SSDs, long life and a company that begins in V and ends in iglen

[VeryPC_Andy]

Hi all, A little late to the party here.

I would like to add our take on this from the viewpoint of a UK System Builder and manufacturer of desktops to education. My perspective on SSD is that since January 2013 around 70% of our build to Education have been SSD based. We have seen massive SSD uptake since the pesky HDD floods in October 2011.

 

I don't have the figures to hand but we have a hell of a lot more HDD failures than SSD. Arguably our HDD fleet in warranty is over 5yrs of sales opposed to SSD which is just over 2yrs.

 

When it comes to SSD I would recommend investing a few extra pound and look at Intel 335 , Crucial M500 (new M4), Samsung 840, or if on a budget Kingston. There are cheaper SSD out there but the aformentioned are definitely worth a few extra quid. The cheaper drives tend to use a cheaper controller and Nand Flash which will equate to less write durability (higher failure rate) and slower performance.

Many hosting companies we provide with servers are choosing High-end consumer drives over enterprise SSD. Current warranted durability on SSD is high, Old EOL Intel 320 and 330 Series SSD are warranted by intel for 5 and 3 yr’s respectively with upto 20GB write per day. We did the math with a customer www.elastichosts.com and we figured that the Crucial M500 were warranted for 40GB write / day over their 3yr warranty.

This is even stated as their warranty- CT120M500SSD1 - 120GB, 2.5-inch Solid State Drive , from Crucial.com (Check Product details Tab)

 

My conclusion from failure rate and manufacturer warranty, the days of questionable SSD reliability are over.

 

To comment on @jamesfed initial issue with his integrator argueing the toss with warranty/ reliability, I suspect this is not a reliability case as all the UK Integrators I’m aware of are quoting SSD.

The reasoning is more likely to be an issue with a large pile of HDD sitting in a warehouse for 2013 rollouts not getting any smaller each day due to SSD over HDD demand. For me this would represent a big problem. The longer the HDD are there the less money they will be worth, business is business…

[zag]

@VeryPC_Andy, just a quick question but have you got any stats for failure by brand of SSD? Particularly Intel?

 

We've been using Intel drives all along and never had one fail, I'm wondering if this 0% rate scales up to thousands or 10s of thousands of machines?

[mac_shinobi]

Many hosting companies we provide with servers are choosing High-end consumer drives over enterprise SSD. Current warranted durability on SSD is high, Old EOL Intel 320 and 330 Series SSD are warranted by intel for 5 and 3 yr’s respectively with upto 20GB write per day. We did the math with a customer www.elastichosts.com and we figured that the Crucial M500 were warranted for 40GB write / day over their 3yr warranty.

This is even stated as their warranty- CT120M500SSD1 - 120GB, 2.5-inch Solid State Drive , from Crucial.com (Check Product details Tab)

 

My conclusion from failure rate and manufacturer warranty, the days of questionable SSD reliability are over.

 

What is the Samsung 840 pro like with regards to the amount of gigs per day it should be able to read / write, as you mentioned it being about 40 gigs per day for the M500

[VeryPC_Andy]

For Data on failure rate I need to check with support team for Intel RMA record vs purchase ledger for each drive sku . So will require a bit of homework......

 

I'll happily check and post the figures - I'm on holiday next week to Greece but apparently all the sun will be here... so it'll have to wait a little while.

 

The Intel 335 is warranted for 3 Year - and has is warranted at a "minimum life" of 20GB /Day for 3 year.

 

Intel® Solid-State Drive 335 Series: Specification Section 2.6

 

Samsung PRO 840 is 40GB/day 5 year warranty .

 

SSD 840 Pro Series - 128 GB 2.5 inch MZ-7PD128 | Samsung SSD - TECH SPECS check warranty section

 

If you push the limits of over 40GB / Day the warranty is invalid. I can only assume is this is if you do 5 Years of 40GB a day in 3 Years and try to make a warranty claim .

[jmcdermott]

Very late to party here but thought I might add.

 

Feel free to correct me but i believe the very old Asus eee 2g surf nettops were based on a 2gig ssd which out of the 35 we bought coming up to 5 years ago we have had not a single failed unit (apart from a few broken screens and keyboards).