SSD Versus HDD

[WorriedNoodle]

12 hours ago, Led Lolly Yellow Lolly said:

HDDs are going to be around for a looong time to come. I build and administer security NVRs (Network Video Recorders) in enterprise environments that handle Petabytes of data per year. Try to use an SSD in that environment and it would be chewed up in weeks, they're useless. The solution is multiple HDDs in RAID. It's the only solution actually. The read/erase/write life of rust is effectively infinite. Did I blow your mind?

Well bully for you. The o/p was about a guy buying a laptop with a HDD in it.

[Led Lolly Yellow Lolly]

I'm responding to comments that HDDs are obsolete. They're not, and will likely be in use long after everyone here is dead.

 

 

 

Edited January 7, 2022 by Led Lolly Yellow Lolly

[lopburi3]

5 minutes ago, Led Lolly Yellow Lolly said:

I'm responding to comments that HDDs are obsolete. They're not, and will likely be in use long after everyone here is dead.

 

 

 

Well, Yeah - most of us are more than long in the tooth (if we even have any).????

[ozimoron]

4 hours ago, Led Lolly Yellow Lolly said:

I'm responding to comments that HDDs are obsolete. They're not, and will likely be in use long after everyone here is dead.

For long term external storage they are still the right choice. Choose one in a drop proof case with an external power supply. Solid state drives resist impact better but can die while a disk platter (HDD spinning disk) is almost always recoverable.

[transam]

12 hours ago, ozimoron said:

For long term external storage they are still the right choice. Choose one in a drop proof case with an external power supply. Solid state drives resist impact better but can die while a disk platter (HDD spinning disk) is almost always recoverable.

I do a regular 'SeaTools' drive scan, doesn't matter what brand of SSD or HDD you have in your machine, it tests them.

[ozimoron]

5 minutes ago, transam said:

I do a regular 'SeaTools' drive scan, doesn't matter what brand of SSD or HDD you have in your machine, it tests them.

Testing isn't the same as recovering data from a dead hard drive.

[transam]

13 minutes ago, ozimoron said:

Testing isn't the same as recovering data from a dead hard drive.

I know, the program tests the drives for stability and envisaged problems, so if it picks something up it is time to transfer stuff to another/new drive....

Did a scan yesterday on my installed SSD and HDD, came out 100% on both..????

[Led Lolly Yellow Lolly]

Analysis tools are useless for data resilience. Faults and failures usually just come out of the blue. A sane backup and replication regimen makes recovery tools redundant.

[howto]

Now shall we discuss SMR vs CMR hard drives, it would be relevant.

Almose everything is now SMR. I don't want it just like V-NAND SSD's.

These HDD's can be had in CMR:

Seagate Barracuda 'Plus', not the common one.

Seagate Ironwolf (entire line)

* perhaps another Seagate line, too lazy to look right now.

Western Digital Red Plus or Pro (thats it).

 

For my 1 baht opinion, for SSD I prefer Samsung in SLC (hard to find and $$$) and MLC (2-cell), I don't trust tricell (3-cell) and abhor 4 cell NAND.

[fdsa]

6 hours ago, howto said:

Almose everything is now SMR. I don't want it just like V-NAND SSD's.

Do not mistake "V-NAND" with "QLC" - "V-NAND" is method of cell placement and "SLC/MLC/TLC/QLC" is a method of storing data in cells.

V-NAND drives are ok if they are made with TLC technology (or how fkucing marketologists call it "3-bit MLC"), e.g. old Samsung models like 950 Pro.

But V-NAND QLC are a piece of shít with 8 MB/s random write speed.

 

6 hours ago, howto said:

For my 1 baht opinion, for SSD I prefer Samsung in SLC (hard to find and $$$)

I'd say "impossible to find", even enterprise SSDs are mostly 2-bit MLC. SLC could be found only in extremely small capacity drives like 64 GB.

 

Also be careful with Samsung - they like to call TLC drives "3-bit MLC". However TLC are still OK.

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by fdsa

[howto]

A week b4 xmas I needed a SSD for a old desktop.

Was considering the 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus, until I read this.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/samsung-seemingly-caught-swapping-components-in-its-970-evo-plus-ssds/

I purchased a Samsung 870 EVO 500GB instead. $60 from BestBuy. Not on sale.

Works very well.

I did 'short-stroke' it to 250GB.

Did not engage 'rapid-mode' or 'over-provision'.

It's simply fast enough for my needs and will hopefully last years.

Next is several 4TB Seagate Ironwolfs. At $80 ea, again at Bestbuy.

Edited January 9, 2022 by howto
spelling

[Greenie5000]

21 hours ago, howto said:

A week b4 xmas I needed a SSD for a old desktop.

Was considering the 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus, until I read this.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/samsung-seemingly-caught-swapping-components-in-its-970-evo-plus-ssds/

I purchased a Samsung 870 EVO 500GB instead. $60 from BestBuy. Not on sale.

Works very well.

I did 'short-stroke' it to 250GB.

Did not engage 'rapid-mode' or 'over-provision'.

It's simply fast enough for my needs and will hopefully last years.

Next is several 4TB Seagate Ironwolfs. At $80 ea, again at Bestbuy.

So you bought a 3-Cell... the kind you that do not trust? ????

[howto]

1 hour ago, Greenie5000 said:

So you bought a 3-Cell... the kind you that do not trust? ????

A Samsung SSD 3-Cell, and no, even that I really don't trust.

Was necessity. Can't wait 3 weeks for the Pro (supply chain issues?).

Trust it more than any 'Wastern Digital' product. Mis-spelling intentional.

 

[KhunHeineken]

When HDD's get old they get noisey and eventually stop spinning and die.

 

What do SSD's do at the end of their life?  Do "sectors" slowing start dying and you lose capacity to the point it's unusable, or does one sector die causing the whole SSD to die suddenly?  

[fdsa]

24 minutes ago, KhunHeineken said:

Do "sectors" slowing start dying and you lose capacity to the point it's unusable

this. All "SSD health monitoring" software will show you how many sectors died and how many spare sectors left.

 

24 minutes ago, KhunHeineken said:

does one sector die causing the whole SSD to die suddenly? 

SSDs do die suddenly, but not because of a single sector failure. Most commonly it's a fried up controller.

Edited January 17, 2022 by fdsa

[KhunHeineken]

On 1/17/2022 at 11:07 PM, fdsa said:

this. All "SSD health monitoring" software will show you how many sectors died and how many spare sectors left.

 

SSDs do die suddenly, but not because of a single sector failure. Most commonly it's a fried up controller.

I gather if you bought a larger SSD, say 1TB, even with dying or dead sectors, it could still last for years longer, because you have bought more storage than you really need.  Would this be correct?

 

Any idea what causes controllers to fry?  Do you mean electricity surges?  If so, use a surge protector, but I am not sure it does much in a 2 pin power point that Thailand has. 

[fdsa]

23 hours ago, KhunHeineken said:

I gather if you bought a larger SSD, say 1TB, even with dying or dead sectors, it could still last for years longer, because you have bought more storage than you really need.  Would this be correct?

Generally - yes.

 

23 hours ago, KhunHeineken said:

Any idea what causes controllers to fry?  Do you mean electricity surges?  If so, use a surge protector, but I am not sure it does much in a 2 pin power point that Thailand has. 

No, I mean that controllers could just instantly die with no apparent reasons (still I believe it's because of overheating).

But it's a very rare fault and its probability is just a little bit higher than a HDD controller fault.