OT? Windows 7: Faster than XP?

[BillW50]

What's the disadvantage of just scrapping the mechanical hard drives
altogether, and putting everything on SSD? I'm assuming it's ONLY the cost
factor at this point in time. I'm also assuming the MTBF (mean time before
failure) is a LOT better than with hard drives, especially if you use the
better SLC ones, although maybe those aren't being made anymore (aren't cost
effective) for all I know.

I was pretty paranoid about writes on SSD so bad that I cut down writes
so low (with XP no less) that I figured that the few hundred MB of
writes a day would take 4000 or was it 8000 years to wear out a 4GB SSD.
In any case, that is just being way too careful. Who cares if I make it
last that long?

I've seen a claim that SSD MTBF is 127 years and hard drives are 37
years. Yes sure maybe, it depends on how you use either one. Plus not
all models are equal.

Man knowing whether a SSD is a SLI (great type) or a cheaper MLC (not so
good) is usually very hard. They are not really forth coming with this
information (few actually tell you up front). Sometimes you have to find
the memory chip part number and find the specs (which is usually in
Chinese). And I can't read Chinese and only know like five words in
Japanese (can't spell those Japanese words either).

Whether to dump hard drives and to use just SSD depends on few things.
SSDs has advantages like usually faster reads, shock tolerance, and in
some cases faster writes. If none of this interest you, I wouldn't
bother. They do sell hybrids which has both so you get the advantages of
both. ;-)

 

[BillW50]

In message <[email protected]>, BillW50 <[email protected]>
writes:
In Mayayana wrote:
They're just as likely to "drop dead", as to fade away.
That deserves a bit of clarification. Neither scenario is common. In
fact, both scenarios are extremely rare, according to what I've read.
I think what Paul was getting at is that, while
SSDs may be generally stable, when they go there
will probably be no warning. With hard disks there
often is some warning ahead of time.
I am not sure about the often part in regards with hard drives. Remember
that Google did their own study about hard drive longevity? And they
found that even SMART often reports no problems for almost half of their
failed drives. And I too have had drives that was working perfectly fine
one day and then the next day dead as a doornail.
If you mean that kind of warning, then you may well be right - and
someone like Google with rooms (buildings, I presume, if not small
villages) full of the things, yes. But _in my experience_, across
several drives on systems across several decades, in basically "home"
type use, hard drives more often than not _do_ give advance warning -
erratic operation, funny noises, whatever. I'm not saying they _never_
die suddenly - only that _I_ have only had it happen either once or zero
times, I can't remember. I have no experience with SSDs at all, but
experience with other non-volatile memory devices (mainly USB thumb
drives) _has_ been that they die suddenly without warning (in fact I've
not had _any_ that went "gradually").

(None of which of course means you shouldn't keep backups whatever
technology your "drive"s are!)
[]

As for hard drives, I had both that makes it clear that something is
really wrong and some was working just fine and the next, dead as a
doornail. I dunno, about 40% without warning would be pretty close IMHO.

No SSD experience but having flash drive failure experience counts in my
book. As the interface is different but the memory is the same. Well the
cheap flash drives use the cheapest of all of the cheapest. So they fail
more often. But what happened in your cases?

One guy told me he goes through cheap flash drives like candy. The
shortest was 2 weeks and the longest was like two months. Although he
writes to them all of the time. I don't use mine like this. I don't
think a single one of mine has 1000 writes yet. Nor have a had a flash
drive fail yet. But if the memory can't hold a write (as too many writes
have occurred), it should stay as a read only device. Is that true for
you?

Extrapolating from this, it might not be so wise as to consider replacing
hard drives with SSDs (assuming the cost was affordable)? But I thought
that contradicted the current state of affairs was, in terms of their
alleged reliability.

SSDs are far more reliable under some conditions. For example, NASA
quickly learned that using hard drives during launch will just trash
them. But SSDs work just fine. Once floating in space and switching over
to hard drives also works just fine.

Police cars with laptops with hard drives will generally fail after two
months. Those with SSDs don't have this problem.

If you are happy with hard drives and they are not failing too soon, I
wouldn't worry too much about SSD really.

 

[Paul]

I was pretty paranoid about writes on SSD so bad that I cut down writes
so low (with XP no less) that I figured that the few hundred MB of
writes a day would take 4000 or was it 8000 years to wear out a 4GB SSD.
In any case, that is just being way too careful. Who cares if I make it
last that long?

I've seen a claim that SSD MTBF is 127 years and hard drives are 37
years. Yes sure maybe, it depends on how you use either one. Plus not
all models are equal.

"Wear life" is not the same thing as MTBF.

And MTBF (even if you knew what to do with the numbers), is still a crock.
It's like that statement about sausages - if you knew how they made
them, you wouldn't eat them. Treat MTBF with a similar contempt, for
your own health.

Paul

 

[Paul]

BillW50 wrote:

SSDs are far more reliable under some conditions. For example, NASA
quickly learned that using hard drives during launch will just trash
them. But SSDs work just fine. Once floating in space and switching over
to hard drives also works just fine.

Police cars with laptops with hard drives will generally fail after two
months. Those with SSDs don't have this problem.

If you are happy with hard drives and they are not failing too soon, I
wouldn't worry too much about SSD really.

Will an SSD tolerate ionizing radiation ?

The ability of electronics to survive the rigors of space, all
depends on what orbit you're in. If you stay low enough, our
atmosphere provides some protection.

To give an example of how sensitive flash memory is, some
people had motherboards shipped by courier, and the BIOS chip
was erased in transit. So terrestrial security devices used
to examine cargo, can be strong enough to erase flash.

I wouldn't want flash memory chips in my spaceship
At least, not modern flash memory chips with small
geometries. Gimme a bunch of core memory instead

Paul