BG, don't be too scared. That's the reason you image/FileCopy/sync/replicate your important DATA... to insure against device failure. If it's important, BACK IT UP! I cannot comment on percentage of SSD hardware failures as they relate to the percentage of HDD hardware failures but THIS MISSIVE (see Myth #3) should make you feel a bit better. Personal experience says if it's important... (see the BOLD in the 1st line).
It'd be a smart move to do @bgoodman4 The moral I can get from that article is that HDD are still the best technology to save data. In case of a hdd crash it's much more easy to recover it. As for the ssds, I'd use them mostly for OS and programs/applications. If I still wanted to use ssds for storing data then I would have two or three units saving simultaneously. @TheRollbackFrog Yes there are myths around ssds. But that article I shared is from a trusted source, a small company that actually deals with many manufacturers and models and it's main business is that: data recovery.
@Mister X - I am confused about your thread title in reference to Data Recovery. And... That sure is not the moral I get - not a all. No where in that article does it say or even suggest SSDs fail at a greater rate than hard drives. The fact is, SSDs (with no moving parts) fail less. Look at the Samsung Pro series. Show us a hard drive maker who has so much confidence in their hard drives, they warranty them for 10 years! The fact data recovery is hard is a good thing - not bad. This means a bad guy will have a very difficult, if not impossible time recovering data you delete. That's a very good thing - especially if you sell or donate your computer, or toss the drive. Remember, for data to be permanently deleted, you have to delete the file, then empty the Recycle Bin. And regardless if you use SSD or HD, you must always have good backups. What if your house is destroyed by fire or flood? Or a bad guy breaks into your home and steals your computer? Or malware wipes it out? Does it really matter if the drive is a SSD or HD? No! I will never go back to slow, clunky, noisy, slow, big, heavy, slow, mechanical, old technology, slow hard drives. Did I mention they were slow? Even the slowest SSD will run circles around the fastest hard drive, and likely last longer too.
Hope you are not implying the moral I get is wrong. I think it's a bad choice, or a good choice, to use SSDs over HDDs depending upon the circumstances or specific scenario.
Sorry, but yes I am. You said you believe the moral of the story from that article is that hard drives are still the best media for storing data. I disagree completely! SSDs are: Faster, Smaller, Lighter, More rugged/less susceptible to damage from physical abuse, Totally silent, Do not cause vibrations or reverberations through the computer case, Consume less energy, Generate less heat, Are more reliable because they have no moving parts, Have a longer life expectancy, again because of no moving parts. The only area hard drives come out ahead is in price per gigabyte. But SSD prices continue to fall dramatically. Factor in the longer life expectancy and lower energy costs and the price per year costs for SSDs will soon be more economical too. Hard drives are based on 60 year old technologies. Except for higher densities and faster seek and access times, little has changed in all those decades. Except where the budget for the initial purchase cost is the paramount driving factor in the purchasing decision, I cannot see any scenario where a hard drive is the better choice.
Me, I'm nervous about all drives. So when data retention matters, I always use RAID 10. Plus backups, of course. But I don't backup OS, just data. When only speed matters, such as for temp files, I use RAID 0. When speed just mostly matters, such as for index files, I use RAID 6. The host for this VM has six 256GB SSDs in RAID 10, providing ~770GB. There's a /boot partition, and a LUKS partition with LVM2, containing /root and /home.
I recently bought an SSD and I must say it greatly contributes to making using my computer a better experience. Anyway all my important data is backed up to the Cloud AND to an external hard disk. It's cheaper to replace the SSD than all the data I would lose otherwise.
You call it nervous, I call it being wisely cautious. I used to use RAID arrays a lot but no more. They cost so much more for so little in return. So I only use them now on "mission critical" systems where no unscheduled downtime whatsoever can be tolerated. A RAID should never be considered a backup - especially as an only backup which sadly, some do. RAID0 can improve disk access speeds, but in reality, with modern computers with a proper complement of RAM, even with hard drives, most people will never see any improvements, except on paper/benchmarks. The problem with a mirrored array is if one drive becomes corrupted, the mirrored can see the same corruption. If malware strikes one drive, it strikes the other drive too. The problem with striped arrays is corruption/failure of one drive can take down the entire array. You can mitigate that with hybrid mirrored/striped array but that takes even more drives adding to the costs. I used them for years on my own system and not once had a drive failure. So I ended paying triple (1 primary drive, 1 secondary drive, and 1 spare drive sitting on the shelf) for nothing. I did, however, have a RAID controller fail catastrophically - taking out the entire array. Not good. Fortunately, I kept daily backups. If you buy quality "enterprise class" drives, keep them properly cooled and feed them good, clean stable power, odds are you will never need a mirrored array. And if you use SSDs, any gains you might see will be negligible at best.
Yes, what you say. I've never had a hardware RAID controller fail. But I have needed to migrate a controller and disk array to a new server. The old server was too near a lightning strike But fortunately, the RAID controller survived I've replaced failed disks in RAID 5, 6 and 10 arrays. With LUKS/LVM2 on top. And didn't lose any data. I've never seen evidence of disk corruption. But then, I've never used RAID arrays over 5TB. And when I used Windows Server or ESXi with RAID controllers, I kept the machines offline, in an isolated LAN, except when updating. No browsing etc. And yes, RAID 10 doubles the disk cost. RAID 6 makes it N/N-2 (1.67 for five disks). And yes, I also use RAID 10 in my backup NAS I've thought of switching to ZFS RAID, but nothing that I'm doing now warrants that level of extremism
The other moral I get from the article is the same from data management in general: backup, backup and backup! Specially when using SSDs cause when they fail or die, they do it fast and suddenly.
Yes Bill for once we agree. I did some RAID in the early days when systems were slower. But, today, the extra couple percent performance increase is not worth the cost and effort.
Well, for six SSDs in RAID 10, the average read rate for the main LUKS/LVM2 array is 960 MB/sec, vs 550 MB/sec for the individual SSDs. For the small /boot array, the average read rate is 1.3 GB/sec. So the performance increase isn't minimal.
The issue is, will people notice it during normal computer use, and I contend they will not. Okay, you might see it when transferring a very large file but that is not how most people "use" a computer. They use computers to read email, watch videos, update Facebook, play games, generate Word documents. So minimal or not, most users will not "see" any difference. And for most of the remaining, any gains they do see will be just a few seconds, and more often under one second. With a RAID 10, it takes 4 drives minimum and only 1/2 the total capacity of all 4 drives will be utilized. And of course, if both drives in one mirrored pair fail, all the data is lost so there are still substantial risks and very substantial costs involved. So the question becomes, will those gains be worth the costs? And the answer is no, except for a very few people in very uncommon scenarios.
Totally agree. And this is what I read in many articles. The only question is if the point 2 of this article could be true: " SSDs fail very fast, without warning. It is very easy to have a perfectly healthy SSD one minute and the next have a completely dead (and possibly unrecoverable) SSD the next ". I don't think, but I'm not sure.
This is also what I'm worried about, so that's why I still make backups to HDD based external drives. But I do hope that SSD will one day be as reliable as HDD's, and I hope Bill Bright is right, because I can also never go back to them. You just can't beat the speed of SSD's. In fact, I'm thinking about replacing my HDD (I use a SSD+HDD combo) with a second SSD, they are not that pricey anymore. Also, after 3 years of usage I didn't have any problems with my Toshiba SSD.
It is common for ALL electronic components to fail suddenly, without warning. That does not suggest they fail often or prematurely. The fact is, pure electronic devices typically last longer than their practical use. That is, they become obsolete, are superseded and/or retired before they break. How many perfectly good cell phones, TVs. monitors, old CPUs, RAM modules have you replaced or upgraded just because you wanted something newer, faster, better, or bigger even though the old one still worked? So it is true, an SSD can fail suddenly without warning. But that does not mean they will. And it really only matters if you are negligent about keeping current backups. And I note hard drives can and do fail without warning too. Their controller boards (which are pure electronics) can and sometimes do fail. So SSDs are, in no way, unique in that regard. However, hard drives are electromechanical devices. They contain high speed drive motors to spin the platters at 7200RPM (that's fast!). Some spin at 5400RPM (typically in notebooks) which is still fast. And some spin at 10,000RPM which is really fast. Those motors contain bearings and channels for the bearings to run in and are subject to friction (and of course, heat). Drives also contain "stepper" motors to swing the arm assembly back and forth across the platters in precise increments to precisely position the Read/Write head (mounted on that arm) precisely over the storage locations on those disk platters. All those motor parts and the mechanical assemblies they move about are subject to damage from physical abuse (knocks, drops, etc.), friction, wear and tear. Environmental seals can leak and contaminants can enter critical spaces (one speck of dust can wreck havoc!). Lubricants can break down or leak out of bearings causing an increase in friction. I note an accidental drop of the hard drive of just a couple feet to a hard surface (like a table top) can cause the read/write head to bang into and irreparably damage the platters. Hard drives employ measures to "park" the read/write head over safe "landing zones" to protect from such damage, but they are not effective 100% of the time. Such a drop will likely have no effect on a SSD. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes hard drives will display symptoms of impending failure. Their drive (spinning) motors will start to whine and/or vibrate when the bearings have excessive wear. "Clicking" sounds may sometimes be heard indicating the R/W arm assembly is banging into the end-stops while seeking some data location. This may be a temporary problem resolved with chkdsk, or signs of permanent physical damage and/or alignment issues due to wear and tear. And other things can suddenly take out a drive (SSD, thumb, hard, internal, external - doesn't matter) without warning too. I already mentioned fire, flood, and theft. Extreme power anomalies can too - perhaps an extreme surge coming off the power grid (supporting my recommendation to use a "good" UPS with AVR on all computers), or a failing power supply can take out suddenly anything connected to it. So it does not matter if SSDs typically fail without warning or that hard drives sometimes give warnings. The facts remain: SSDs are more robust, SSDs can be expected to have a longer useful life, Current backups are required regardless drive type.
'Specially when using SSDs cause when they fail or die, they do it fast and suddenly.' I've never been bothered by a harddrive failing on me. An old Windows XP computer lasted for more than 13 years. Really, what if one just uses a desktop that does not move around ? SSD or HDD ? I'm not so sure ... of course, recoveryforce.com may not be objective ? I'm really not a techie.
Potential disk failures from physical abuse are not the primary reason to use or not use an SSD. As I noted in post #7 above, I am not suggesting everyone should go out and replace their hard drives. But for anyone looking to upgrade their computer, improve disk performance, to buying or building a new computer, adding disk space, or replacing a failing drive, I sure recommend getting a SSD instead of a hard drive.
Backing up your data is not only to secure against drive failure, it's also to secure against fire/theft or "wtf". I have backed up my storage drive ever since my W98 **** itself in '99 and I lost everything. After that learning curve ALL my storage was on an external HDD [no other options then]. In 2010 I switched to an SSD drive for my OS. It was still going strong when I updated my system last year to use the new M.2 PCI-e based SSD's. Although I still use WD My Passport HDD drives for my bulk storage, since about 2015 I have used Samsung T1's for my back up storage, and another for my OS. It's light, portable and FAST. My wife does not make many demands of her computer, so when I upgrade I pass my old equipment on to her. So my equipment has a rather long expected lifespan. And, as @Fly mentioned in #20, I also have never had a drive - regardless of religion - die on me.
There were lots of other options. You could (and still can) backup to another networked computer, to DVDs, tape, or other internal drive.
I don't disagree with @Bill_Bright's advice for typical PC users. For them, increased disk I/O doesn't improve performance enough to warrant the increased cost and complexity. But I'm coming from the context of running multiple VMs, some doing substantial disk I/O. Such as running MySQL, manipulating large data files, and so on. I sometimes need to clone large (10-50 GB) VMs. Others might edit large video files. But again, that's not most users, and I should have made that clear.
Thank you for your confirming what I thought . Indeed I'm happy with my SSD: fast, performing.... Naturally I care it - not swap file, not defragmentation ( useless and deteriorating ), not hibernation ...... - and I use it for my OS. It's enough to do regular system image ( AOMEI Backupper ) and files backup to be sure. Sure, a sudden fail can be annoying, but till I had to replace the failed device I have the reserve pc.
