Anyone who says HDDs are more reliable than SSDs needs to have their brain checked. The annual replacement rates of hard disk drives have previously been reported to be 2-9%, which is high compared to the 4-10% of flash drives we see being replaced in a 4 year period.

Cave Waverider:

Personally, we've had many more HDDs fail in the past decade than SSDs. We haven't had an SSD fail over here after our first SSDs, two old OCZ Vertex 2 drives failed. We've had a bunch of more or less expensive SSDs from Samsung, OCZ, Corsair, SanDisk, PNY etc. in multiple systems since then using them as we would a HDD and all of them are still working without issue (need to knock on wood, I guess). In the meantime, 8 HDDs failed (a happy mix of Seagate, WD and Samsung) since that time. So from our personal experience, SSDs have proven to be more reliable than HDDs over the past decade or so. That can just be a coincidence, of course. But I don't have any more concerns about SSD reliablity compared to HDD reliability these days, at least for personal use.

Same here, I've had HDD's fail but not 1 SSD yet.

illrigger:

This. SSD wear and tear isn't a big deal anymore, once drives got to 500GB+ and TRIM became standard, the average lifespan of SSDs is in the 5 year+ range, which is about the same as average sh**ty desktop HDDs these days.

I'm honestly not convinced it was ever a big deal for most consumers. I still have an OCZ Vertex 120 in an office laptop that's basically been in use, every single weekday day, since 2009.

Reardan:

Yeah that's not what that says. Do you guys actually read this stuff before you send it or? What YOU linked SPECIFICALLY SAYS it DOES NOT "wear the nand".

do you need a re-education on how silicon degrading occurs?

I'd bet this is integrated into the new Xbox (but not the ps5 due to its custom ssd controller) and between this and the raw power of the system and all the crazy software tricks Microsoft came up with that will also be part of dx12u... This console is looking extremely high end.

schmidtbag:

Except for games that update frequently, games are actually one of the better things to put on an SSD if you're worried about lifespan, because they don't use write cycles all that often and most games today put their save files in your user folder. Games might write a lot of data, but as long as that data isn't replaced, the games actually protect your SSD from writes. Compare that to things like web browsers or your OS, where huge amounts of files are being written and overwritten on a regular basis. Bear in mind, the bigger the drive, the slower it will wear out (assuming your average write workload remains the same).

At this point an SSD wearing out isn't really an issue because you will probably upgrade them long before they die. I have a SSD that's 5 years old, has had games installed and uninstalled hundreds and hundreds of times because I have a gigabit connection I just constantly download when I need something. I also have a swap file on that SSD and it's just as fast and reliable as day 1. Super important files go on an hdd. My setup is like.... Windows and only windows on an SSD with all default folders set to an HDD, no swap file on the drive. 5 SSD's for games, 2 are nvme. Near the end of the year I'm going to build a ryzen system. My i7 5820k has been amazing. All (6) core overclock is stable up to 5.2 GHz but I run it at 4.4 It's still plenty capable but I want more cores and gen 4 pcie. My 2080ti demands more cores. CPU use usually hangs around 50% because games don't generally max you out unless your CPU is really old but games and other things perform better on more cores even if they are slower. Id also like to plug Intel's security holes. What a ramble lol...

Its gotten to the stage for me personally, that I only run SSD's in my PC. I have several old HDD's sitting in a cupboard. I don't think I'd purchase another HDD again.

mentor07825:

Mind if I ask, do you do a lot of database and heavy read/write loads on that particular PC @rl66 ?

asturur:

Endpoint that they broke? Lost data or are they not working anymore? I believe windows can damage SSD more than a game, that is basically write once read forever, savegames often goes on the system disk. For me lifespan has never been an issue, i tend to upgrade my SSD more than i consume it.

It was on pro use, and under an internal custom linux distro. Yes quite some lot of IO. It was fail of cell for the Samsung, and for the corsair it was unable to access to it... definitively. After those fail we passed to MLC, more expensive but no more problem.

Reardan:

Anyone who says HDDs are more reliable than SSDs needs to have their brain checked. The annual replacement rates of hard disk drives have previously been reported to be 2-9%, which is high compared to the 4-10% of flash drives we see being replaced in a 4 year period.

Have you checked the huge gap between "pro" and "normal", and this last one is inferior than HDD in lifespan, AND doesn't exist over 8To.

rl66:

Have you checked the huge gap between "pro" and "normal", and this last one is inferior than HDD in lifespan, AND doesn't exist over 8To.

No it isn't, I've literally shown you a research paper collaboration between the University of Toronto and Google and all you've said is "nuh uh"

I was bummed out. Finally got an X470 and X399 setup and it was pulled down. Been waiting to use it. I wanna use a 512gb NVME with my 2TB game drive on my threadripper and a 512gb nvme with my 3tb game drive in my x470 rig.

Reardan:

No it isn't, I've literally shown you a research paper collaboration between the University of Toronto and Google and all you've said is "nuh uh"

it's about SLC and MLC... it's PRO use and cost a lot BECAUSE they are super reliable. (As an exemple, Samsung 970 PRO in MLC 1To 430 Euro and the Samsung 970 EVO Plus in TLC 1To 230 Euro, also SLC is nearly twice the MLC's price). TLC and QLC are the main consumer one and have a much shorter life (but enough for most people) AND are less reliable too... The good compromise is TLC for main consumer and MLC for pro use. Most sold are TLC and QLC.

Reardan:

Yeah that's not what that says. Do you guys actually read this stuff before you send it or? What YOU linked SPECIFICALLY SAYS it DOES NOT "wear the nand". What it does say is that repeat reads (hundreds of thousands) can cause the voltage to drop in the surrounding cells which could cause a failed read. It then specifically says that, of course, controller designers are aware of this and the controller will just refresh the information if it's read too much. It was like literally a paragraph to read, that was it.

NOPE. You didn't keep reading did you? "When the count exceeds a target limit, the affected block is copied over to a new block, erased, then released to the block pool. The original block is as good as new after the erase." So after a certain number of reads a program/erase cycle (write) happens. Thus reading does wear out the SSD. It's probably a very small amount compared to normal writes but it still occurs.