Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:09:17 +1000 From: Da Rock <freebsd-questions@herveybayaustralia.com.au> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why do I feel like compact flash is more reliable than SSD ? Message-ID: <4EFDB7FD.4040606@herveybayaustralia.com.au> In-Reply-To: <20111230124153.GA18989@slackbox.erewhon.net> References: <1325229204.34713.YahooMailNeo@web140405.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <20111230124153.GA18989@slackbox.erewhon.net>
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On 12/30/11 22:41, Roland Smith wrote: > On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 11:13:24PM -0800, UFS User wrote: > >> I have run a lot of different FreeBSD systems off (fileservers, firewalls, >> routers, etc.) off of compact flash cards[1] and have never had a CF part >> fail. >> >> Most of these were read-only mode, but some of them were left mounted 'rw' >> for years (with no swapping, of course). The bottom line is, they never >> failed, and some were (and are) in the field for over 8 years now. >> >> But everyone I know (including me) has had an SSD fail, usually with no >> explanation. > It seems that unlike disk drives, SMART doesn't really give you a warning with > SSDs. > > But as a counterpoint, who hasn't ever had a harddrive fail? And there might > be some negativity bias [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias] at work > here too. > >> So is this just chance, or ... are CF cards really a lot more reliable than >> SSD ? > Although I've been looking at SSD's, I've held off for now because of cost and > small disk sizes. But concrete data is relatively scarce, probably due to the > fact that SSD's haven't been available _that_ long. > > There are several studies available for harddisks, e.g. from google > [http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf] and Carnagie Mellon [http://www.usenix.org/events/fast07/tech/schroeder/schroeder_html/index.html]. > Generally, more disks fail as they age. > > But studies concerning SSD's seem to be almost nonexistant. The most interesting > inventarization I found was on Tom's Hardware > [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html]. > Some interesting quotes covering the main points; > > Even though our data set is one-twentieth the size of previous studies on > hard drives, our information starts to suggest that SLC-based SSDs are no more > reliable than SAS and SATA hard drives. > ... > Our data center survey exclusively covers Intel SSD failure rates because > those are the drives that big businesses currently trust the most. > ... > Should you be deterred from adopting a solid-state solution? So long as > you protect your data through regular backups, which is imperative regardless > of your preferred storage technology, then we don't see any reason to shy away > from SSDs. > > Currently SSD's are too small for my taste. But when that changes, I'll > seriously consider switching to an SSD with an equal sized HDD for nightly > backups. I'd only consider them in laptops- and even then I don't see too much difference in power use, only shock resistance. And I'd back them up to the network anyway- store most of the data on a fileserver and only copy what was being worked on to the lap. I can't see too much point otherwise, 60Gb is reasonable for a desktop with the usual suspects and is reasonably priced (not too over the top anyway...).
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