FWIW and per Google and CMU retrospectives, the vendor-published MTBF rates appear very optimistic, about 36% of large HDD populations failed with no SMART data

FWIW and per Google and CMU retrospectives, the vendor-published MTBF rates appear very optimistic, about 36% of large HDD populations failed with no SMART data logged, and only about half of impending HDD failures were reasonably predicted by SMART. I'd expect the predictive values of various of the SMART data points to be (very) different with SSD, too. Until we get a population of these SSDs in the field and better studied, then we'll have a better idea of the failure rates, and whether SMART needs to be considered or reconsidered.