Solid state drives not reliable

[Alan L.]

Got 5 new dell computers and replaced the hard drives with SSD drives from crucial. In 6 weeks two have totally failed and one is iffy. Replaced one with an intel SSd so far so good, replacing another with intel today. These are very fast but very disappointed in the reliability. Thank God for Symantec system recovery. These are 512gb drives. The Intels are 480.

[mikehaugen]

I have just recently heard about these as I am not up on new technology like I was. This is good to know, though I actually expected the opposite. If I am not mistaken, isn't it usually the moving parts that fail on a traditional hard drive?

[tcartwri]

you'll find that it's the drive interface that's not completely compliant with the bios. That's what we found a number of years ago when they first came out. Seems to be a common thing with the sst drives. We spent allot of money on testing hardware that got shelved. Surprised it hasn't improved since then though.

[jinman]

Alan, I think Tim is spot-on. As with any new technology, the software bugs are there to "byte" you in the butt. Using a drive from a major supplier like Intel is probably the best cure to insure complete compatibility. You can be pretty sure that Dell and Intel test each others hardware/firmware/software for compatibility.

BTW: Just noticed that the Crucial M4 series has a MTBF of 1.2 million hours vs the industry standard of 1.5 million hours. I know that's wacky when you start counting millions of hours, but reduced numbers might also represent cooling or low level silicon issues in their construction.

[RobertN]

Wonder what the thermals look like on those systems...

[Alan L.]

Alan, I think Tim is spot-on. As with any new technology, the software bugs are there to "byte" you in the butt. Using a drive from a major supplier like Intel is probably the best cure to insure complete compatibility. You can be pretty sure that Dell and Intel test each others hardware/firmware/software for compatibility.

BTW: Just noticed that the Crucial M4 series has a MTBF of 1.2 million hours vs the industry standard of 1.5 million hours. I know that's wacky when you start counting millions of hours, but reduced numbers might also represent cooling or low level silicon issues in their construction.

Yea that is a point, unforutnately the first 2 failed about 1,999,800 hours too early. These are in fact Crucial M4 drives and they were about $400 each. We are replacing with Intel drives as they go out. I am actually now more concerned that the Symantec system restore software just flat won't work for us. Gonna try Acronis instead. Every time we have tried restoring from Symantec the drive won't boot and there is a "bootmgr.ini missing" error that we have not been able to correct.

[jinman]

Yea that is a point, unforutnately the first 2 failed about 1,999,800 hours too early.

Did you mean 1,199,800 hours too early? 1.2 million is 1,200,000. I hate it when I have to correct an accountant.

[Alan L.]

Did you mean 1,199,800 hours too early? 1.2 million is 1,200,000. I hate it when I have to correct an accountant.

Thanks for the correction. Unfortunately most accountants are terrible with figures......unless we have a calculator handy.......

[Alan L.]

Something to add to this discussion....I got 8 computers from Dell - 5 came with basic traditional 7200 RPM SATA hard drives (because you can't get Dell Optiplex computers without drives). We pulled those 5 out and replaced with Crucial M4 SSDs purchased from another source. Those 5 are for power users (myself included) and also have I7-3700 processors and 16GB of RAM. We also got 3 with only 8GM of RAM and Hybrid drives (have a built in cache that sort of acts like an SSD).

In the process of restoring from images I have had a chance to compare the speeds. Frankly the hybrids are surprisingly fast and nearly as fast as the SSDs. The traditional hard drives are extremely slow by comparison to either the the SSDs or the hybrids. If we have any more trouble with the SSDs the hybrids are the way to go, assuming they turn out to be reliable. So far so good. Just talking about boot time, my desktop in its current configuration takes about 30 seconds to boot and once the login screen comes up it is like 3 seconds after logging in to the domain. The same exact system setup restored to a traditional hard drive (which i am holding in case of SSD failure) takes about 2:45 to boot. The hybrids I haven't timed but seem not that much different from the boot time of the SSDs. These are all configured about the same, with the same applications installed.

[jymbee]

Interestiing. The SSD on my main system (Crucial m4 256GB) has worked flawlessly. At the same time, the other HDs (2x2TB 7200 internal & 2x2TB 7200 hot-swaps) have also not had any problem. So, hard to say in my case any one is more reliable than the others. I do notice a clear edge in startup time compared to the other PCs here. But given it only starts once a day, not that big a deal.

Got 5 new dell computers and replaced the hard drives with SSD drives from crucial. In 6 weeks two have totally failed and one is iffy. Replaced one with an intel SSd so far so good, replacing another with intel today. These are very fast but very disappointed in the reliability. Thank God for Symantec system recovery. These are 512gb drives. The Intels are 480.