To me, any article that ends with a "contact us" statement is pretty biased or usually has a motive. I've been running my OS *and* data off of SSDs exclusively for four years now. For the OS, I started with a Plextor m3 Pro SSD six years ago, replaced it with a Plextor m5 mSata a few years back and just recently again with a Samsung EVO 850 mSata to increase the capacity (Plextor mSata are insanely expensive now and hard to find). For "heavy" data, including VMs used for software development (heavily used and often running several concurrently), I started using the Plextor and later switched to a pair of SanDisk Extreme Pro SSDs when I needed higher capacity. VM performance (especially startup) went up many times over using HDDs, and no need to defrag continuously. To add to the mix, and in spite of many warnings against it, I've used TrueCrypt on my data SSDs from day 1 (with manual overprovisioning, so yes, I lose some capacity). So, I think I'm pretty hard on my SSDs. In all, I'm running 1.5TB in internal SSDs on a laptop. In 6 years of using SSDs I only encountered one drive (one of the Extreme Pros) that was failing with write errors and confirmed with HD Sentinel Pro's read test which showed huge inconsistencies in read rates across sectors. Turns out the drive firmware was out of date and wasn't executing TRIM, so the same cells kept getting thrashed. The read test showed hugely volatile reads for the first 75% of the drive and the last 25% -- my empty partition for overprovisioning -- was at factory read-rates. The other drive, with the updated firmware, did not show the same problem and read rates were still close to factory. Overall I think it's more a matter of the quality/brand of SSDs you buy, moreso than the inherent nature of SSD versus traditional HDD. I've had many a HDD fail over the years, and most without any prior warning. I noticed in the article "A couple examples of SSD cases we have recently worked on" included one Kingston and one AData drive ... hardly representative and two brands/models I wouldn't recommend for serious use in the first place. But as several have said upthread, it's also about backing up your data files (which I do to external HDD). Personally I would never go back to an HDD for the OS or for data. But, then, we'll see how the Samsung EVO holds up over time...
I have two SSDs in this computer. One for multiple OS and the other for image backups. I also have two (2 TB each) HDs. One for data and the other for backups of the data HD. The HDs are getting full so I'm going to replace them with two 4 TB HDs. I can't afford 4 TB SSDs. Who can? HDs still have a place. I also use external HDs.
Brian, you're right. I tend to forget that I also have external data storage on HDDs, where I store stuff I don't need regularly. I wouldn't waste SSD space on videos or music and I archive data that I don't use daily. As you say, SSDs are still very expensive compared to HDDs, and HDDs still have their place. I should've clarified that my post was in response to bgoodman4, or to anyone who thinks that SSDs are inherently less reliable than HDDs and therefore wouldn't use them, especially based on that article. The article's focus was on data recovery, not drive reliability; it may be that data recovery is that much harder and costlier on an SSD, but I don't think that should be a deciding factor unless you are dealing with critical data you cannot afford to lose. My point was to show that SSDs can be successfully used for the OS or data over long periods of time and be no less reliable than an HDD. Really, you could get a lemon in either case, no matter the warranty.
I am considering getting a SSD but saw the OP and became concerned about the idea. I do regularly image (daily) to an external drive using MR6 so am not that concerned with data recovery. Reliability is however a concern which is why I linked to this thread over in the backup forum. My concerns have been well laid to rest.
Thanks for the info. I have to say that because of all of the things I read about SSD's not being as trustworthy as HDD's, I decided not to install virtual machines to reduce the amount of writes. My old Western Digital HHD of 8 years old sounds pretty bad (weird noises) but actually still works. I did do a lot of software testing via virtual machines, I miss it sometimes.
Independent tests have shown that the current generation of SSDs will be good for petabytes of data written. Sudden death affects Hds as well... it happened with me just last year. The HD wasn't even 1 year old...
