SSD issues. Is it true?

ssal

ssal

Active Member
I read something that flashed thru my cell phone yesterday regarding SSD that is quite troubling. But I don't trust those stories from the web entirely because I don't know if it is a paid advertisement (or negative adv.).

The article said that the SSD is designed to hold data under normal temperature for only tow years. I the drive was not activated/used for two year, under ideal condition, all data could be lost. Secondly, it said, for every 5 degree C of temperature, it cuts the life in half. So if you leave a SSD near the window where it is subjected to sunlight which could increase temperature substantially, you may lose all you data in a lot shorter time.

Are those valid concerns?
 
I've never heard of anything like that. FWIW, one of my SSDs has been installed for over three years and is still flawless.
 
This may be the article the OP is referring to: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2920727/leaving-unpowered-ssds-in-a-warm-room-can-kill-your-data-fast.html

It's saying if you leave an unpowered machine with ssd storage in a warm room for as little as 2 weeks, it may start to lose data.

My personal experience is that I have a little netbook with an sdd in it that I hadn't powered up since last Christmas, I powered it on 2 days ago and it came up without issue after having been powered off for almost 5 months.

That doesn't prove or disprove the article, I do think there's a very real probability that the longer an ssd sits unpowered, the greater the chance of it losing data.
 
Assuming that's the same post ^^, the last part basically says you don't have to worry about it.

The impact on you: In reality, there’s probably not much risk to your primary computer unless you leave it in excessively high heat, in which case you may have other problems to address. But as more devices come with solid state storage as the standard, you may end up with some older computers whose data will deteriorate after a couple years' neglect. Consider this your routine reminder to back things up—preferably to a mechanical hard drive.
Click to expand...

SSD's are more reliable than mechanical HDD's due to no moving parts anyway, not withstanding these claims about temperature. Backups are your friend in any case.
 
Darren said:
SSD's are more reliable than mechanical HDD's due to no moving parts anyway
Click to expand...

I don't know, maybe somewhat true. I have mechanical drives that are 20 years old and run fine. Don't know what a SSD would be like at 20 years old, that's had the OS on it for 17 years. Bet if you got 10 SSDs and 10 mechanicals, both would have pretty much the same DOA % and the same defective % in the first 5 years.
 
20 years is centuries in the computer world

StrangleHold said:
I have mechanical drives that are 20 years old and run fine.
Click to expand...

20 years! I think IBM just introduced the AT with Intel 486 processor.

I think a hard drive of that era was full height and full size, and heavy too. The general capacity was 80 to 100 mb. And then it went to 500 mb, but you'd need a special format for DOS to recognize the added size. I want to reiterate that we are talking about mb (megabytes), not gb, or tb.

If you have those running, it would be running in a much older machine where the bay would accommodate such a drive.

With due respect, I can't imagine you have any mission critical data or application on those machines and drives.
 
Last edited:
LOL! You're a little off on your timeline. IBM introduced the AT with a 286 processor and 20MB hard drive in 1984. 20 years ago, in 1995, Intel introduced the Pentium Pro processor and disk drives were hitting 2GB in size.

Until recently, I had a working IBM 5160 PC XT with it's original full height 10MB disk drive that was manufactured in 1983. It was fully operational but I certainly didn't have any critical data stored on it.
 
Last edited:
ssal said:
20 years! I think IBM just introduced the AT with Intel 486 processor.

I think a hard drive of that era was full height and full size, and heavy too. The general capacity was 80 to 100 mb. And then it went to 500 mb, but you'd need a special format for DOS to recognize the added size. I want to reiterate that we are talking about mb (megabytes), not gb, or tb.

If you have those running, it would be running in a much older machine where the bay would accommodate such a drive.

With due respect, I can't imagine you have any mission critical data or application on those machines and drives.
Click to expand...

You need to check your dates!
 
I have a old ass netbook running windows 7 pro on a ocz vertex 2 ssd.. I dont even know how old it is now.. 4-5 years maybe more
 
Of course temperature always influences hardware since it generally changes the conductivity along with other aspects of the device. But it's normally only extreme changes that would make a realistic difference, for example varied normal running temperatures would only make differences on a really small scale.

Articles like that like to exaggerate a bit and/or base it on a bigger picture. Kinda like newspapers to grab people's attention. Besides SSD's have been around for a little while now, I think there would be more people kicking off and therefore it being more common knowledge if this was the case.
 
Darren said:
SSD's are more reliable than mechanical HDD's due to no moving parts anyway, not withstanding these claims about temperature. Backups are your friend in any case.
Click to expand...

They can still die at any point Darren, I've had one die on me out of the blue after just over a year of use. A HDD usually gives warning signs that they're about to die, but with SSDs those signs are not so easy to spot. They're just like flash drives - they can die without warning too. You're right, you need to backup data frequently.

I've been using SSDs for 4 years now (lots of them too - Crucials, SanDisks, Samsungs, OCZs, Kingstons - most brands now!) in lots of different systems in lots of different environments and I'd never heard about data being 'lost' if you store them in hot rooms or if you unplug them. Very strange.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top