SSD Reliability

**Modulok** · Posted: Mon, 04 Jun 2012 14:04:30 Post Subject: SSD Reliability

Over the last few years I have used a fair amount of SSDs at home and work. I have had to send back at least 5 drives for RMA due to the drive completely dying. I have used different brands, Kingston, Crucial, Corsair, OCZ, Muskin, etc.

It happened again last night. I was shutting down my laptop (Linux Mint) and it hung with some strange hard disk errors. Held the power button, and now the laptop doesn't see the drive. I tried it in another laptop, and even a simple USB device to see if its recognized on Windows, nothing.

Anyone else have any similar stories like this? I can't believe so many SSDs are just crapping out like this.

Hellfire · Rated XXX Joined: 05 Aug 2003 Posts: 3473

wow that's strange, got many SSD's in use and never had one fail yet. Maybe I've just been unlucky...

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Mon, 04 Jun 2012 14:51:54 Post Subject:

None have died on me - But I have read the stories of certain SSD chipsets being prone to dying.

Do they die when fairly new - or are these older drives?

**Modulok** · Posted: Mon, 04 Jun 2012 15:45:45 Post Subject:

I would estimate they die between 6-18 months.

Hellfire · Rated XXX Joined: 05 Aug 2003 Posts: 3473

Bummer, I know a buddy had an issue with an OCZ Agility 3 drive, but that was a known issue, a firmware update fixed it. I've been using that Kingston 128gb SSD, OCZ SSD and an Intel SSD pretty heavily for several years now.

skarydrunkguy · Posted: Mon, 04 Jun 2012 23:06:24 Post Subject:

I've only ever had a single 1st gen intel ssd and its still going strong (though they claim in their marketing that they have a 5% fail rate while other companies have up to a 40% fail rate). I also don't use mine for internet .tmp files, as that drastically increases read/write frequency which hastens the death of the nand flash (from what I hear).

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Tue, 05 Jun 2012 07:44:40 Post Subject:

Yeah - firmware updates can be key on extending the life of certain SSDs.

Plus - there are all the tips like these that will help, too:

http://blog.ocztechnology.com/?p=178

I think I have always done most of those.

**Modulok** · Posted: Tue, 05 Jun 2012 09:16:01 Post Subject:

In all honesty, how many 'normal' users are going to update firmware on anything?

MTBF = 2 million hours of use
Drive was purchased Nov 2010. So it's roughly 18 months since purchase. But probably not used consistently since then (as I move drives around between different machines).

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Fri, 08 Jun 2012 16:00:28 Post Subject:

Not sure how useful this could really be, but check out this app:

http://ssd-life.com/

What does that say about the expected death date of your drives? Laughing

**Modulok** · Posted: Fri, 08 Jun 2012 16:39:48 Post Subject:

I wouldn't know. The PC doesn't even acknowledge the drive is connected!