any other kind with a SSD) in about an hour... provided that I had another SSD sitting on the shelf waiting to be installed! Otherwise I wait for NewEgg to ship my new SSD to my mail forwarder where it will languish for anything from 10 days to a month clearing customs before I actually have it. SSDs might be great for some (most?) people, but for me, not so much. tanstaafl.
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"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"
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#345825 - 18/06/2011 07:00
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: tanstaafl.]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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None of my data is on my system drive, so an SSD won't have a significant impact on throughput. Programs will load faster, but even with my technologically ancient IDE hard drive Excel loads in 1.4 seconds, MS Word takes 1.8. I see no likelihood of increased internet speed just because my storage device has no moving parts.
This is just one of those cases where you have to see the difference to believe it. SSDs really do make a noticeable difference to even day-to-day usage. I think it is far too early to determine that SSDs are unreliable in average normal person usage. The StackOverflow guys who got so many failures in a year are: a) a relatively small sample size b) atypical users who are likely pounding their discs all day, every day c) had no control group of users doing the same work on spinning platters d) the commentors with lots of SSD were a self selecting sample who were likely looking for other people with lots of SSD failures As my Intel SSD has just passed its first birthday, I've got my fingers crossed 
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#345826 - 18/06/2011 09:59
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
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..and the past two years were "early days" for SSDs in the mainstream, with a number of bugs exposed and fixed. Todays drives and firmwares appear to be rather rock solid. Much more so than the mechanical drives out there.
But yes, one big difference, is that when an SSD fails, generally the entire unit fails. With mechanical drives, one sometimes gets advance notice in the form of bad sectors, as the dust particles bounce around inside randomly scratching sectors until the whole thing konks out.
But total/sudden electronic failure is also common for mechanical media, as are firmware bugs (eg. Seagate last year).
Cheers
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#345829 - 18/06/2011 11:32
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 3608
Loc: Minnetonka, MN
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Don't forget cool and quiet mine is silent which is to be expected and runs at room temperature.
_________________________
Matt
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#345830 - 18/06/2011 13:06
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
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This is just one of those cases where you have to see the difference to believe it. SSDs really do make a noticeable difference to even day-to-day usage.
Amen! I feel exactly the same way. While it might seem to be a rather pedantic point of view (I'm not saying you're pedantic Andy!), it simply *is* true. It's got to be experienced to be believed. My Intel Postville is now also six months old, still going strong. My SSD upgrade was one of the best (most noticeable in daily use) upgrades I've made to my PC in the last couple of years. I've never regretted its purchase for a second.
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Riocar 80gig (010102106) - backup
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#345835 - 19/06/2011 05:47
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
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SSDs really do make a noticeable difference to even day-to-day usage. Amen. I've got an SSD in my Asus netbook and, despite being woefully underpowered compared to my desktop PC, it just feels much snappier for day-to-day stuff. And my desktop PC's got two pairs of disks, each pair configured as RAID0, so it should be (and is) really quite quick. It's just missing that "snap". It's just that the price of 120GB SSDs is a little more than I'm prepared to pay right now, and a 60GB SSD would be a little small (although it's perfect for the netbook).
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-- roger
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#345838 - 19/06/2011 15:20
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/07/1999
Posts: 5546
Loc: Ajijic, Mexico
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SSDs really do make a noticeable difference to even day-to-day usage. Yes, no doubt. But let's not confuse "noticeable difference" with "quantifiable benefit." It would be nice to have "snappier performance", and to have my programs load as much as a second and a half faster. But will that cause a significant improvement in efficiency when I work with my computer? Much of what I do involves internet downloading, and my bottleneck there is certainly my ISP, not my disk IO. I do a lot of work with Excel, and it seems like most of my time there is spent counting parentheses and wondering why this or that damned formula doesn't work.  I have 4 GB of RAM, I doubt that Excel is doing much disk IO, particularly since my data is not on the system drive. It's analogous to explaining how much "better" my Porsche (930 Turbo Carrera) was than my Taurus station wagon. Sure, it was two and a half seconds faster from zero to 60 MPH, and it had nearly 20 MPH faster top speed (~160 MPH). It certainly had "snappier performance". But it didn't get me where I was going any faster than the Taurus because of other limiting factors like speed limits [55 mph ~= 7 mbps] and traffic. It all comes down to this: Will I get more work done in less time with an SSD system drive? I think not. Will my computer be "snappier" and more satisfying to use with an SSD? Almost certainly it will. Is that intangible difference worth the expense and increased potential of catastrophic failure? Well, YMMV. tanstaafl.
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"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"
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#345839 - 19/06/2011 16:25
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: tanstaafl.]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/06/2001
Posts: 2504
Loc: Roma, Italy
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It would be nice to have "snappier performance", and to have my programs load as much as a second and a half faster. But will that cause a significant improvement in efficiency when I work with my computer? I see your point. But I nonetheless recommend an SSDs hands down, because that "nicer", is a lot nicer. In fact, there's a psychological factor, which I found to be very relevant in my "user experience". I have to reboot it due to an upgrade or a change of CFG, no big deal. Starting a complex excel file as if it was notepad is to me more than just "1 second less": I can open an XLSX file, read it, close it by mistake, re-open it, close it, forget what I read because I was also at the phone, then re-open it, close it, etc. I don't even realize I do so any more; but every time I use my laptop with standard HDD it feels like working in slow motion. Photoshop starts in less than 1 second, too. Copying files from A to B feels just as "natural". See, when simple operations are so much snappier, they steal your attention less, and your mind is just less busy waiting, whether you consciously realize you're doing so or not. What I mean is, there's more than just less time at the stopwatch. There's a whole user experience which improves dramatically, and that has a much greater value than few seconds can tell you. So, I too suggest: try it
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#345845 - 20/06/2011 02:28
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: msaeger]
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enthusiast
Registered: 06/08/2002
Posts: 333
Loc: The Pilbara, Western Australia
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Don't forget cool and quiet mine is silent which is to be expected and runs at room temperature. But doesn't it drive you nuts?
I'm with you if I didn't have cable I would go nuts from the silence. I am mostly just surfing the net but have the TV on in the background.
_________________________
Peter.
"I spent 90% of my money on women, drink and fast cars. The rest I wasted." - George Best
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#345849 - 20/06/2011 09:52
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: pedrohoon]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 3608
Loc: Minnetonka, MN
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Yeah good onone HDD spinning isn't what I want to hear I want TV
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Matt
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#345851 - 20/06/2011 10:48
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: drakino]
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veteran
Registered: 25/04/2000
Posts: 1525
Loc: Arizona
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If you buy a well known good SSD, it will last you a long time too. The difference is that all the really shoddy hard drive manufacturers faded away ages ago. The SSD field on the other hand has all kinds of bad manufacturers cranking out crap, leading to the horror stories. SSDs are also just manufactured chips, much like most of the other components in your system. Sometimes bad batches occur, leading to bad batches of SSDs. My SSD was from a well known, good manufacturer and failed so completely that it isn't even recognized by any machine it is plugged into any more. Could just be a fluke, but as much as I loved the speed of it, I've decided to wait a while before getting a new one (until 'decent' sizes are more affordable anyway, trying to play with only 120G on a system disk was getting tiresome).
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#345895 - 21/06/2011 11:09
Re: SSDs faliures?
[Re: Tim]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
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Yeah, I have (had) a bunch of hard drives (mechanical) with a similar issue: working fine one minute, completely and utterly dead the next. Turfed.
At least the SSDs have decent warranties and don't cost a fortune for RMA shipping.
The "sudden death" firmware bugs seem to have been fixed over the past couple of years, and that kind of failure should be pretty darned rare now (mid 2011).
Cheers
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#357375 - 03/02/2013 14:47
Re: SSDs
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 17/12/2000
Posts: 2665
Loc: Manteca, California
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Ugh, my macbookpro 2009 13" does not like the vertex 3.
Won't even boot with one inside, even after its been formatted and had OSX installed while attached via a USB dongle.
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Glenn
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#357395 - 04/02/2013 13:51
Re: SSDs
[Re: gbeer]
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old hand
Registered: 29/05/2002
Posts: 798
Loc: near Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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Can you install the OS while the SSD drive is installed inside the Mac?
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#357397 - 04/02/2013 14:15
Re: SSDs
[Re: gbeer]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Which storage bay is the SSD installed into, the former hard drive bay, or former optical drive bay?
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#357404 - 05/02/2013 01:29
Re: SSDs
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 17/12/2000
Posts: 2665
Loc: Manteca, California
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With the ssd in the std drive location. ( under right palm rest )
The system posts. With the correct chime.
But no bootable volume, so no boot.
I can hold down the C on boot and the cd (external) spins but before a display appears, the screen goes dark. Eventually the spinning stops and pressing return starts it again. Rinse an repeat.
_________________________
Glenn
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#357408 - 05/02/2013 02:12
Re: SSDs
[Re: gbeer]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 17/12/2000
Posts: 2665
Loc: Manteca, California
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P.S. as a debug test, it booted fine from the original hard drive.
_________________________
Glenn
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#357484 - 08/02/2013 14:24
Re: SSDs
[Re: gbeer]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 17/12/2000
Posts: 2665
Loc: Manteca, California
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FYI. The original ssd in this laptop was a 128GB OCD agility 2.
I briefly saw one SMART report saying it had over 2000 GB written to it.
And some ungodly number of errors.
I now have a 256GB Crucial M4. The version that includes a sweet USB data cable. The only difficulty I had was not remembering to partition it GUID first. I made the wrong assumption that the restore function would carry that out.
The vertex 3 will be tried in a windows machine before sending it back.
_________________________
Glenn
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#357485 - 08/02/2013 14:30
Re: SSDs
[Re: gbeer]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
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The "errors" number is "normal" for anything using NAND flash chips (all SSDs, and lots of other devices too). Some drives report it, others hide it. Mechanical drives, too.
NAND chips come with a huge number of faults right from the factory, and continue to accumulate them in normal "non failing" use.
Cheers
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#357486 - 08/02/2013 14:34
Re: SSDs
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
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Eg. ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 119 119 050 Pre-fail Always - 220831014
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 003 Pre-fail Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1408 (78 92 0)
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 5
171 Unknown_Attribute 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 0
172 Unknown_Attribute 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 0
174 Unknown_Attribute 0x0030 000 000 000 Old_age Offline - 5
177 Wear_Leveling_Count 0x0000 000 000 000 Old_age Offline - 0
181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 0
182 Erase_Fail_Count_Total 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0000 034 042 000 Old_age Offline - 34 (Min/Max 17/42)
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 034 042 000 Old_age Always - 34 (Min/Max 17/42)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x001c 120 120 000 Old_age Offline - 220831014
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0033 100 100 003 Pre-fail Always - 0
201 Soft_Read_Error_Rate 0x001c 120 120 000 Old_age Offline - 220831014
204 Soft_ECC_Correction 0x001c 120 120 000 Old_age Offline - 220831014
230 Head_Amplitude 0x0013 100 100 000 Pre-fail Always - 100
231 Temperature_Celsius 0x0013 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0000 000 000 000 Old_age Offline - 1089
234 Unknown_Attribute 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 1185
241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 1185
242 Total_LBAs_Read 0x0032 000 000 000 Old_age Always - 1454
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#357487 - 08/02/2013 14:39
Re: SSDs
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
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Somewhere here I have a Seagate mechanical drive which presents similarly (non-)alarming information.
The fields that actually matter are things like Reallocated_Event_Count, Reallocated_Sector_Ct, Current_Pending_Sector, Offline_Uncorrectable, and (to a lesser extent) UDMA_CRC_Error_Count.
If that last one is non-zero, check/replace the cabling. For the others, RMA the drive.
Edited by mlord (08/02/2013 14:41)
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#357488 - 08/02/2013 14:46
Re: SSDs
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
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This attribute (#231) is actually the "Media life remaining" indicator for that drive, mislabelled in the version of smartctl I'm using. The "Value" of 100 means "100%", or near enough not to matter in this case.
231 Temperature_Celsius 0x0013 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
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