3 ms·

I'll take reliability over almost anything. I work out on the road 200+ days of 365. A drive failing on me while out in the wilds would be a ~~~~ing catastrophe

I'll take reliability over almost anything. I work out on the road 200+ days of 365. A drive failing on me while out in the wilds would be a ~~~~ing catastrophe. I can picture it now, Sunday night, after a long flight, code modified on the flight, not in a remote GIT update in a couple of days... failure in such a scenario would mean i'm out of job. No thanks, I'll take the slow HDD

palish 15y ago
At my last job, they got me an SSD. About a month later, I started coding a new feature for their product. It was a few hours' worth of work, and they were using CVS, and didn't really have a good branching model, so I didn't do any work-in-progress checkins. While I was coding the feature, the SSD failed. This manifested itself via all sorts of strange compiler errors, and so I rebooted. After that, Windows didn't show the SSD anymore, and my code was never seen again. So, while the SSD did save me some time, I effectively lost it all when it failed, due in part to my stupidity, but also due to the fact that you need to understand that if you buy an SSD, you MUST plan for failure. This is not an option, this is "yes-I-will-wear-a-helmet-while-riding-a-motorcycle-at-70-mph". Contrast that with my Dell laptop. I bought it in ~2007, and I've never had a problem with it (except I've had to replace the dim screen a couple times).
- danudey 15y ago
  If you buy storage media, you must plan for failure. Having worked in data centres, I've seen spinning disk drives DOA, die after a week, die in clusters (sequential serials, different machines), etc. SSDs aren't 100% reliable, but neither are HDs. You lost your SSD at an inopportune time, and that sucks, but it could just as easily have been a spinning disk that died, or it could have died after you finished a nightly system backup so you had no data loss at all. It's pure coincidence.
dlsspy 15y ago
> I'll take reliability over almost anything. Then measure reliability by IO operation instead of wall clock time. I had a catastrophic failure in my MBP HDD after a couple years of use so heavy that if it were an HDD, I simply wouldn't've been able to have done all that work.
aristidb 15y ago
HDDs do fail, too. A lot. If drives failing for you is a catastrophe, you should consider taking backup media with you.
- jules 15y ago
  This may be anecdotal, but I've never had a HDD fail and neither do I know anyone who had a HDD fail.
  - jcnnghm 15y ago
    And how many drives do you have, and how long have you had them? In the last 15 years I've probably had 20 HDD's fail out of 150 total. There was a particularly bad period where I was dealing with about 15 Dell laptops with 1.8" HDD's. Many of those drives failed, some repeatedly. Bad enough that I was buying 5 drives at a time until we could replace the computers. HDD's from every manufacturer can and do fail at fairly high rates.
    - jules 15y ago
      If I'm counting correctly I've had 11 drives, and each was used on average 3-5 years I think. I've helped a lot of other people with their computers being the nerd kid, and the problem has not been a failed drive yet (and it has been other failed hardware, like RAM and video cards and sound cards). If you've had about 20 drives fail, and of 15 Dell laptops a lot of drives failed, some repeatedly, don't you think that your bad experience was primarily caused by that type of drive?
      - rm445 15y ago
        Hard drive failure is probabalistic. You're just one data point. There are plenty of people who have seen a moderate number of drive failures, and some people who have so many drives fail that you have to check that they aren't tapping them with a magnet for good luck or something. Not believing in hard drive failure because you haven't had any, despite the rest of the word telling you it's a fact of life... well, it says something interesting about human psychology, is all.

palish 15y ago

At my last job, they got me an SSD. About a month later, I started coding a new feature for their product. It was a few hours' worth of work, and they were using CVS, and didn't really have a good branching model, so I didn't do any work-in-progress checkins. While I was coding the feature, the SSD failed. This manifested itself via all sorts of strange compiler errors, and so I rebooted. After that, Windows didn't show the SSD anymore, and my code was never seen again. So, while the SSD did save me some time, I effectively lost it all when it failed, due in part to my stupidity, but also due to the fact that you need to understand that if you buy an SSD, you MUST plan for failure. This is not an option, this is "yes-I-will-wear-a-helmet-while-riding-a-motorcycle-at-70-mph". Contrast that with my Dell laptop. I bought it in ~2007, and I've never had a problem with it (except I've had to replace the dim screen a couple times).

danudey 15y ago
If you buy storage media, you must plan for failure. Having worked in data centres, I've seen spinning disk drives DOA, die after a week, die in clusters (sequential serials, different machines), etc. SSDs aren't 100% reliable, but neither are HDs. You lost your SSD at an inopportune time, and that sucks, but it could just as easily have been a spinning disk that died, or it could have died after you finished a nightly system backup so you had no data loss at all. It's pure coincidence.

dlsspy 15y ago

> I'll take reliability over almost anything. Then measure reliability by IO operation instead of wall clock time. I had a catastrophic failure in my MBP HDD after a couple years of use so heavy that if it were an HDD, I simply wouldn't've been able to have done all that work.

aristidb 15y ago

HDDs do fail, too. A lot. If drives failing for you is a catastrophe, you should consider taking backup media with you.

jules 15y ago
This may be anecdotal, but I've never had a HDD fail and neither do I know anyone who had a HDD fail.
- jcnnghm 15y ago
  And how many drives do you have, and how long have you had them? In the last 15 years I've probably had 20 HDD's fail out of 150 total. There was a particularly bad period where I was dealing with about 15 Dell laptops with 1.8" HDD's. Many of those drives failed, some repeatedly. Bad enough that I was buying 5 drives at a time until we could replace the computers. HDD's from every manufacturer can and do fail at fairly high rates.
  - jules 15y ago
    If I'm counting correctly I've had 11 drives, and each was used on average 3-5 years I think. I've helped a lot of other people with their computers being the nerd kid, and the problem has not been a failed drive yet (and it has been other failed hardware, like RAM and video cards and sound cards). If you've had about 20 drives fail, and of 15 Dell laptops a lot of drives failed, some repeatedly, don't you think that your bad experience was primarily caused by that type of drive?
    - rm445 15y ago
      Hard drive failure is probabalistic. You're just one data point. There are plenty of people who have seen a moderate number of drive failures, and some people who have so many drives fail that you have to check that they aren't tapping them with a magnet for good luck or something. Not believing in hard drive failure because you haven't had any, despite the rest of the word telling you it's a fact of life... well, it says something interesting about human psychology, is all.