Re:Flash Drives Replace Disks at Amazon, Facebook, Dropbox
by InclinedPlane on Wednesday June 13, 2012 @02:50PM
(#4107718)
Yes, but there are two types of flash cell you can use. SLC cells have an order of magnitude higher write-cycle lifetime than MLC cells, which is why there's a difference in "enterprise" vs. consumer ssds. In practice for most uses an SLC based flash drive will be retired before it reaches its durability limits.
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Re:Flash Drives Replace Disks at Amazon, Facebook, Dropbox
by StavrosK on Wednesday June 13, 2012 @03:24PM
(#4107920)
Eh, I just had an X-25M G2 start to fail the other day, after two years of desktop use. Intel replaced it within the week for free, but it was hardly retired.
Re:Flash Drives Replace Disks at Amazon, Facebook, Dropbox
by rtkwe on Wednesday June 13, 2012 @04:10PM
(#4108165)
Just a question, did you take the swap partition off the SSD? That's one of the main tips I've seen in improving SSD life-spans.
Re:Flash Drives Replace Disks at Amazon, Facebook, Dropbox
by StavrosK on Wednesday June 13, 2012 @05:42PM
(#4108614)
I didn't, but I don't know if it was swapping all that much... Maybe that was it.
Re:Flash Drives Replace Disks at Amazon, Facebook, Dropbox
by InclinedPlane on Wednesday June 13, 2012 @03:46PM
(#4108023)
The x-25m uses MLC flash cells. All other things being equal you'd expect an SLC based SSD to have a 10x longer lifetime. Also, can you confirm that your device failed due to write cycle exhaustion or could it have been due to a firmware bug instead?
Re:Flash Drives Replace Disks at Amazon, Facebook, Dropbox
by StavrosK on Wednesday June 13, 2012 @03:48PM
(#4108030)
Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you were talking about SLC. Yes, that's true. It was cycle exhaustion, as bad sectors started appearing and SMART reported a high end-to-end error count. I had the latest firmware, nothing helped.