How big a factor is having a solid state hard drive?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Diver110, Oct 23, 2018.

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  1. nick99nack

    nick99nack Forum Resident

    Location:
    Spotswood, NJ
    I tend to think that SSDs, reliability-wise, are just like any other hard drive. Some are good and will last many years, some will die after a few months. I have a NAS that has 2 30GB drives in it (mirrored RAID). It's 19 years old. I've had to replace both fans in it, but it still has the original drives. Of course after 19 years I don't fully trust them, so that gets backed up regularly. But, I've had others fail in a very short time.

    SSDs are the same way. Most newer ones will probably last many years, but there are a number that fail quickly. The lesson here is: back up your data.

    Of course, if you want speed, SSD is the way to go.
     
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  2. PhilBiker

    PhilBiker sh.tv member number 666

    Location:
    Northern VA, USA
    There is still a massive difference in both price and quality between consumer grade and enterprise grade SSDs.
     
  3. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    I know that. And you know that. But some people are going to use SSDs for backups and have the drive unplugged and stored away. Those people will want the data to be retained just like a traditional hard drive. If you put a SSD in a media player box, copy a bunch of music to it, use it for a while, then decide to take it out of the system because you got a new toy. How long will that SSD in the media player box retain the music files while the box is unplugged and in storage? People are gonna do that and expect their music to still be there when they turn it on again after a year or two.
     
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  4. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    And, your point is...:confused:
     
  5. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Good point since you've worded your post well.

    This is the thing about technology. It quickly filters down to the average (usually ill-informed or unsavvy) consumer, and companies make the money while improving the product...like Windows 10. The products have warranties, but the consumer is conditioned to ignore them, since most things do exceed their guaranteed time limit, and the consumer just expects things to work flawlessly forever, unlike the techies who know better than to trust them. Since SSDs are advertised as being more stable and reliable, the average consumer expects the data to be there over a lifetime.

    I'm sure a few people are wondering why they traded up their magnetic hard disk drives for these flash drives when they could have saved money for bigger ones. Laptops have has SSDs in them for more than a decade, but, with most cheapo products, and with the way the consumer blows through them, I don't know if we can gauge any track record of SSD longevity from them.
     
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  6. House de Kris

    House de Kris VVell-known member

    Location:
    Texas
    When flash memory chips are made, they are tested to retain data for 20 years. Many manufactures warrant their products that use such chips to retain data for 10 years. What your personal experience is, is anyone's guess. Since a drive contains more components that just flash memory chips, the total expected working life of a drive shouldn't be expected to last 20 years. In my experience, controller chips fail before the actual flash devices. What's even more depressing is when a regulator chip fails, yielding a drive useless.

    Also, data retention has nothing to do with being powered on, or left on a shelf unpowered.
     
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  7. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    That's true of spinning drives, too.
     
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  8. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    Thread haks how big a factor is; price certainly is a factor. Enterprise-grade drives seem extravegant 5 years ago, now I'm considering them. That's a pretty big factor.
     
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  9. HDOM

    HDOM Well-Known Member

    I think speed dont make the sound quality better!

    Usb 2 is enough i belive. The only good thing about ssd is that is silence;

    Buy so does a usb also!
     
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  10. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I suggest you take some time to learn about SSD.
     
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  11. Projectman

    Projectman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sarasota, Florida
    Newegg has the Micron 2TB SSD for $250.00. It isn’t the speed I’m worried about but the noise generated by the HDD. That is why all Aurender Music Servers with HDDs load music to an SSD so the HDD can shut down.
     
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  12. Ponzio

    Ponzio Forum Resident

    Location:
    19462
    I learned the hard way back in '98 about the reality of any data storage when I had my Dell PC crash & burn after 5 years of service. What a nightmare. Ever since I've become the Back-Up King much to my friends amusement. I have 4 HD's to back-up all my data. The sad truth is you never know when any drive, no matter what type, is going to fail, for a multitude of reasons (age, wear & tear, factory build defect, etc.). Even when I had my latest custom PC built in '15 I had the SSD drives mirror each other. The builder thought I was crazy and felt it was unnecessary and he could be right. But I'm not about to tempt fate.

    A little paranoia never hurts in this instance. o_O
     
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  13. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!


    That's right!

    I've never had a hard drive just up and die cold on me. I always had warning signs. It's time I made a backup to my new SSD. It's only been three weeks running it, and I still have the original HDD that it was cloned from. So, if anything happens today to the new SSD, I can still go back to the HDD. I do back up all personal files so I won't lose much or anything.
     
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  14. ellisr63

    ellisr63 Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Mexico
    I have had a SSD die, and I think I have another one that died...the replacement Samsung that replaced the first failed SSD. :(
     
  15. ellisr63

    ellisr63 Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Mexico
    Why not have your media server in another room, and your player in the room you listen in? My NAS has all Noctura fans, and is very quiet...even though it is quiet, I have it in another room with my other sources.
     
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  16. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Can you tell us more about the details? Samsung are not known to die so easily. Like, did you run lots of tests or defrag them? Did you fill it up with data? As with HDD, you should always leave something like 15% blank space, at least.

    When I installed my SSD, the first thing I did was turn off the auto defrag in Windows.
     
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  17. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    SSDs have no moving parts, so they do not generate any noise at all. If you have noise, look to your case fans, graphics card, if you have one with fans, your power supply fan, water cooler pump if you have one, and/or your CPU fan.
     
  18. jkauff

    jkauff Senior Member

    Location:
    Akron, OH
    I bought a Samsung 256GB 840 Pro in December 2012, from the first manufacturing run. Followed all the best practices (no defrag, over-provisioning, etc.). It worked great for about 4 months before sudden death struck. One morning it just refused to boot, and I had to restore my backup image to a spare HDD.

    Samsung replaced it with a refurb a couple of weeks later, which has worked reliably ever since. I'm using a 970 Pro PCIe NVMe for my boot drive now, but the 840 Pro is still in the system and gets used every day. I still have no idea what caused the original drive to fail, but I've been a satisfied Samsung SSD customer for over 5 years now.
     
  19. ellisr63

    ellisr63 Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Mexico
    I had the Samsung 250g USB SSD, I never defraged it, and I just used it occasionally for moving, and viewing music, and movies. One day I went to use it, and it was no longer accessible. I returned it to Samsung, and they sent out a replacement SSD.... This happened a couple of years ago as I recall. A few weeks ago I loaded the replacement drive up about to 75%, and then went to use it on a relatives laptop, and it was no longer accessible either. The drive was not defraged, and was not even used a lot either. I then decided to purchase another SSD, and this time I got the 500g Samsung, and so far it works fine. I am going to notify Samsung, and see if they will replace the 250g again. I have not had good luck with Samsung o other products either. We have had a Samsung 4k tv, that has continually given us problems with sporadic HDMI contel, and their response is to do factory resets. I have decided to use it strictly as a monitor, and not allow it to control anything, as it would switch inputs whenever I wanted, and also would mess up on the YouTube app. Our Samsung Note, and Edge7 phones have also been problems at times. I like the design of Samsung's phones but it constantly has software problems...My wife still wants to get a new Samsung Note, but ai am about ready to jump ship, and try a LG phone.
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2018
  20. PhilBiker

    PhilBiker sh.tv member number 666

    Location:
    Northern VA, USA
    LOL I'm pretty fastidious about back-up also. My new Synology NAS has two mirrored 4TB drives and an external 4TB USB drive for backup. Before I got the NAS I used Windows "File History" to backup my internal 2TB to an external USB 2TB drive.

    My internal 2TB drive recently died - that's why I got the NAS. Because I had everything on File History I was cool calm and collected when my HDD with all my photos, music, etc. etc. died. I knew everything was backed up. It's a good feeling to be able to treat a major disk failure as a minor event.

    What do you do for off-site backup?
     
  21. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Looks like Samsung is the new Sony. They are the biggest, and the most innovative. But, you know what happens when you become the biggest manufacturer...


    But, I have read that the bigger the SSD capacity, the better.
     
  22. Jack Flannery

    Jack Flannery Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
  23. Ponzio

    Ponzio Forum Resident

    Location:
    19462
    Don't trust the cloud. Keep another 4TB HD at another location.
     
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  24. Fahzz

    Fahzz Forum Resident

    Location:
    Outside Providence
    Some of these drives (SSD's and portable HDD's) are powered using the USB cable instead of a separate power cable. Any advantages/disadvantages to this from an audio perspective?
     
  25. nm_west

    nm_west Forum Resident

    Location:
    Abq. NM. USA
    Oh my, I just remembered why I hate these computer related threads. :(
     
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