Is Solid State Drive reliable enough for heavy use?

Hi,

I am new to this mass storage arena. A couple months ago my friend got a Mac Book Pro with a 256GB SSD loaded. He got almost instant start up and application load. That kind of performance boast lures me to consider adding a SSD to my next new laptop - that's an impression without any research.

However, I just ran into the IT head in our institute. He mentioned SSD has reliability issues and would degrade over time. It has higher failure rate than the conventional drives. After some read-up, I see mixed opinions on the web. The industry of course defends the technology and place high hope on the pace that it's improved.

A SSD is a pretty significant investment. May I have any advice if I should forge for a SSD for the performance boast, or get a conventional drive and wait until the technology matures and swap disk? How significant is the increase in performance with a SSD, compared to a conventional drive, provided they have identical config otherwise?

Thank you very much!!

 

After my upgrade to my Intel X-25M G2 80GB SSD, my computer is much, much snappier, especially at loading applications and booting. Definitely worth it to me.

Of course, SSDs are still extremely expensive now, so the longer you wait the cheaper, larger, and more reliable they'll get.

 

1) I would rely more on a SSD than a HDD, any day.
2) An SSD is single best upgrade to any laptop with a HDD. The benefits are multiple, and flow on to other components that interact with the storage area (i.e. just about everything). The benefits include within areas of speed, sound, heat, power, vibration, ability to survive an accident/drop/impact.
3) I went back for a hour the other day to my 7200rpm HDD from my 6-month-old SSD. It was like having a different computer. Comparatively noisy, slow. Simple benchmarks showed that the SSD was at least 5 times quicker to read and write 512K, 40 times faster to read 4K, and 8 times faster to write 4K (Intel SSD's are about 40 times faster in 4K writes).
4) The real-world difference is akin to having a ram-drive rather than a hard drive - the general computing experience between using a SSD and a HDD is barely comparable.
5) I work in total silence, even with a 512MB dedicated gpu. General actions (e.g opening programs and files, and multi-tasking) are almost instantaneous.
6) before purchase the only constraints are cost and fewer storage size options. If cost and size is OK, there should be no choice left but which of the many brilliant SSD's to choose?

 

I'd also be interested in knowing whether people already have observed effects of SSD wear.

What kind of MTBF state those things? Are there already people who managed to destroy them by heavy usage?

 

How does a ssd behave in a, say, 3-4 year time frame? How slow does it get over time? I've read also that it'd be troublesome if I start to fill up the disk max space

Is it better to just pick the ssd when configuring a thinkpad or just buy with a he'd and upgrade it with a ssd bought somewhere else? I'd certainly like Aa hassle free option where I don't have to install everythng back again on a new drive. Plus, I wonder if the while Lenovo Win7 enhanced experience will be lost with a custom windows install and/or a 3rd party drive.

 

The MTBF of both Intel and OCZ SSD's is between 1.2-2 million hours, and they come with 3 years warranty. For highest security go for SLC over MLC SSD's. Most people will be happy enough with MLC. But just as for HDD's, any hardware can fail at any time. If you have always complete images and backups of your data at all times, you will be as safe as with any HDD. If you don't you will be as un-safe as for any HDD.

With the latest firmware, the latest Intel or OCZ SSD's all come with TRIM, and shouldn't slow down with use, with Windows 7. Even if it did slow, it still would be many times faster than any HDD. I did not have TRIM on my SSD for 6 months. It only slowed a little (in writes only), and it was barely noticeable. Compared to a 7200rpm HDD it was always comparing apples with oranges. i.e. no comparison. TRIM has improved write-speeds, and is nice to know it's there to keep the SSD in top shape. I can't say I notice or will notice any difference.

It is not good policy with any storage media to fill it right to the brim, or even close.

If you don't want any hassle, buy a SSD from Lenovo at purchase time, with everything installed and ready for use. Second less hassle is buying one afterwards, and imaging everything back to the new SSD. In either case Lenovo will give your SSD and any issues relating to it its support. They do not support third-party SSD's or any problems relating to them in any way (even if they are models sold by Lenovo).

In any scenario you always need at least one exterior storage area (a "big" 2.5" HDD is fine) for storing periodical images and backups of whatever storage you have within the laptop. After all, you are, at all times, as with any storage media, a second from losing all your software and all your data.

 

"I don't have to install everythng back again on a new drive. "

Then in that case, begin by doing a backup and backup critical files periodically. I alway have and did my latest - last nite.

I have an SSD on my desktop and I'm convinced that they are reliable enough to replace hard drives. My next notebook will SSD based.

Renee

 

SSDs have traditionally been more reliable than platters due to their lack of moving parts.

People have no idea SSDs have been around since the dark ages. They are nothing more than a bunch of flash memory chips linked together.