Does anyone have any bad experiences with SSDs?

BigBANGtheory · Post by **BigBANGtheory** » Wed, 13. Sep 17, 22:28

I've been running a RAID 0 array with 2 Samsung (256GB 830 or 840) drives for 5yrs no issues at all.

I am aware of the risks and backup what I consider to be important data.

If I was building for today though I'd pick an M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD probably a Samsung again...

burger1 · Post by **burger1** » Wed, 13. Sep 17, 22:45

jlehtone wrote:I haven't personally experienced a failure, but a friend had to replace one (on warranty). Due to controller, IIRC. Way back, when 80GB was still big.

@burger1:
(GPT + EFI) has no MBR. Do you use MBR as more generic term?

I transferred my OS from a hard drive to a ssd. After doing this it booted fine but then I formatted the old hard drive and the system wouldn't boot up. The old hard drive had what the computer needed to boot up.

It should also be noted that Samsung seems like a company to weasel out of warranties. If you buy it from the wrong source they may not honor their warranty. If it works fine which it should then no worries.

https://www.amazon.ca/Samsung-2-5-Inch- ... geNumber=1

Seller Memory house was completely useless and offered no support. Contact Samsung and they do not recognize memory house as an authorized dealer and therefore would not provide any warranty.

5 year Warranty is void by purchasing from an unauthorized reseller

WARNING: Samsung's official statement (confirmed by its customer service rep) is that THIS PRODUCT IS NOT BEING OFFICIALLY SOLD IN CANADA, so THE FIVE-YEAR WARRANTY DOES NOT APPLY IF PURCHASED IN CANADA.

starsNo 5 year warranty not even authorized sellers.

etc.....

Masterbagger · Post by **Masterbagger** » Thu, 14. Sep 17, 03:21

I've got an image of my C drive and windows installation saved externally. Highly recommend doing that. When my first SSD died restoring everything was fairly painless. And of course truecrypt on everything.

Post by **korio** » Thu, 14. Sep 17, 10:02

burger1 wrote:
I transferred my OS from a hard drive to a ssd. After doing this it booted fine but then I formatted the old hard drive and the system wouldn't boot up. The old hard drive had what the computer needed to boot up.

You cant just copy the files from one to the other, you need to copy some sectors that are the ones that makes the disk bootable, those sector are usually only copied by apps that are especifically intended to make full clones or ghost images of the disk.

Till windows 10 the most used was MBR, now the new "standard" is GPT partition with UEFI bios, you need to look if the clone software you are using clones them too, if it doesn't you will not be able to boot the system with that drive.

For the OP, if your system is "new" and you have windows 10, check the optane modules, as far as i have seen they work really good and you save some money.

Praefectus classis · Post by **Praefectus classis** » Mon, 29. Jan 18, 12:33

I know the last post was dated September but it appears still relevant so here goes. Apologies if the thread is too old.

I've had a 120GB Corsair SSD running Windows 7 Ultimate since April 2012. Only the operating system and programs that insisted on installing to the C drive are on it. The data and other programs are installed on a 1TB HDD (data and programs) and 3TB HDD (data). I back up the data fairy regularly.

Late last year, both because of the age of the Corsair SSD drive and the fact it was getting close to capacity, I got myself a Samsung 850 PRO 256 GB SSD that I was planning on installing the middle of this week. Work commitments have stopped me doing it earlier. Ironically, on Saturday, the Corsair SSD started to fail. Symptoms were programs crashing, write errors, error checking, BSOD's, etc. Fortunately, after the second attempt at running the Samsung data migration cloning software (the first time I had a BSOD half way through), I managed to clone the drive successfully. After fitting the new drive in the system case the computer successfully booted up with no sign of corruption yet. The Windows 7 system files appear to check out ok. I've been lucky with this one as I had some warning of failure.

thrangar · Post by **thrangar** » Mon, 29. Jan 18, 22:19

"after the second attempt at running the Samsung data migration cloning software "

So I figured it would work with other ssd, but this confirms?

Hank001 · Post by **Hank001** » Sat, 17. Feb 18, 06:37

After many issues caused my too many programs set up for conventional sata drives finding ways to crash when faced with solid state and patches not forthcoming from developers I dropped back to "disc disks". HOWEVER! For backup and storage drive SSD are the way to go. I bought a leading brand from Newegg in BULK. I had Terabytes and terabytes in backup HDD's setup with a slide in tray. Just setting somewhere for X amount of time is dangerous. Things degrade. I usually move my storage around yearly. SSD's data should hold up according to the experts and since I have to keep tons of data to prove my 3D work and copyright and such the loss of data can mean serious trouble.

My thinking now is at some point in time SSD will be the standard storage media. Only now its functionality is impaired by sometimes outright and deliberate calls to what few functions SSD aren't saddled with like speed checks and SMART calls to keep HD makers chugging out dinosaurs. And Windows and MS has really been no help updating the storage industry into something with a lifecycle average longer than five years if you're lucky.

I say give me a Fifteen TB SSD with data retention of fifteen years and let hard hard disks fly into the same category as cassette drives and 8 track tapes.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Sat, 17. Feb 18, 07:24

Hank001 wrote:After many issues caused my too many programs set up for conventional sata drives finding ways to crash when faced with solid state and patches not forthcoming from developers I dropped back to "disc disks".

Eh? I have literally never found a program that has a problem running from an SSD, and I can't think of any reason why a program *should* have such an issue--the interface to the drive is still SATA, it's just the drive itself is much faster. As for using them for backup and storage, that's just a huge waste of money, since SSDs are still far more expensive per gigabyte than spinning rust, and speed is not the main consideration for those uses.

theeclownbroze · Post by **theeclownbroze** » Sat, 17. Feb 18, 07:47

I've had an m.2 formfactor NVME 1TB samung evo drive for about 6 months and its ok, too early to tell how long it will last.

But from what I've gathered I've never had a harddrive fail on me, partly because I never had more than 1 drive at a time.

But this thread has reminded me to backup my important saves and 3D designs onto a disk. I've also heard that the safest solution to long term storage are those "Mdisks" which can be used in a Blueray drive, so i'll look into getting a couple.

Hank001 · Post by **Hank001** » Sat, 17. Feb 18, 07:52

To pjknibbs:
You probably won't either in home use. Thank god.
It became rife in multi-drive sync backup programs. They'd freeze and not tell you, lock up the system or corrupt the backup. That's just one example, there are others like network backups driven by Linux, Windows, etc. Basically all programs making calls to disk monitoring and some performance.

I was tired of butting my head against software makers telling me in essence to go back to the dinosaurs if you want our software to function.

Though there are issues people are likely to face in the same vain with home or small business, there's most likely fixes out there for these. Though when you rely on constant in the background backup, you can expect problems with SSD. Though there is software coming out that's going to resolve this it's all in development at present.

Usenko · Post by **Usenko** » Sat, 17. Feb 18, 14:54

I had two of them attack from the front. Scared the living daylights out of me, but the forward shield was correctly angled, so I could jump into hyperspace without them catching . . .

Oh wait, not "Super Star Destroyers"?

Hank001 · Post by **Hank001** » Sat, 17. Feb 18, 15:04

"I have a bad feeling about this."

"Wait that's no moon!"

Axeface · Post by **Axeface** » Sat, 17. Feb 18, 17:57

Ive had loads of HDD's fail on me over the years, one failure lost me a decade of photos and 3d work, got my first SSD about a year ago. Due to the nature of them I decided not to use it for my OS or storage, it is just for games. Any data storage/backup and OS I keep on the HDD - I hear a lot of mixed feedback about them, some say they are more reliable than HDD's and some say the opposite.

Someone said above, 'for data and storage SSD are the way to go', why do you say that? I thought its actually the opposite, they are not permenant storage, you cant back everything up on one, unplug it and leave it in the cupboard for years because it will lose data without power.

Hank001 · Post by **Hank001** » Sat, 17. Feb 18, 18:19

Axeface, good point. I have a drive slot (6 ch motherboard on op PC) with slide in tray through case front face. I slide in SSD's, back up my shadow drive and store it. 4 op drives are all HDD C: is Linux. D: is Win 7 E: Win XP 64. F: is drive tray slot & G is BU. (0 ch is dvd of course) To boot into old builds and Linux must have MB with UEFI and "Legacy" settings and set to "Both" ,OS to other, boot off "Legacy First". Then VM for Win 10 has It's "Penguin Keeper".

Linus menu pops up at bios finish with a boot direct. Otherwise EVERYTHING wants to boot into Win 10. Within Linux menu is VM start for 10. Server also goes to 4 computer render farm in closet. Nice space heaters in winters like this, SOB in summer.

Sync w/ shadow bu on SSD was was problem #1 I ran into.

(I edited off of bios setting after jobs finished and reboot
then

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Sat, 17. Feb 18, 20:35

Axeface wrote:I thought its actually the opposite, they are not permenant storage, you cant back everything up on one, unplug it and leave it in the cupboard for years because it will lose data without power.

That's based on a JEDEC paper released many years ago now, and the information in that paper was only ever supposed to apply to SSDs that were at end of life (e.g. had used up all their available write cycles) and which were stored at abnormal temperatures. A brand new SSD won't lose data when unpowered.

More info here:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2925173 ... r-all.html

Hank001 · Post by **Hank001** » Sat, 17. Feb 18, 20:59

About ssd losing data unpowered:

Nope especially when when it's right there on the box, documentation and so on and there's bench tests galore to point out which to get and which to avoid so I won't advocate one particular brand or model. You're needs and mine will differ.

My only suggestion is that if you do use SSD perm BU to save your HDD backup data so you can format your backup hdd, when full is that you do invest in a slide tray. Saves tons of time, effort and ware and tear and when I'm not using it for permanent backup another HDD goes in the slot. On the drive that I usually plug in is Win XP Pro SP3 I pulled from said permanent BU with all the tools and X3 reunion and TC among other games of the day.

Now Hank001's Math For Fellow Tech Geeks!
Figure this equation:

HDD w/ 0 BU =

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Does anyone have any bad experiences with SSDs?