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As far as I know, the only con against switching to an SSD except its price is the tendency to fail soon (relatively to conventional HDDs) in case used in active read-write operation. Is there an efficient way to predict the failure?
Ivan
Posted 2012-06-04T23:15:43.000
Reputation: 6 173
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Yes there is, and you're in luck, your SSD already has it built in.
It's called S.M.A.R.T. - "Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology", and it's made to monitor and report (potential) problems with the drive.
Most/all modern operating systems relay SMART alerts from the drives, plus there are serveral SMART reading utilities. Check out this SU question: How can I read my hard drive's SMART status in Windows 7?
Also maybe check out: Are SSD's really reliable enough for power users?
Really, when it comes to SSD longevity, you're worrying too much. ;)
Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
Posted 2012-06-04T23:15:43.000
Reputation: 103 763
"It's called S.M.A.R.T." - I've been using S.M.A.R.T. since the age of 2GB hard drives and it has almost always been useless. I've seen hard drives almost dead or heavily malfunctioning reported "ok" by S.M.A.R.T. as well as good (no bad blocks, working perfectly for many years on and still ok) reported as "to be replaced urgently". So I am curious if S.M.A.R.T. can work better with SSDs. – Ivan – 2012-06-05T02:25:09.770
"when it comes to SSD longevity, you're worrying too much" - 1. I use my hard drive very actively (writing and deleting many gigs or tens, or even hundreds gigs every day) 2. "normal longevity" means 10 or more years for me, I won't usually expect a good hard drive to fail ever 3. I have read that SSDs use to fail every 0.5-2 years if used actively and would prefer to replace it before it actually fails (though, just replacing it every half a year with no objective reasons doesn't seem a reasonable solution to me). – Ivan – 2012-06-05T02:25:16.243
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+1 to techie007 for believing in SSD reliability. I've worked with two SSDs made in 2007 that have had intensive writes done to them, and they're still working like-new. As for HDDs, I've had 5 HDD failures since 2010! All of the failures were caused by different reasons, too.
– Deltik – 2012-06-06T18:58:43.9972@Ivan "I won't usually expect a good hard drive to fail ever" - Then my friend, you are living in a fantasy world where RAID, Backup, and RMA departments are almost unneeded. ;) "Expecting" 10 years is not a good policy either. Expecting 60 seconds, preparing for it, and lucking out when it lasts 10 years, is a much better approach IMO. – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2012-06-06T19:12:41.883
@techie007, "preparing for it" - that's why I ask. I can't put a fault-tolerant RAID array into my laptop. – Ivan – 2012-06-06T19:33:29.400
SMART, your BIOS and your OS should monitor it for you, and hopefully alert you before a full failure. Otherwise, Backup is your friend, regardless of your persistent storage type. What is it you're looking for, that wasn't offered in my answer? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2012-06-06T19:41:15.873