Comments on: Hard disk or solid-state? Think again

Although solid-state drives are in vogue, market forces and technical issues are making them a little less appealing than before.

[MyRightEye]

I put a 128GB Corsair in my 13" MacBook Pro. OMG!!!! It's the fastest computer I have ever used, AND and I now get 8 HOURS of battery!

[Lerianis3]

I have to agree.... I am really thinking of putting a SSD in my old Toshiba laptop and my new Gateway Gaming PC because I have seen the MASSIVE speed increases that they get. To the people who are 'waiting til the prices are similar to regular hard drives'.... NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN!
They will always be SLIGHLY more expensive than a regular mechanical hard drive, but the speed increases are WORTH IT!

[viper396]

@Lerianis3...."NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN!"?? Given the rapid pace, price drops, and availability of technology that has got to be one of the most short-sighted comments possible.

People today are using quad-core systems with loads of ram and and gigabytes of harddrive space and all that cost less then what an original 120Mhz Pentium system with 4mb of ram and a 1gig harddrive cost back in '95.

[BigGuns149]

I think the point that Lerianis3 was trying to make was that HDD will probably largely be discontinued before they reach price parity with HDDs because the performance benefits will become so dramatic that only the most thrifty of customers will seriously want a HDD as opposed to an SSD anymore. Most people started adopting LCDs en masse long before they reached price parity with CRTs and the same will ultimately happen with SSDs.

[zyxxy]

I think it will be a while before I can afford to build a 2TB raid 5 array using SSD. Using 500GB rotating media, that is quite affordable today.

[inachu1]

I will not buy one until the prices are similar to that of regular hard drives and by then I will use it to raid for best speed.

[thisnamestoolong]

"It's if versus when. With a hard drive it's if it's going to fail. With an SSD, it's when is it going to fail,"

Umm... no. It is 'when' as well with a HDD, I have never had one of those suckers last more than 5 years. Granted, I do some fairly disk intensive stuff (audio, mostly), but the question is most definitely not 'if' a HDD will fail. Regardless of what you are using for storage, backup, backup, backup...

[Lerianis3]

Agree totally, thisnamestoolong. I've also had HDD's fail, though I also have had ones that have gone for 10 years without a problem.... it's a CRAPSHOOT, to be honest.... it might last only one year (which is why the warranties are for 3 years now), it might last 10 years.

[ti99_forever]

Yes, that was always the quote "It's not *if* your hard drive will fail, but *when*". Age old quote that, until this article, was always quoted the same way. Is the author of this piece a part of this community or not?

[protagonistic]

I think what he is getting at is that with a HD you have a good chance of having it last longer than the computer you are using it in. With a SSD that is going to be more iffy. And both HDs in my PowerMac are older than five years with the oldest being almost six years old. And the oldest one gets used a lot.

Another point I think he was making was that you can yank a HD and let it set on the shelf for a few years and when you hook it back up it will more than likely work just fine. Again, with a SSD that is not nearly as likely.

[Bakkster]

But NAND and NOR solid-state memory will always slowly lose the electrical charge that stores the data. This puts a maximum time limit on how long the data will be around without rewriting.

With a hard drive, the magnetic domains are permanent until they are changed by a sufficiently strong magnetic field. The motor or other components may break, but the data will still be safe on the platters.

This is especially prevalent in the example given: a computer that has not been turned on in years. Most HDDs will work just as well if stored properly. A SSD has been losing charge over time and can be guaranteed not to have any readable data (even forensically) after a certain time.

[zmjman08]

you're totally right, HDDs almost always fail within a couple years.

[viper396]

@zmjman08. "HDDs almost always fail within a couple years. "

The comment is just asking to be proven wrong. Anyone using a PC older then two years can attest to that. The older and working harddrives for sale on e-bay can also act as proof. I agree, harddrives are mechanical devices and like all machanical devices they will eventually wear out, but storage technology wouldn't have progressed to where it is today if harddrives were really as unreliable as you imply it is.

[zyxxy]

My luck with HDD has been pretty good. I have only had one drive that lasted less than five years. After five years, they become very shaky. That has just been my experience. I did have one on an old box that no longer carried critical data, I let it run until death. It still hasn't died. Ten years and running an all original components. The drive is a Seagate.

On SSD, a lot will hinge on whether it is SLC or MLC. Data retention on SLC is pretty good up to fifteen years. Early MLC (2 bit) was ten years. Current (4 bit) MLC is five. Five years is pretty short for retention time if you ask me.

[Pishkado]

SSDs may be more "durable" (see fourth para.) in the sense that they're less likely to break if you drop them, but they're not more durable in the more relevant sense of lasting a long time under normal use. Ed Doller's comment a bit further down points this out, too. Perhaps change this word to "rugged?"

[Lerianis3]

? Not going to last a long time under normal use? Weirdest comment I have ever seen. As long as you are not writing files to the hard drive on a regular basis (and I would get a separate MECHANICAL hard drive for storing movies, music, etc..... files that might change on a regular basis or be 'swappred out), a SSD should last LONGER than a comparable mechanical hard drive.

[Mr. Dee]

Thanks for warning me, crossing SSD's off all future PC purchases. Don't use now and don't plan to. Been using a work horse PC since 2004 with the same hard disk and its working perfect. I personally don't SSD's anyway, sound like a bunch of complicated mess.

[Lerianis3]

Complicated mess? No, SSD's are just like regular hard drive: format, install OS, and go! The only 'complicated mess' is the article of this writer, that had to stretch credulity VERY long in order to find that SSD's are 'less reliable' than mechanical hard drives.

[pithenumber]

@Lerianis3
SSD last far shorter than any good HDD
SSD's have a set number of read/write cycles before they die

[BigGuns149]

@ pithenumber:

The motor on an HDD also has a practical lifetime as well. Google did a study a while back and found that 12% of HDDs in their test died in the first year.

[Cube Over]

i dunno why people shun SSD on netbooks? rarely ever you're going to shelve a netbook as a long-term family album storage. at least mfgrs should tell customers not to do that. and increase their turnaround - for people increase usage of SSD-enabled products. remember magnetic tapes? they had to be rewound, too - to reduce strain and magnetic fingerprint which decreased quality when applied statically for prolonged periods. frankly speaking, me i have seen more flaking cdrom/dvdroms that HDD. never used an SSD but will buy! just not for shelving. in a product you use daily it sounds good

[BigGuns149]

I think that the only reason that SSDs have largely been shunned on netbooks is because on such an inexpensive laptop the added cost of an SSD either results in very small capacity or a dramatic increase in the price of the netbook. Since cost is a big factor in the allure of netbooks I think that ASUS, one of the few vendors that seriously tried SSD based netbooks, found that a lot of their SSD based models weren't selling very well compared to the HDD based models.

Given enough time though I think that SSDs will end up taking over the netbook space much like they have taken over the MP3 player market (save for the iPod classic the HDD based MP3 player is nearly defunct). Due to the small size of the screens storage for high def video, high end games, 3d modeling, video editing, etc. are non-issues since one will never likely do any of those tasks on such a machine. Once 128GB SSDs drop below $100, which may be as little as a year away, I think that we will start to see a revived interest in SSDs on netbooks.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Another issue that enterprise corporate customers have to consider is the cost of data recovery. From a physically failed hard drive, you can generally move the platters to another drive or replace the controller card. That can be done in a clean room environment and recover costs are typically 2K-5K.

SSD's are a whole 'nother ball of wax together and those critters require a different set of tacticsentirely. The drives I've sent out for recovery come back with estimates of $15-20K. That's just a whole lot of money for a laptop that only cost $1200 to start with.

[alegr]

That's BS. With SSD you don't need recovery from media. I don't know, maybe working at MS made you think your data is invincible. What's the point in paying 15-20K? Do you keep the only copies of such valuable files? Don't you use centralized version control?

[viper396]

Backup, Backup, and Backup.

I never heard anything more asinine as the customer I had who was willing to spend $5k to recover data but originally wouldn't spend ~$100 for a backup harddrive. In my opinion, if it wasn't important enough to backup then it's not important enough to recover.

[Lerianis3]

viper396, I agree totally. Anything that I wish to keep for longer than a year, I either back up to burnable DVD discs or put on an EXTERNAL hard drive that I use on a 'rare occasion'.

[contentcreator--2008]

SSD is absolutely 100% what you want in a laptop that you carry around, but then it is backed up across the network to a cloud storage facility. And that storage facility may use SSDs for short-term load leveling, but then they will transfer to hard disks for long-term storage. Technological systems always get more complex over time, as they use limited technologies in more complex ways to overcome the limitations of the components.

[mrcheck1]

It seems that most of the negative comments I hear about SSDs are from those who don't have one in their primary machine. I do. I love it. It's amazing. This is how I see the comparison:

You have two choices in automobiles. 1) Normal average 2009 model. Cost $30,000. 2) New vehicle. Cost $100,000. Same size as option 1. Option 2 never gets stuck in traffic, gets 10 times the gas mileage, has it's own lanes on all highways which allow top speeds of 200 mph, but will only last you 5 years before you have to replace it.

The benefits are clear for option 2. If I could afford it, I'd buy option 2. If I couldn't afford it, I'd sit around pointing out how it costs too much and how it will only last for 5 years.

SSDs are amazing. It's like night and day compared to a hard drive. Ask anyone that has one produced in the last year or two. They're pricey. It's doubtful the price will come down to HD price anytime soon. They won't last as long as a HD in theory (I say that because I've had my share of HDs go bad before the expected lifespan on an SSD). But MAN are they nice. Every day, day in and day out, I'm pleased with how fast my system responds with the SSD. Programs load faster, the system boots faster, patches install faster (yes, the writes are faster for me), everything just runs faster.

Sit on the sidelines all you want and talk about the problems they exhibit after years of stellar performance. I'll be running laps around you with my SSD. :)

[SteveW928]

I mostly agree... my main fear though is how they will start to fail. Have you ever had a 'flaky' hard drive where it doesn't just outright fail, but you just start losing a file here and there, or copies or installs just kind of randomly fail, etc. It is really a pain... and you usually go through all sorts of torture before pinning the problem down to the drive. I'm just wondering if that will be the norm for SSD failure. HDs seem to often mechanically go bad, or show serious problems rather quickly when they do go. I think I prefer the latter as long as I have good backups. However, the speed thing is a clear win for the SSD.

[monkeyfun14]

"but will only last you 5 years before you have to replace it."

Hell if a SSD even lasted that long alot of people wouldn't have a problem but the lifespan of them is like 2-3

[jadedanalyst]

I'm sorry... this reads like a classic fud piece. The gentlemen from Numonyx is looking to has a vested interest in raising concerns about today's SSD technology since he's promoting a new generation of solid state storage.

None of the "flaws" mentioned in this piece are news at all.... the limitations of SSD are very well known.

The reason notebook manufacturers are moving away (for now) from SSD is simply cost... and cost is going to fluctuate as the cost of NAND chips moves. Anyone who has been watching the industry for any length of time ought to know this.

SSD is going to be the subject of massive R&D investment over the next decade, and there are some pretty obvious reasons why traditional HDD's aren't going to take us much further - A traditional HDD is essentially a rack of spinning aluminium disks coated in rust... There comes a point when the laws of physics intervene to prevent you from getting more bits onto a square centimetre of that rust (to whit - the little pointy things are simply so close together that they begin to interfere with eachother).

Players like IBM (the people who invented the Winchester Drive (in Winchester - England) are burning the midnight oil to figure out how to address the challenge that storage represents.

SSD - even current gen SSD has a huge future - not necesarily as long-term storage - But as super-fast front-end storage for things like databases (which are typically written to few times but read from many) - Thing of SSD as a way to speed up your server (dramatically) by providing a very fast second tier of persistent cache - With long term storage done on those painfully slow spinning disks of rust, and the super-fast access on SSD.


This article would have been much much better if it had included an interview with someone other than the guy from Numonyx... I would be happy to point the author of this piece to a couple of really hard-core experts on storage if he'd like?

[Lecktrickery]

Well that last statement should end all argument. Fianly someone with common sense. We have to move forward and SSDs are what we have now. If we had peen so worried about HDD failure when HDDs were first invented ew would still be loading opperating systems from Tape or Floppy Drives.
So SSDs are not perfect yet but give it time. Perhaps a SSD with a batery backup system or a small solar pannel who knows what they will think of but we should all be excited about what speed the future holds & look forward to an instant loading OS.

Hello... we're talking about $200-$400 netbooks here. I'm pretty sure mine (which has 16GB SSD) will be thrown in the dump (ok, electronics recycle) long before the SSD craps out. These are inexpensive consumer throw away items which makes them so popular. Who still uses a digital camera in that price range older than 4 years? These are like cell phones, throw em out every 2 years. The reason to get a NetBook is portability and ease of access. For that SSD is much better than rotating HD. And anyway, in 2 years you'll want a new one with WiMax, LTE or WiFi n and OLED and 16 GB RAM to handle Windows 10, and wireless USB (you get the point, all that tech creep), not that old slow WiFi g and/or EVDO Rev A. Yes, I still have a $2,000 '82 Osborne and it still boots up, but that's only to show my kids what we was state-of-the art in mobile computing back then.

[rundreams]

i just worry about security problem in SSD

[tundraboy]

My disenchantment with flash memory goes back to the day my daughter lost 15 excellent close up shops of a bald eagle that she took on a field trip. One second they were there in the SD card, the next, they were gone. And it's not so much that the SD card degrades, it's that there's no way you can predict when it would happen.