[website] Tech Report's SSD endurance experiment passes 1 Petabyte!

[Arthur]

TL;DR. The Corsair Neutron GTX, Samsung 840 Pro and Kingston HyperX 3K are the only drives still going.

 

Link: http://techreport.com/review/26523/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-casualties-on-the-way-to-a-petabyte

 

We started with six SSDs: the Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB, Intel 335 Series 240GB, Samsung 840 Series 250GB, Samsung 840 Pro 256GB, and two Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB. They all exceeded their endurance specifications early on, successfully writing hundreds of terabytes without issue. That's a heck of a lot of data, and certainly more than most folks will write in the lifetimes of their drives.

 

The last time we checked in, the SSDs had just passed the 600TB mark. They were all functional, but the 840 Series was burning through its TLC cells at a steady pace, and even some of the MLC drives were starting to show cracks. We've now written over a petabyte, and only half of the SSDs remain. Three drives failed at different points—and in different ways—before reaching the 1PB milestone. We've performed autopsies on the casualties and our usual battery of tests on the survivors, and there is much to report.

 

The petabyte club

As their comrades fell around them, the Corsair Neutron GTX, Samsung 840 Pro, and compressible Kingston HyperX 3K drives soldiered on to 1PB without issue. That's kind of miraculous, really: a bunch of consumer-grade SSDs withstanding one freaking petabyte of writes. None of these drives are rated for more than 200TB.

 

Given our limited sample size, I wouldn't read too much into exactly how many writes each drive handled. The more important takeaway is that all of the SSDs, including the 840 Series, performed flawlessly through hundreds of terabytes. A typical consumer won't write anything close to that much data over the useful life of a drive.

 

Even with only six subjects, the fact that we didn't experience any failures until after 700TB is a testament to the endurance of modern SSDs. So is the fact that three of our subjects have now written over a petabyte. That's an astounding total for consumer-grade drives, and the Corsair Neutron GTX, Samsung 840 Pro, and compressible Kingston HyperX 3K are still going!

 

[Arthur]

It looks like the winner is going to be the Samsung 840 Pro, but will it reach 2 petabytes before it dies?

 

The SSD Endurance Experiment: Only two remain after 1.5PB

 

You won't believe how much data can be written to modern SSDs. No, seriously. Our ongoing SSD Endurance Experiment has demonstrated that some consumer-grade drives can withstand over a petabyte of writes before burning out. That's a hyperbole-worthy total for a class of products typically rated to survive only a few hundred terabytes at most.

 

Our experiment began with the Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB, Intel 335 Series 240GB, Samsung 840 Series 250GB, and Samsung 840 Pro 256GB, plus two Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB drives. They all surpassed their endurance specifications, but the 335 Series, 840 Series, and one of the HyperX drives failed to reach the petabyte mark. The remainder pressed on toward 1.5PB, and two of them made it relatively unscathed. That journey claimed one more victim, though—and you won't believe which one.

 

Seriously, you won't. But I'll stop now.

 

To celebrate the latest milestone, we've checked the health of the survivors, put them through another data retention test, and compiled performance results from the last 500TB. We've also taken a closer look at the last throes of our latest casualty.

[Arthur]

The SSD Endurance Experiment: Two freaking petabytes

 

More than a year ago, we drafted six SSDs for a suicide mission. We were curious about how many writes they could survive before burning out. We also wanted to track how each one's performance characteristics and health statistics changed as the writes accumulated. And, somewhat morbidly, we wanted to watch what happened when the drives finally expired.

 

Our SSD Endurance Experiment has left four casualties in its wake so far. Representatives from the Corsair Neutron Series GTX, Intel 335 Series, Kingston HyperX 3K, and Samsung 840 Series all perished to satisfy our curiosity. Each one absorbed far more damage than its official endurance specification promised—and far more than the vast majority of users are likely to inflict.

 

The last victim fell at 1.2PB, which is barely a speck in the rear-view mirror for our remaining subjects. The 840 Pro and a second HyperX 3K have now reached two freaking petabytes of writes. To put that figure into perspective, the SSDs in my main desktop have logged less than two terabytes of writes over the past couple years. At this rate, it'll take me a thousand years to reach that total.

[ZeroHour]

Cool!!

[mac_shinobi]

Samsung 850 Pro :

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8239/update-on-samsung-850-pro-endurance-vnand-die-size

[xenonive]

And to think I was worried how much data my Samsung 840 pro drives would cope with before needing to be replaced in our servers

[synaesthesia]

Nice and reassuring. Just bought an 850 pro for our colleague, good to know it's going to last!

[mac_shinobi]

Nice and reassuring. Just bought an 850 pro for our colleague, good to know it's going to last!

 

Good good - I am hoping to ( get an 850 pro, maybe two ) as building my PC in the next month or two

 

Like you say - good to know it will last a long time and can take a hammering ( so to speak )

[Arthur]

The 840 Pro finally died after reaching 2.4 Petabytes!!!

 

The SSD Endurance Experiment: They're all dead

 

The SSD Endurance Experiment represents the longest test TR has ever conducted. It's been a lot of work, but the results have also been gratifying. Over the past 18 months, we've watched modern SSDs easily write far more data than most consumers will ever need. Errors didn't strike the Samsung 840 Series until after 300TB of writes, and it took over 700TB to induce the first failures. The fact that the 840 Pro exceeded 2.4PB is nothing short of amazing, even if that achievement is also kind of academic.

 

Obviously, the limited sample size precludes drawing definitive conclusions about the durability and reliability of the individual drives. The second HyperX's against-all-odds campaign past 2PB demonstrates that some SSDs are simply tougher than others. The important takeaway is that all of the drives wrote hundreds of terabytes without any problems. Their collective endurance is a meaningful result.

 

The Corsair, Intel, and Kingston SSDs all issued SMART warnings before their deaths, giving users plenty of time to preserve their data. The HyperX's warnings ended up being particularly premature, but that's better than no warning at all. Samsung's own software pronounced the 840 Series and 840 Pro to be in good health before their respective deaths. Worryingly, the 840 Series' uncorrectable errors didn't change that cheery assessment.

 

If you write a lot of data, keep an eye out for warning messages, because SSDs don't always fail gracefully. Among the ones we tested, only the Intel 335 Series and first HyperX remained accessible at the end. Even those bricked themselves after a reboot. The others were immediately unresponsive, possibly because they were overwhelmed by incoming writes before attempted resuscitation.

 

Also, watch for bursts of reallocated sectors. The steady burn rates of the 840 Series and 840 Pro show that SSDs can live long and productive lives even as they sustain mounting flash failures. However, sudden massacres that deviate from the drive's established pattern may hint at impending death, as they did for the Neutron GTX and the first HyperX.