How long do SSD last and how reliable are SSD?

Bubble99 · Nov 23, 2020

I have 4TB of data I will like to back up and I don’t know if I should back it up on SSD or hard drive.

I hear SSD don’t last as long as hard drives and are not as reliable and have problems. So I need long term reliable back up.

Jetster · Nov 23, 2020

With that amount of data a HDD would be best. But SSDs last as long and more
If you want reliable have more than one back up

Vya Domus · Nov 23, 2020

I don't know how much data is available on this subject but it wouldn't surprise me if your average SSD is way more reliable than an average HDD now.

Help with the eradication of slow and horrible HDDs and buy an SSD.

TheLostSwede · Nov 23, 2020

For backup SSDs don't make sense, as they lose charge over time. In other words, if they're not powered on from time to time, the data will get corrupted.
Obviously this can happen to hard drives as well, but with regards to them losing the magnetic charge. However, it would take much longer for this to happen on a hard drive than an SSD.

Beyond that, one is not really more or less reliable than the other. Hard drives are mechanical and mechanical parts fail. SSDs rely on flash which can fail for no reason and then you're screwed.

Bill_Bright · Nov 23, 2020

TheLostSwede said:
For backup SSDs don't make sense, as they lose charge over time.

Yeah, like after 10 years - "IF" the drive is properly stored, undisturbed in a cool, dry place.

And of course, SSDs don't store data by arranging magnetic particles on the disk to represent 1s and 0s. They store 1s and 0s by flipping gates with charged electrons in the transistors of the memory chips. HDs magnetic fields can decay over time. And the insulation in the SSD transistor gates can degrade too. I have also seen hard drives that were stored for several years where the lubricant in the drive motor hardened and the drive motor was seized.

Moral of the story? Have multiple backups with multiple and current technologies.

And if very long term storage is needed, look into optical disks. Some are designed to last several 100 years!

One more thing to consider is technologies become obsolete. Your 10 year old backup media is useless if your current computer does not support the interface to use it. For example, I used to maintain backups on tape and floppy disks. My current computer and OS don't support those drives any longer. So I learned long ago to go through my backups every few years and transfer them to the latest "current" technologies.

dirtyferret · Nov 23, 2020

TheLostSwede said:
For backup SSDs don't make sense, as they lose charge over time. In other words, if they're not powered on from time to time, the data will get corrupted.
Obviously this can happen to hard drives as well, but with regards to them losing the magnetic charge. However, it would take much longer for this to happen on a hard drive than an SSD.

Beyond that, one is not really more or less reliable than the other. Hard drives are mechanical and mechanical parts fail. SSDs rely on flash which can fail for no reason and then you're screwed.

If it's important, documents for Kids school, taxes, wife's pics of our family, etc., I back everything up on a old HDD using my docking station and a portable HDD that goes in a fireproof safe.

Bill_Bright said:
Some are designed to last several 100 years!

The tech world version of...

Bill_Bright · Nov 23, 2020

dirtyferret said:
The tech world version of...

LOL How true!

ThrashZone · Nov 23, 2020

Hi,
Bigger they are the more they hurt.

WhiteNoise · Nov 23, 2020

I haven't had one go bust yet. I prefer Intel for their dependability but I have a few other brands as well. I bought an 80GB Intel SSD back when SSD's first came on the market. It is still running strong to this day.

Hachi_Roku256563 · Nov 23, 2020

Hardrives are way more reliable when it comes to long term use and large amounts of right I strongly recommned going harddrive

silentbogo · Nov 23, 2020

It's also worth paying attention to disaster recovery.
Normally, if HDD fails, you can still get some of your data back. with a few bad blocks you can still re-image the disk and keep on going. Same with MDisks or BD-R's - even if it's old and beat-up, you can still get some data back from it (assuming it's still round and has some resemblance of a readable surface).
With SSDs almost any kind of failure is fatal. You'll get lucky if it remembers to switch to read-only mode if flash storage degrades to some point, but in all other cases (which is 99% of all cases in my experience), you can end up with a paperweight, or it's fixable by reflashing the controller firmware (which also remaps NAND and kills all of your data). And read-only mode is also not a guarantee that you can get all of your data back.
SSDs themselves are actually more reliable than HDDs nowadays (especially comparing to CMR), but only as a daily driver. Definitely not a "backup" solution.

Anyways, HDDs are good only for short-term storage or as intermediate/secondary backups. If it's a one-time deal, I'd rather go with a bunch of Mdisks. If you are planning on large periodic backups, LTO-5 is a best bang for the buck right now. You can get a tape drive for ~$300, and stock on some 3TB tape cartridges at $20-25/ea. I should probably hunt a bit on eBay and get one myself. Seen some tasty lots, like a drive + 10-pack of 3TB tape + LSI SAS card for a little over $400.

ThrashZone · Nov 23, 2020

Hi,
Most the issues are backing up large ssd's
Hdd's are as reliable as it gets I've never had an issue with one personally even restoring a system image off ones I made four years ago lol

Deleted member 193596 · Nov 23, 2020

modern HDDs are crap.

SMR, unreliable, loud...

i have 500GB SSDs that have around 400TBW and zero dead sectors. and i only had one dead SSD in my whole life and that was at the first day after installing it. (i have over 10)

ThrashZone · Nov 23, 2020

HI,
Western digital seem fine I usually get the black for the speed but do also have a couple blue.
Had more ssd's die than hdd's mostly killed by linux freaking crucial firmware crap

Win-10 put one hdd to permanent sleep but it was a really old one.

silentbogo · Nov 24, 2020

WarTherapy1195 said:
SMR, unreliable, loud...

Yep, got a pair of 4TB Seagate Compute drives, and both got extremely lout only 5-6mo into use. One of them got so bad, I could hear it on the 1st floor in a 2-story house, while the server was hidden all the way in the attic. R/W speeds also degraded drastically. Started at rock-solid 180MB/s R/W, now it's barely half that even for relatively small 1-2GB transfers, and it only gets worse with time.

Hachi_Roku256563 · Nov 24, 2020

Ive had 10 year old drives that are running fine seems like your system has a problem

Bubble99 · Nov 24, 2020

TheLostSwede said:
For backup SSDs don't make sense, as they lose charge over time. In other words, if they're not powered on from time to time, the data will get corrupted.
Obviously this can happen to hard drives as well, but with regards to them losing the magnetic charge. However, it would take much longer for this to happen on a hard drive than an SSD.

Beyond that, one is not really more or less reliable than the other. Hard drives are mechanical and mechanical parts fail. SSDs rely on flash which can fail for no reason and then you're screwed.

So how often should SSD be powered up? Every three years?

And normally how long do SSD last 10 to 15 years?

I hear CDs and DVDs only last about 15 to 20 years. And hard drives normally last 5 to 8 years. With some hard drives can last longer than 8 years but most normally last 5 to 8 years. But hard drives can be powered off for 5 years or more and still keep the data?

I hear floppy drives and tape drives last the longest.

silentbogo said:
Yep, got a pair of 4TB Seagate Compute drives, and both got extremely lout only 5-6mo into use. One of them got so bad, I could hear it on the 1st floor in a 2-story house, while the server was hidden all the way in the attic. R/W speeds also degraded drastically. Started at rock-solid 180MB/s R/W, now it's barely half that even for relatively small 1-2GB transfers, and it only gets worse with time.

Most likely I will have to get two hard drives or two SSDs as back up and every 5 years replace them. So there is two back ups.

WarTherapy1195 said:
modern HDDs are crap.

SMR, unreliable, loud...

i have 500GB SSDs that have around 400TBW and zero dead sectors. and i only had one dead SSD in my whole life and that was at the first day after installing it. (i have over 10)

So what do you use if you hate hard drives and SSD?

You can’t get 4 TB tape drive and even if there was 4 TB tape drive it will not work with windows 10.

ThrashZone said:
HI,
Western digital seem fine I usually get the black for the speed but do also have a couple blue.
Had more ssd's die than hdd's mostly killed by linux freaking crucial firmware crap
Win-10 put one hdd to permanent sleep but it was a really old one.

Well not sure your reference here? Are you saying Linux is really bad at destroying hard drives and SSD?

Is that because of Linux kernel or drivers supported by the Linux community and not the company that makes the hard drive or SSD?

Hachi_Roku256563 · Nov 24, 2020

Bruh why was this all 1 post
Also in my experience the conditions a backup drive has to endure Lots of writing 1 big file very little reading it must better to get a harddrive

Bubble99 · Nov 24, 2020

Isaac` said:
Bruh why was this all 1 post
Also in my experience the conditions a backup drive has to endure Lots of writing 1 big file very little reading it must better to get a harddrive

It seems the software techpowerup forum uses seem to keep it all in one post for some strange reason.

Hachi_Roku256563 · Nov 24, 2020

Sorry i asked why it was multiple threads i got 4 notifications

TheLostSwede · Nov 24, 2020

SSDs can lose data in as little as 7 days without power

New data suggests that enterprise SSD data retention can fall below a week, while client data can reach 1-2 weeks in extreme temperatures.

www.extremetech.com

Rei · Nov 24, 2020

Bubble99 said:
So how often should SSD be powered up? Every three years?

That depends on the storage condition. In an ideal storage space, SSD would not need to be powered-up for typically 10 years. But powering it up is not a difficult thing to do. Just plug it in & turn it on for a minute & that's it.

Bubble99 said:
And normally how long do SSD last 10 to 15 years?

If using it only as a backup then they will much longer than that.

Bubble99 said:
I hear CDs and DVDs only last about 15 to 20 years. And hard drives normally last 5 to 8 years. With some hard drives can last longer than 8 years but most normally last 5 to 8 years. But hard drives can be powered off for 5 years or more and still keep the data?

CDs & DVDs doesn't last long due to a thing called "disc-rot" where the material compound within disc starts degrading & rotting. The exception to this are archival disc which are built to last for theoretically more than a century.
As a powered-off backup drive, mechanical hard disk drives can prolly last longer than SSDs.

Bubble99 said:
I hear floppy drives and tape drives last the longest.

While I'm not so sure about that but they are now an obsolete & no longer viable backup technology as noted by @Bill_Bright with the increasing drop in HDD price.

Bubble99 said:
Most likely I will have to get two hard drives or two SSDs as back up and every 5 years replace them. So there is two back ups.

What a needlessly expensive solution to backing up your stuff. Just get the highest capacity mechanical HDD you can afford, back it up there, if your HDD came with a box or you have a container box, then store it there & that's it. Since you are likely gonna be adding and/or updating additional files to backup in the future then that is considered also powering up your HDD.
Or a better, more convenient & possibly much cheaper solution would be to use an online cloud storage solutions that specifically deals with backing up files. Two that I would recommend is SpiderOak and BackBlaze. I use BackBlaze while an employee of mine uses SpiderOak & we're both satisfied by their services & pricing.

TheLostSwede said:
SSDs can lose data in as little as 7 days without power

New data suggests that enterprise SSD data retention can fall below a week, while client data can reach 1-2 weeks in extreme temperatures.

www.extremetech.com

Dunno, man... I'm rather skeptical of that article considering it's mostly enterprise SSDs, decade old SSDs & an outdated article with an outdated analytical study.

TheLostSwede · Nov 24, 2020

Rei said:
Dunno, man... I'm rather skeptical of that article considering it's mostly enterprise SSDs, decade old SSDs & an outdated article with an outdated analytical study.

Things haven't changed for the better. In fact TLC and even more so QLC should be even more prone to the same issues.
In all fairness, controllers have improved a lot in the past couple of years, but that doesn't make up for much worse NAND, even if the error correction has improved to make up for some of this. If you actually read the article, you'll see that it's better to write to the NAND at high temperatures, but it's then important to let the SSD cool down before shutting off the system, as that combination leads to the best possible data retention in the NAND flash.

Rei · Nov 24, 2020

TheLostSwede said:
Things haven't changed for the better. In fact TLC and even more so QLC should be even more prone to the same issues.
In all fairness, controllers have improved a lot in the past couple of years, but that doesn't make up for much worse NAND, even if the error correction has improved to make up for some of this. If you actually read the article, you'll see that it's better to write to the NAND at high temperatures, but it's then important to let the SSD cool down before shutting off the system, as that combination leads to the best possible data retention in the NAND flash.

You got a point actually. When I wrote that comment earlier, I was only thinking about the SSD flash controller & the whole 3D NAND & V-NAND thing but I didn't thought about the whole TLC & QLC issue.

Anyway, in the context of OP using SSDs as backup solution, I dunno how viably good it is as a backup storage but I would never recommend just based on the terrible price-to-capacity value.

silentbogo · Nov 24, 2020

Bubble99 said:
So how often should SSD be powered up? Every three years?

TheLostSwede said:
Things haven't changed for the better. In fact TLC and even more so QLC should be even more prone to the same issues.

It's hard to say, because most research is old, and/or hidden behind stupid academic paywall.
The only solid thing we have, is what's in JEDEC classification, e.g. 1 year @ 30C for Client SSD, and 3mo @ 40C for Enterprise.
I'm sure there's big difference between SLC/MLC/TLC/QLC in terms of storage, but no way to verify due to lack of info (except JEDEC class, of course).

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How long do SSD last and how reliable are SSD?

Bubble99

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Jetster

Vya Domus

TheLostSwede

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Bill_Bright

dirtyferret

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ThrashZone

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Hachi_Roku256563

silentbogo

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ThrashZone

Deleted member 193596

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ThrashZone

silentbogo

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Hachi_Roku256563

Bubble99

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Hachi_Roku256563

Bubble99

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TheLostSwede

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SSDs can lose data in as little as 7 days without power

Rei

SSDs can lose data in as little as 7 days without power

TheLostSwede

News Editor

Rei

silentbogo

Moderator

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