A question for SSD experts/owners

[Agost]

Hi all,

since i have no more money to upgrade my rig this year ( yeah, they "disappeared"... -.- ) I'm speculating about what I could get next year, with a good fat budget.

SSDs are getting bigger and longer lasting, but would you run a SSD only PC? Even for datas you would otherwise put on a HDD, like music and movies? For example could a 256gb OS drive+ 1 TB data/game drive setup be reliable enough even for sensible data like documents and other personal things like photos?

I've heard of many SSDs suddenly dying, and lots of firmware issues...

Do not consider neither cost nor backup storage ( the latter is necessary ): would you feel safe running a normal, everyday use machine with many games, rendering programs, lots of personal data and other stuff on SSDs only? And by "normal" I also mean enabled pagefile, restore points etc

 

[Edge]

Assuming you bought SSDs from a high quality brand, yes, an SSD is always worth it, and yes, SSD only PCs are fine. I'd still pair it with a fat HDD for storage though. You could try an SSHD hybrid drive too.

 

[Agost]

Assuming you bought SSDs from a high quality brand, yes, an SSD is always worth it, and yes, SSD only PCs are fine. I'd still pair it with a fat HDD for storage though. You could try an SSHD hybrid drive too.

The idea is to completely switch to 2.5" ( or, even better, M.2 ) SSDs to save space and get more watercooling, while achieving good performance and a silent storage

The most interesting SSDs for me ( right now, but the actual pc should be built in mid 2015 ) are the samsung 850 Pro because of vNAND and the M550 because of low price, good performance and, most important, power loss protection ( which is absent in the 850pro, unfortunately )

 

[JR23]

I've run a pair of SSD's (2x Neutron GTX 240GB's) for quite a while now on their own. First off with one as an OS drive and one as a game drive and now in one big RAID0 volume.

The only thing i'm worried about is they've been turned off for so long while i've been building αclass that they will have forgotten some stuff. I'll just have to try my luck and re-install if necessary. I'm really not very good at looking after my pictures (they are my only sensitive information) and they are all spread out over an external HDD, two laptops, an old Samsung F3 and a huge SD card. I really need to compile all of my digital images together at some point and put a copy on both mechanical drives. I don't keep anything 'important' on the SSD's in my rig. Just a bunch of free/pirated programs I could get back at any point really so I wouldn't be too borked if they failed. I will continue to run SSD only rigs from here on in and a couple of external mechanical drives but i'm not a data heavy kinda guy, just a limited music collection and no films whatsoever.

The only hardware failure that has ever cost me any data was actually a Seagate HDD and I lost around 3 months of pictures, some of which I managed to get back because I had uploaded them to picasa or put on my mums laptop. I had a firmware issue with a Corsair Force 3 120GB but once I diagnosed that was the cause of the BSOD's I fixed it and didn't lose anything that was on it.

JR

 

[Agost]

.

The only thing i'm worried about is they've been turned off for so long while i've been building αclass that they will have forgotten some stuff.

Wait... SSDs lose data if not powered for some time? .-.

 

[JR23]

Wait... SSDs lose data if not powered for some time? .-.

I don't know myself and it's an extremely grey area to try and read into but AFAIK they cannot retain data indefinitely when not powered on. Naturally to operate as fast as they do it's relatively easy for the flash to change state unlike a pen drive. I've read some skeptical people say 2-3 months or 6 months - a year shouldn't cause any issue and others say it will never be a problem, but I don't think they can be considered an indefinite form of storage when totally unpowered and unplugged, not that anything else can either long term. I think it may become a bigger problem in older drives coming close to the end of their write limit. The epic SSD endurance test from techreport contains periods of unpowered time to test for retention as the drives are ageing, I don't think any have failed to retain data so far but it's obviously a concern if they are investigating it.

JR

 

[ShaunB-91]

Wow I didn't know that. My OCZ's better not let me down.

 

[JR23]

Wow I didn't know that. My OCZ's better not let me down.

Yeah I don't think it's a huge issue for any normal circumstances, i'd just be more worried by the fact it's OCZ . I guess some people are very particular where data is concerned and just don't want to unnecessarily increase chances of loss or corruption. It would be nice to hear a manufacurers/wise ones opinion on the subject.

JR

 

[ShaunB-91]

Yeah I don't think it's a huge issue for any normal circumstances, i'd just be more worried by the fact it's OCZ . I guess some people are very particular where data is concerned and just don't want to unnecessarily increase chances of loss or corruption. It would be nice to hear a manufacurers/wise ones opinion on the subject.

JR

I don't have anything other than games on mine, doesn't get used enough to store pics or anything but I have Dropbox on there incase I do. Still worrying though if thats true with SSD's.

 

[truesilax]

its always a good idea to put things that you rarly use on a hdd its not as quiet but hdd still can game but sdd is still better if you have the money maby get some low preformance but durable hdd to back up once in a while and store some were safe.

 

[Agost]

The possibility to lose data by not powering the SSD for long is kinda scary... even if the maximum amount of time my PC can be off is about 1-2 weeks

 

[Xrqute]

The possibility to lose data by not powering the SSD for long is kinda scary... even if the maximum amount of time my PC can be off is about 1-2 weeks

We are talking long term without power like years not weeks or months.

The tech wouldn't be viable if it had such a rapid data decay.






When it comes to SSD's stick with Corsair and Samsung and you'll never have sn issue.


Lol in such a hypocrite...... I'm using a Asus Raidr lol as my boot drive. But thats because I wanted my boot drive off sata.

 

[paulstung]

I run an SSD only rig, And would,t go back to mech again, I started with just the one, but with weekly offers and sales I've now got 5, just shy of 1tb, and plenty for me. I am considering getting a 3tb external mech though just for backup.

For me the advantages over mech's is the fact that they're silent, I'm not a silent pc junkie, I just can't stand the sound of a drive spinning up, it's like nails on a blackboard to me, the speed is just a happily received bonus.

 

[Xrqute]

I run an SSD only rig, And would,t go back to mech again, I started with just the one, but with weekly offers and sales I've now got 5, just shy of 1tb, and plenty for me. I am considering getting a 3tb external mech though just for backup.

For me the advantages over mech's is the fact that they're silent, I'm not a silent pc junkie, I just can't stand the sound of a drive spinning up, it's like nails on a blackboard to me, the speed is just a happily received bonus.

I've got 6tb of mech storage in my rig! I'd love to get some 1tb SSD's but the $700 Aus per drive just isn't worth it. They really need to get there arse into gear and get some high capacity SSD's to the consumer market at a fair price! 5tb drives for $500 Aus would suit n
Me just fine haha

 

[JR23]

If your genuinely worried about durability OP then I suggest you read all of the epic SSD endurance test from techreport - http://techreport.com/review/26523/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-casualties-on-the-way-to-a-petabyte

...and then buy a Neutron GTX

JR

 

[NeverBackDown]

I run an ssd only rig too. Would never buy a mech drive for myself anymore.

 

[Agost]

If your genuinely worried about durability OP then I suggest you read all of the epic SSD endurance test from techreport - http://techreport.com/review/26523/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-casualties-on-the-way-to-a-petabyte

...and then buy a Neutron GTX

JR

I've already read that, but I can't figure out how much I'll write on a SSD...

IMHO the neutron GTX is more resilient than the others in that test mainly because of its 26nm nand vs ~20nm of the competitors ( I doubt it's because of the controller, even if LAMD makes enterprise controllers )

It's also quite expensive ( more than a 850 PRO, which should have the longest lasting NAND of all consumer SSDs ): for the same price I could get an Intel 730, which should be the most reliable consumer SSD ( power loss protection, lots of over provisioning, good controller used even for the enterprise ones... all made by intel )

I'd like to see more interesting and recent SSDs tested, like the 840 evo, 850 pro, intel 730, crucial m550 & mx100, some SanDisk drives...

 

[son of spanner]

Hi all,

since i have no more money to upgrade my rig this year ( yeah, they "disappeared"... -.- ) I'm speculating about what I could get next year, with a good fat budget.

SSDs are getting bigger and longer lasting, but would you run a SSD only PC? Even for datas you would otherwise put on a HDD, like music and movies? For example could a 256gb OS drive+ 1 TB data/game drive setup be reliable enough even for sensible data like documents and other personal things like photos?

I've heard of many SSDs suddenly dying, and lots of firmware issues...

Do not consider neither cost nor backup storage ( the latter is necessary ): would you feel safe running a normal, everyday use machine with many games, rendering programs, lots of personal data and other stuff on SSDs only? And by "normal" I also mean enabled pagefile, restore points etc

I've only ever had one ssd fail and that was a ocz 60gb back wen ssd,s cost silly money they have got so much better now I only run a ssd in my rig if I need to store anything I use a nas drive I have on my home network and im sure lots of people use something like that or a 3.5 drive in there rig I don't know about most but I would use a ssd to store things like pic/movies and so on I think its just the cost holding people back right now

 

[iBeInspire]

SSD only pcs are the way forward, I actually only run my entire rig off a 120gb ssd. Being a movie/music nut I still have a 2tb WD all-in-one home server thingy for storage which is plenty.

I think as long as you have either some sort of home server or some form of cloud storage for your larger files, you should be fine with ssd only.

 

[d3rrial]

Well I have 2 huge SSDs, but I still leave most of my BS data parked on HDDs, just so I don't unnecessarily waste write cycles on my SSDs.
That said I have the games I used to play most often all on my SSDs and I never bothered changing the pagefile / temp folder etc. and I'm honestly not very worried about it. The Samsung 840 Pros are a hell of a drive.