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Being new to SSD (I don't own/use one, yet), how severe can storage loss be on those drives?
I heard that the entire drive can pretty much get lost instantly due to the technology it uses to store data. While that IS awful, I was curious if anyone knows if the drive are still functional after the incident?
Provided that the drive wasn't physically damaged (like dropped, hit with a baseball bat, submerged in a water tank...) and just happened out of the blue from, well, the wear-and-tear of electrons flowing in it (what else is moving in it, really?), is there any chance to reuse the drive? Does it become more and more questionable if they are reliable or not?
Or, is the general rule - once faulty, toss it in the garbage?
3On a personal note, based on the number of people on this site, who have experienced total drive failures, I would only use it as a system drive, and I would make sure I have a good image of it for rapid recovery, just in case. – KCotreau – 2011-08-05T14:11:46.117
Right, the onboard drive controller can always go out entirely, just like on a mechanical drive. You could always attempt to transplant one and restore the data (to be fair, I don't know how successful that'd be on an SSD as opposed to an HDD but it would have to be done by trained professionals anyway so...) Some SSDs have lousy failure rates, so do your homework in advance. The only consumer drive I'd really consider reliable from both personal experience and in-depth research are Intel branded with Intel controllers. – Shinrai – 2011-08-05T14:12:37.743
3@Shinrai Right. Also, anyone, who has been doing this for a while, has managed to recover data from a failing magnetic media hard drive; but usually, when an SSD goes, you get no warning, and you are done. – KCotreau – 2011-08-05T14:21:46.173
Very good point that we were both implying but good to have it explicit - failures on SSDs can be much less obvious beforehand than on an HDD. They're not likely to, for instance, start making noise before you stop being able to read them. :) (Also, oops, I forgot to upvote. :3) – Shinrai – 2011-08-05T14:25:16.547
Thanks for the answer @KCotreau. So if I understand correctly, when a SSD is said to "fail" the way you describe, it's not just some small read/write error that can be overlooked - it renders the entire drive useless and would require actual physical components replaced on the drive itself (or the entire drive even)? – bigp – 2011-08-05T14:31:29.830
Bigp, I am not the biggest expert as to whether sometimes they can fail like that (a bit or two dying on the chips), but I do know from the questions here, they often go totally and without warning. – KCotreau – 2011-08-05T14:36:17.640
1Also, @KCotreau you mention a good point about using the SSD drive primarily as a system drive - which I would more than likely do. However, would an SSD drive be also a great decision for storing large Sound Sample libraries? (since if it fails, it could be re-installed from the install DVDs/CDs... or better yet it could be duplicated on a separate HDD for backup/recovery purpose) – bigp – 2011-08-05T14:36:32.773
1Yes, static data would also be a good choice for an SSD. Good point. – KCotreau – 2011-08-05T14:41:20.977
@Breakthrough Thanks. It taught me a lot more about SSD's too. – KCotreau – 2011-08-05T16:22:56.397
As a side note. You crash harddrives very easily by dropping them. Whereas the amount of drop damage to a solid state drive would have to be rather substancial. They are more like really fast flash drives. It's non obvious and gives an odd impression but these things are fragile with regard to physical damage. By drop damage, you'd more likely need from a building than from a table with standard harddrives.
But, yeah, unlike the month long click fest we often get with failing platter drives, it's just poof gone with SSD. – Tatarize – 2014-01-09T11:47:29.660