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SSD Problems
- Thread starter BradHatter
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Yes to this. In theory, I think that HDDs are not supposed to be left unpowered for an extended period of years, but I recently destroyed some very old HDDs and checked them casually before I did. They powered up fine and a quick read/write check worked fine. A couple had come out of computers that had been taken out of service in the late 1990s. I wouldn't try that with an SSD.
SSDs have no history yet. They've only been available in mass quantities for a few years and for most that wouldn't even be enough time for a regular hard drive to die an age related death.
Why would someone spend about $1000 for an SSD big enough to serve as a Time Machine backup, which doesn't need to be high speed, when they can get a hard drive for about $80? Most backup drives sleep so often that they don't suffer the wear that regular use drives do.
Whether an SSD could hang onto data for years like an HDD does is probably up for grabs. We'll likely find out in a few years.
Why would someone spend about $1000 for an SSD big enough to serve as a Time Machine backup, which doesn't need to be high speed, when they can get a hard drive for about $80? Most backup drives sleep so often that they don't suffer the wear that regular use drives do.
Whether an SSD could hang onto data for years like an HDD does is probably up for grabs. We'll likely find out in a few years.
S.M.A.R.T. needs to be monitored. I'm talking about getting an indication of problems without monitoring tools. In other words, someone is sitting there working on the unit and starts noticing slow downs or whatever and noises start coinciding with them.
It's also normal for SSDs to move bad blocks out a lot more frequently than how it happens on a hard drive. I can just see people tossing perfectly good SSDs because they're functioning normally.
This is what I've always hated about SMART testing. People see some type of more or less normal change but they don't understand it so they go screaming around thinking their disk is about to explode. I have to wonder how many people have replaced decent drives, regardless of whether they're SSD or HDD, just because an insignificant and relatively normal defect showed up.
I have an old hard drive in an old PowerBook that has 10,000+ hours of use on it and SMART has been telling me for 5 years now that the drive is going to explode any minute now, and yet it hasn't. Needless to say, the Titanium doesn't see much use any more because it's so slow, but the "about to fail any minute now" drive is still working. SMART sucks. That's my opinion. It just isn't very good.
I have an old hard drive in an old PowerBook that has 10,000+ hours of use on it and SMART has been telling me for 5 years now that the drive is going to explode any minute now, and yet it hasn't. Needless to say, the Titanium doesn't see much use any more because it's so slow, but the "about to fail any minute now" drive is still working. SMART sucks. That's my opinion. It just isn't very good.
I hate to be the guy that goes against the trend, but SSDs don't impress me that much. My work absolutely requires at least 500GB per drive, and 1TB or greater is even better. SSDs boot fast, and if you're doing really intensive drive related stuff, like converting a big movie from one format to another, which most people don't do, the speed differences are not consequential. Most systems nowadays have enough memory to pre-load and cache applications hence their initial startup with a hard drive is a bit slower, but once loaded, a re-load is almost instantaneous.
Most of the hard drives I've retired have been retired not because they failed but because I ran out of disk space. I can buy a 500GB high quality and high speed, at least as far as old HDDs go, for tens of dollars, but an SSD of that size will cost hundreds of dollars, and as far as I'm concerned, their longevity and reliability is kind of sketchy.
When I can get a 500GB SSD for 50 bucks, yeah, I'll seriously consider it, but for my storage needs the risk and cost isn't warranted.
All of the HDDs I've had that have failed have usually done so after about 4 or more years of continuous work. The same can't be said of SSDs...they haven't been around that long!
Most of the hard drives I've retired have been retired not because they failed but because I ran out of disk space. I can buy a 500GB high quality and high speed, at least as far as old HDDs go, for tens of dollars, but an SSD of that size will cost hundreds of dollars, and as far as I'm concerned, their longevity and reliability is kind of sketchy.
When I can get a 500GB SSD for 50 bucks, yeah, I'll seriously consider it, but for my storage needs the risk and cost isn't warranted.
All of the HDDs I've had that have failed have usually done so after about 4 or more years of continuous work. The same can't be said of SSDs...they haven't been around that long!
I also am not overly enamored with SSDs. They are fast, yes, but most of the time I don't care. Durability-wise, I have had success with HDDs from quality manufacturers. The HDD in my main laptop is 11 years old and works fine. My router runs great on a 9 year old HDD. The main advantages for me to an SSD are battery life and shock resistance which is why I do still use them, but you still need to be careful which SSD you get because some will use a surprising amount of power.
Soooo why not just use an SSD as a boot drive and use a convention hard drive for data storage?
I almost thought the same way... Until I got an SSD.
Actually, one of my systems is configured like that. It has a 64GB Sandisk coupled with an Hitachi 500GB AF type drive. The boot speed improvements with the SSD are noticeable but for typical daily use, you can't tell the difference that much between the two after booted. The new AF formatted Hitachi's have a very high areal density so the throughput compared to a normal, older style drives, like the 5400RPM drive's Apple is putting in their systems, is considerably faster. When I first put the Hitachi in the system I tested it with Scannerz to make sure it was OK and it was going so fast that I thought I was mistakenly testing the SSD. I then tested it with BlackMagic and it was no mistake, the Hitachi was just that much faster. The newer drives from Hitachi and Western Digital that use AF format, higher areal densities, and large buffers (32M minimum) will produce similar performance improvements over old-style hard drives, but instead of costing hundreds of dollars for hundreds of gigabytes, they cost tens of dollars.
I'm not trying to say the newer hard drives are as fast as SSDs, I'm just saying they've improved them enough that unless you do work that's heavily drive intensive like video editing or conversion, it may be worth the cost savings to consider a newer type hard drive instead of an SSD. If my Hitachi fails, I'm out 50 bucks. If I had a similarly sized SSD, I'd be out hundreds of dollars.
By the way, I don't work for Hitachi or Western Digital.
The current lineup of Macs still has a lot of HDDs in them for big storage. I noticed that the new iMacs when configured with a hard drive are now 7200RPM instead of the older 5400 RPM types. I assume these are the new higher speed drives like you just described. Apple took their time getting around to that change.
I also noticed they're continuing to rely/push Fusion drives.
I also noticed they're continuing to rely/push Fusion drives.
You forgot to mention the downsides: now only 24GB instead of 128GB SSD as part of the Fusion Drive...
Looking at a tear down for one of the iMac's on iFixit, apparently if it isn't ordered with a Fusion drive, if you think you're going to add one in, you're out of luck…the connector for it isn't there. Can't say that's true for all of them but I think it's true for one of the newer 21.5" models.
Some of the iMacs have 5400RPM drives, others have 7200RPM drives (higher end units). The drives are not AF formatted they're the old, slower types with the lower areal densities.
Considering the price difference between the newer drives and the older is only a few dollars, you have to wonder why they're nickel and diming their production costs.
…Oh wait…I forgot…Automotive assembly lines cost a lot of money.
Some of the iMacs have 5400RPM drives, others have 7200RPM drives (higher end units). The drives are not AF formatted they're the old, slower types with the lower areal densities.
Considering the price difference between the newer drives and the older is only a few dollars, you have to wonder why they're nickel and diming their production costs.
…Oh wait…I forgot…Automotive assembly lines cost a lot of money.
I don't understand this either. What's the price difference between a Caviar Blue and a Caviar Black? The most expensive iMac is using a Caviar Blue. The smaller iMacs with 2.5" drives use 5400RPM Seagates (as Samsung). WD appears to be taking some of the faster HGST drives and sticking their label and name on them, now that they own HGST. Never the less the price for the faster drives is negligible.
I think Wall Street is now dictating to Apple…the race to the bottom will follow shortly.
I think it fired its QA department. Some of the oddities on El Capitan are unbelievable, and now it's as if no one is even paying any attention to hardware design as well.
Sorry for replying so late. I forgot about this thread.
Many of the SSDs, when they go bad, just go without any warning. S.M.A.R.T. could detect block loss and eventually the inability of the SSD to swap out bad blocks any longer, but most of the reports I'm reading show a complete lack of any signs of failure before hand. One cause is know: Being exposed to a sudden power outage, but the others seem to be undefined, as in "it just happened."
It's still a new technology, IMHO, and it still doesn't have all the kinks worked out.