8 ms·

Waiting for a 1TB SSD below $1 per GB?

75 points by disposition2 14y ago

bitcartel 14y ago
As SSD technology improves and prices lower, it's great that consumers can easily upgrade their laptops with a 960GB SSD or perhaps a 480GB mSATA SSD. Meanwhile, MBP Retina owners have to sit on the sidelines because Apple decided they didn't want to use a standard connector. "Keep in mind that although the interface is electrically SATA, it is not physically SATA or mSATA or any other standardized interface - this is entirely Apple's own creation." http://www.anandtech.com/show/6005/apples-new-ssd-its-fast http://www.anandtech.com/show/6005/apples-new-ssd-its-fast
gnosis 14y ago
How does the longevity of SSDs compare to HDs these days?
- Einherji 14y ago
  Usually, an SSD will by far outlast an HDD. The risk of drive failiures is always quite large with mechanical drives. This of course depends on useage, but with an estimated workload of 10 GiB/day a 256GiB will last for about 70 years[1]. (These numbers are for MLC NAND) [1] : http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung-ssd-840-testing-the-endurance-of-tlc-nand http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung-ssd-840-testing-t...
  - rolleiflex 14y ago
    Also, most of the time, when SSD's fail, they become read-only, which is a far better outcome than a spinner starting to scratch its plates. So even if SSD's had short lifespans it wouldn't be as destructive.
    - cake 14y ago
      most of the time All the crashes I've read about on the web were fatal failures with total data loss. I hope it'll get better.
      - w1ntermute 14y ago
        Well, here's one story on the web for you about SSD failure without total data loss: I've had an SSD that just refused to write anymore, but all the data was still readable. All I had to do was buy another SSD, dd the old SSD's data over to it, and go on my merry way.
        pessimizer 14y ago
        Same thing happened to me, and at the time I had no idea that that was how SSDs failed - it was my OS disk, and suddenly I couldn't sudo. Popped in a bootable USB, and had the data copied off and a replacement SSD in within a couple of hours. I wouldn't depend on that failure mode, but it's a nice feature.
      - hosay123 14y ago
        My first, only, and last-until-hell-freezes-over SSD went crazy last week, after a series of bizarre kernel panics that now appear to relate entirely to the SSD (machine is fine after a reinstall). Following a final reboot the Macbook's firmware displayed a "missing startup folder" icon. On flying home I discover that several GB from the start of the drive has gone missing entirely (check out http://i.imgur.com/riK4CBt.gif http://i.imgur.com/riK4CBt.gif -- grey is good, black is zero blocks). Never again relying on a disk technology that doesn't respond to a hammer when it's dying.
        aaronblohowiak 14y ago
        One data point is a poor basis for decision making.
        hosay123 14y ago
        Right. So I could drop $2-3k on gaining experience from a meaningful sample size, all the while risking more lost business days, or I could just believe all those anecdotes it took me close to half a decade to convince myself to ignore. I've got bigger problems than seek latency, will retry in a couple more years.
    - chollida1 14y ago
      Really? I've had 4 SSD drives fail across 20 desktops and in all cases the data loss has been total. I've never seen, heck or even heard of, an SSD drive go int read only mode. Is there some special tinkering you need to do to get one to go into read only mode?
  - fulafel 14y ago
    they typically eat your data by corrupting their internal state. I hear about this kind of ssd crashes way more often than conventional HDD crashes. flash wear is a red herring and is dwarfed by these FTL corruptions.
- pfg 14y ago
  If you're not doing anything crazy with them, you probably won't be able to kill your average MLC/TLC SSD. Let's say you write 20 GB to your SSD every day. The SSDs mentioned in the article have a lifetime of 72 TB, which means you can write 20 GB daily for more than 10 years. Also, 72 TB is probably a pretty pessimistic estimate. That being said, if you do anything I/O-intensive (write-heavy databases, anything with lots of small write operations, ...), YMMV. That's why "enterprise" SSDs are still unbelievably expensive - quite often they use SLC technology (though there are more and more server MLCs) and they usually have way more "spare" cells which are used to replace other cells killed by too many writes.
  - tobylane 14y ago
    Enterprise quality seems to mean a different quality improvement each time. Is there any realistic point in average heavy desktop users sticking to SLC?
    - pfg 14y ago
      Can't think of a reason. SLC is a bit faster at writes, but a lot of new MLC SSDs are able to fully saturate SATA 6Gb/s, so there's really no point in going any faster. If you're really worried about write endurance, stick to MLCs with a lot of spare cells (I think Intel is a good choice there).
- cnlwsu 14y ago
  Completely anecdotal and kinda meaningless but I've never had one fail and I've bought 6 drives (ocz and samsung) over last 2 years. Nor have any of my friends/family who own them ever experienced a failure.
- pravda 14y ago
  My personal failure rate with SSD drives has been close to 50%. I like them, I use them, but I don't trust them!
  - justin_ 14y ago
    50% sounds pretty bad. How long did they last? Were you able to recover your data from them?
    - wcfields 14y ago
      Must be an OCZ user ;)
    - pravda 14y ago
      I had an Intel 32G X25-V value drive that failed and lost all its data. And then a Corsair drive that failed and I sent it back and they sent a replacement. I have a bunch of OCZ drives but so far I don't think any of them have failed. Just bought a 'refurb' SATA 2 OCZ for $62/120G. Never lost any data because I used the SSDs as boot drives, not for data storage.
  - driverdan 14y ago
    Details? I've only had one fail about 4 years ago but that was almost straight out of the box so it was bad from the factory.
- ukandy 14y ago
  No, but I have full faith in SSDs for laptops and desktops now. I've never found the need for them a server. Does anyone know of any large scale operations using them in servers?
  - pfg 14y ago
    Netflix appears to be using SSD instances for their Cassandra deployment on AWS.[1] Also, more and more hosting providers start offering SSD-based products (e.g. DigitalOcean) [1]: http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/benchmarking-high-performance-io-with.html http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/benchmarking-high-perfor...
  - __mharrison__ 14y ago
    Facebook, Apple, Google...
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    DigitalOcean[1] is a ssd-only VM provider, by their numbers they should have a few TB in SSD storage. Not that large, but would be interesting to hear about their experiences. [1] https://www.digitalocean.com/ https://www.digitalocean.com/
    - ukandy 14y ago
      Yes. It would be interesting to read about their experiences as I presume most large SSD deployments would be for databases only.
  - ericd 14y ago
    SSDs in your database server is a wonderful thing.
- specto 14y ago
  They're more predictable on lifespan, but hardware errors can always occur.
- j_s 14y ago
  The main problem is the failure mode (complete). Either you get a bad one or, like most, you don't... but if it breaks, it's completely gone. I'd like to know how many have experienced a failure after 90 days or whatever the cut-off is so that I can stop worrying so much beyond a certain point.
- mike_esspe 14y ago
  One thing you should care with consumer SSDs - is always to have a backup battery for power loss. Due to large write cache it's easy to lose a large chunk of file system. Enterprise SSDs usually have supercapacitors to take care of cache flushing. http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?278816-SSD-s-cache-and-power-loss-protection http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?278816-SS...
  - tobylane 14y ago
    What power and time are we talking about? Could one high draw cell or AAA battery do it?
- DanBC 14y ago
  ...and I'm interested to know what the state of forensic-style software is for SSDs. (Not for recovery; people should have back-ups. But for investigations.)
- chiph 14y ago
  I just got a SMART error on my gaming machine SSD over the weekend. I'm starting the backup process to external USB drive tonight... just in case.
- r0s 14y ago
  Look at the warranty, expecting any device to outlast it's warranty is naive. Longevity has no bearing on the need for backups either, so SSD vs. HDD longevity is irrelevant, in my opinion.
dandrews 14y ago
Anand Lal Shimpi has done his usual superb job tearing this one down: http://www.anandtech.com/print/6884/crucial-micron-m500-review-960gb-480gb-240gb-120gb http://www.anandtech.com/print/6884/crucial-micron-m500-revi...
UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
It both shock and disgusts me how few laptops sold have SSDs in them. Even today only the very top end and very bottom end ships with SSDs (Netbooks, and Macbook Pros respectively). Everything in the middle is purely HDD even with SSDs offered widely for the same amount of money if you're willing to lose storage (e.g. 256 GB SSD == 1 TB HDDs). Come on Asus, Dell, and similar. Start offering SSDs across your entire range. I should get the choice of either a smaller/faster SSD or larger/slower HDD. It isn't a premium feature and hasn't been for a long time.
- kmfrk 14y ago
  The next generation of consoles - at least the PS4 - presumably come with a mechanical harddrive. That honestly surprised and disappointed me a bit, but I'll wait a few years, until I take the plunge anyway. At that point, they hopefully come with SSDs by default.
  - UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
    Which is odd as you can install an SSD in the PS3 just fine and while it only offers a minor speed improvement (slow SATA connection) it still works.
- Osmium 14y ago
  All Apple notebooks have SSDs now, not just the Pros, and they start at $999 -- not cheap, but not just the "very top end" either...
- corresation 14y ago
  It actually disgusts you? I think you might want to spend your emotions more cautiously. I don't quite understand the argument you're really making (a less polite way is to say that you sound unreasonably entitled). "Asus, Dell, and similar" aren't making SSDs. They're buying them. And yes, it is and remains a premium feature.
  - UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
    Entitled? I want to give them money and get a product in return. But the market isn't supplying the product I want. I can buy it through other supply channels but this small handful of companies are intentionally sitting in innovative new technology so they can sell you it at a massive markup in a limited range of their "premium" products. For example, just look at the Chromebook. Clearly it is possible to supply at a reasonable price, but yet a MORE expensive, Dell, Asus, or similar wont.
mark-r 14y ago
Is it my imagination, or have prices stalled at $1/GB for a while now? Where's Moore's Law when you need it?
edward 14y ago
I made a page listing that tracks the SSD available from Newegg sorted by price per TB. http://edwardbetts.com/price_per_tb/ssd/ http://edwardbetts.com/price_per_tb/ssd/ Ignore the hybrid SSDs and the refurbished drives at the top of the list. The best prices are on 256GB disks. For a 256GB SanDisk drive that is in stock the price is $169.99 or $0.664 per GB. There is a 960GB Crucial drive for $649.99 or $0.677 per GB.
bcoates 14y ago
Does anyone know when Intel is going to come up with a 20nm, ~1TB successor to the 520? I've gotta buy more capacity soon, but i'd feel silly filling up all my bays with older 480GB drives a week before they come out.
- mahyarm 14y ago
  With the speed of SSD improvement, if you can afford to sit and wait, do so.
- wmf 14y ago
  IDF is tomorrow; they should give an SSD roadmap update. My impression is that Intel is getting out of the consumer SSD market.
hp50g 14y ago
I'm sure some people are just crap hoarders. I've got a 128gb ssd and my data backup size for the last 30 years is about 12Gb including music and photos leaving the disk about 60Gb used. 1Tb? Never shall I fill one.
- ISL 14y ago
  It's reasonably easy to fill a 16GB card with < 1 yr's worth of mountaineering still photos from a modern digital camera. Documents are small, but images and video, especially at high quality, consume a lot of space. Are all the photos great? No. Will I know which ones will prove useful in the future? Only approximately. Storage is cheap!
  - hp50g 14y ago
    I tend to delete all the shit photos up front. I perhaps end up with 10-15 a trip that get kept (60-90 Mb off my D3100 in jpeg fine). Storage is cheap but ending up with so much noise you can't see the interesting bits is expensive on time, and that is finite.

75 points by disposition2 14y ago

As SSD technology improves and prices lower, it's great that consumers can easily upgrade their laptops with a 960GB SSD or perhaps a 480GB mSATA SSD. Meanwhile, MBP Retina owners have to sit on the sidelines because Apple decided they didn't want to use a standard connector. "Keep in mind that although the interface is electrically SATA, it is not physically SATA or mSATA or any other standardized interface - this is entirely Apple's own creation." http://www.anandtech.com/show/6005/apples-new-ssd-its-fast http://www.anandtech.com/show/6005/apples-new-ssd-its-fast

gnosis 14y ago

How does the longevity of SSDs compare to HDs these days?

Einherji 14y ago
Usually, an SSD will by far outlast an HDD. The risk of drive failiures is always quite large with mechanical drives. This of course depends on useage, but with an estimated workload of 10 GiB/day a 256GiB will last for about 70 years[1]. (These numbers are for MLC NAND) [1] : http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung-ssd-840-testing-the-endurance-of-tlc-nand http://www.anandtech.com/show/6459/samsung-ssd-840-testing-t...
- rolleiflex 14y ago
  Also, most of the time, when SSD's fail, they become read-only, which is a far better outcome than a spinner starting to scratch its plates. So even if SSD's had short lifespans it wouldn't be as destructive.
  - cake 14y ago
    most of the time All the crashes I've read about on the web were fatal failures with total data loss. I hope it'll get better.
    - w1ntermute 14y ago
      Well, here's one story on the web for you about SSD failure without total data loss: I've had an SSD that just refused to write anymore, but all the data was still readable. All I had to do was buy another SSD, dd the old SSD's data over to it, and go on my merry way.
      - pessimizer 14y ago
        Same thing happened to me, and at the time I had no idea that that was how SSDs failed - it was my OS disk, and suddenly I couldn't sudo. Popped in a bootable USB, and had the data copied off and a replacement SSD in within a couple of hours. I wouldn't depend on that failure mode, but it's a nice feature.
    - hosay123 14y ago
      My first, only, and last-until-hell-freezes-over SSD went crazy last week, after a series of bizarre kernel panics that now appear to relate entirely to the SSD (machine is fine after a reinstall). Following a final reboot the Macbook's firmware displayed a "missing startup folder" icon. On flying home I discover that several GB from the start of the drive has gone missing entirely (check out http://i.imgur.com/riK4CBt.gif http://i.imgur.com/riK4CBt.gif -- grey is good, black is zero blocks). Never again relying on a disk technology that doesn't respond to a hammer when it's dying.
      - aaronblohowiak 14y ago
        One data point is a poor basis for decision making.
        hosay123 14y ago
        Right. So I could drop $2-3k on gaining experience from a meaningful sample size, all the while risking more lost business days, or I could just believe all those anecdotes it took me close to half a decade to convince myself to ignore. I've got bigger problems than seek latency, will retry in a couple more years.
  - chollida1 14y ago
    Really? I've had 4 SSD drives fail across 20 desktops and in all cases the data loss has been total. I've never seen, heck or even heard of, an SSD drive go int read only mode. Is there some special tinkering you need to do to get one to go into read only mode?
- fulafel 14y ago
  they typically eat your data by corrupting their internal state. I hear about this kind of ssd crashes way more often than conventional HDD crashes. flash wear is a red herring and is dwarfed by these FTL corruptions.
pfg 14y ago
If you're not doing anything crazy with them, you probably won't be able to kill your average MLC/TLC SSD. Let's say you write 20 GB to your SSD every day. The SSDs mentioned in the article have a lifetime of 72 TB, which means you can write 20 GB daily for more than 10 years. Also, 72 TB is probably a pretty pessimistic estimate. That being said, if you do anything I/O-intensive (write-heavy databases, anything with lots of small write operations, ...), YMMV. That's why "enterprise" SSDs are still unbelievably expensive - quite often they use SLC technology (though there are more and more server MLCs) and they usually have way more "spare" cells which are used to replace other cells killed by too many writes.
- tobylane 14y ago
  Enterprise quality seems to mean a different quality improvement each time. Is there any realistic point in average heavy desktop users sticking to SLC?
  - pfg 14y ago
    Can't think of a reason. SLC is a bit faster at writes, but a lot of new MLC SSDs are able to fully saturate SATA 6Gb/s, so there's really no point in going any faster. If you're really worried about write endurance, stick to MLCs with a lot of spare cells (I think Intel is a good choice there).
cnlwsu 14y ago
Completely anecdotal and kinda meaningless but I've never had one fail and I've bought 6 drives (ocz and samsung) over last 2 years. Nor have any of my friends/family who own them ever experienced a failure.
pravda 14y ago
My personal failure rate with SSD drives has been close to 50%. I like them, I use them, but I don't trust them!
- justin_ 14y ago
  50% sounds pretty bad. How long did they last? Were you able to recover your data from them?
  - wcfields 14y ago
    Must be an OCZ user ;)
  - pravda 14y ago
    I had an Intel 32G X25-V value drive that failed and lost all its data. And then a Corsair drive that failed and I sent it back and they sent a replacement. I have a bunch of OCZ drives but so far I don't think any of them have failed. Just bought a 'refurb' SATA 2 OCZ for $62/120G. Never lost any data because I used the SSDs as boot drives, not for data storage.
- driverdan 14y ago
  Details? I've only had one fail about 4 years ago but that was almost straight out of the box so it was bad from the factory.
ukandy 14y ago
No, but I have full faith in SSDs for laptops and desktops now. I've never found the need for them a server. Does anyone know of any large scale operations using them in servers?
- pfg 14y ago
  Netflix appears to be using SSD instances for their Cassandra deployment on AWS.[1] Also, more and more hosting providers start offering SSD-based products (e.g. DigitalOcean) [1]: http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/benchmarking-high-performance-io-with.html http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/benchmarking-high-perfor...
- __mharrison__ 14y ago
  Facebook, Apple, Google...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  DigitalOcean[1] is a ssd-only VM provider, by their numbers they should have a few TB in SSD storage. Not that large, but would be interesting to hear about their experiences. [1] https://www.digitalocean.com/ https://www.digitalocean.com/
  - ukandy 14y ago
    Yes. It would be interesting to read about their experiences as I presume most large SSD deployments would be for databases only.
- ericd 14y ago
  SSDs in your database server is a wonderful thing.
specto 14y ago
They're more predictable on lifespan, but hardware errors can always occur.
j_s 14y ago
The main problem is the failure mode (complete). Either you get a bad one or, like most, you don't... but if it breaks, it's completely gone. I'd like to know how many have experienced a failure after 90 days or whatever the cut-off is so that I can stop worrying so much beyond a certain point.
mike_esspe 14y ago
One thing you should care with consumer SSDs - is always to have a backup battery for power loss. Due to large write cache it's easy to lose a large chunk of file system. Enterprise SSDs usually have supercapacitors to take care of cache flushing. http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?278816-SSD-s-cache-and-power-loss-protection http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?278816-SS...
- tobylane 14y ago
  What power and time are we talking about? Could one high draw cell or AAA battery do it?
DanBC 14y ago
...and I'm interested to know what the state of forensic-style software is for SSDs. (Not for recovery; people should have back-ups. But for investigations.)
chiph 14y ago
I just got a SMART error on my gaming machine SSD over the weekend. I'm starting the backup process to external USB drive tonight... just in case.
r0s 14y ago
Look at the warranty, expecting any device to outlast it's warranty is naive. Longevity has no bearing on the need for backups either, so SSD vs. HDD longevity is irrelevant, in my opinion.

dandrews 14y ago

Anand Lal Shimpi has done his usual superb job tearing this one down: http://www.anandtech.com/print/6884/crucial-micron-m500-review-960gb-480gb-240gb-120gb http://www.anandtech.com/print/6884/crucial-micron-m500-revi...

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago

It both shock and disgusts me how few laptops sold have SSDs in them. Even today only the very top end and very bottom end ships with SSDs (Netbooks, and Macbook Pros respectively). Everything in the middle is purely HDD even with SSDs offered widely for the same amount of money if you're willing to lose storage (e.g. 256 GB SSD == 1 TB HDDs). Come on Asus, Dell, and similar. Start offering SSDs across your entire range. I should get the choice of either a smaller/faster SSD or larger/slower HDD. It isn't a premium feature and hasn't been for a long time.

kmfrk 14y ago
The next generation of consoles - at least the PS4 - presumably come with a mechanical harddrive. That honestly surprised and disappointed me a bit, but I'll wait a few years, until I take the plunge anyway. At that point, they hopefully come with SSDs by default.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  Which is odd as you can install an SSD in the PS3 just fine and while it only offers a minor speed improvement (slow SATA connection) it still works.
Osmium 14y ago
All Apple notebooks have SSDs now, not just the Pros, and they start at $999 -- not cheap, but not just the "very top end" either...
corresation 14y ago
It actually disgusts you? I think you might want to spend your emotions more cautiously. I don't quite understand the argument you're really making (a less polite way is to say that you sound unreasonably entitled). "Asus, Dell, and similar" aren't making SSDs. They're buying them. And yes, it is and remains a premium feature.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  Entitled? I want to give them money and get a product in return. But the market isn't supplying the product I want. I can buy it through other supply channels but this small handful of companies are intentionally sitting in innovative new technology so they can sell you it at a massive markup in a limited range of their "premium" products. For example, just look at the Chromebook. Clearly it is possible to supply at a reasonable price, but yet a MORE expensive, Dell, Asus, or similar wont.

mark-r 14y ago

Is it my imagination, or have prices stalled at $1/GB for a while now? Where's Moore's Law when you need it?

edward 14y ago

I made a page listing that tracks the SSD available from Newegg sorted by price per TB. http://edwardbetts.com/price_per_tb/ssd/ http://edwardbetts.com/price_per_tb/ssd/ Ignore the hybrid SSDs and the refurbished drives at the top of the list. The best prices are on 256GB disks. For a 256GB SanDisk drive that is in stock the price is $169.99 or $0.664 per GB. There is a 960GB Crucial drive for $649.99 or $0.677 per GB.

bcoates 14y ago

Does anyone know when Intel is going to come up with a 20nm, ~1TB successor to the 520? I've gotta buy more capacity soon, but i'd feel silly filling up all my bays with older 480GB drives a week before they come out.

mahyarm 14y ago
With the speed of SSD improvement, if you can afford to sit and wait, do so.
wmf 14y ago
IDF is tomorrow; they should give an SSD roadmap update. My impression is that Intel is getting out of the consumer SSD market.

hp50g 14y ago

I'm sure some people are just crap hoarders. I've got a 128gb ssd and my data backup size for the last 30 years is about 12Gb including music and photos leaving the disk about 60Gb used. 1Tb? Never shall I fill one.

ISL 14y ago
It's reasonably easy to fill a 16GB card with < 1 yr's worth of mountaineering still photos from a modern digital camera. Documents are small, but images and video, especially at high quality, consume a lot of space. Are all the photos great? No. Will I know which ones will prove useful in the future? Only approximately. Storage is cheap!
- hp50g 14y ago
  I tend to delete all the shit photos up front. I perhaps end up with 10-15 a trip that get kept (60-90 Mb off my D3100 in jpeg fine). Storage is cheap but ending up with so much noise you can't see the interesting bits is expensive on time, and that is finite.