My first few SSDs... Intel X25-Ms, 80GB, are coming up on 5 years in service. Still reading "100%" in Intel SSD Toolbox. Looks like these things will outlive me. Read a tech report where it commented, "While SATA III drives bench significantly higher than SATA II drives, user will be hard-pressed to notice any significant performance difference in day-to-day computing operations..." (Compiling code and other such drive-intensive operations are where SATA IIIs shine.) SSD Torture Test is up to 600TB on 240-256GB drives.... WAAAYYYYY more than manufacturers' warranties and waayyy more than anticipated before this test. And with significant over-provisioning reserves remaining, testers expect all the test drives to reach 1PB and beyond. No more spinners for me... all of my rigs run on SSDs... and have been for nearly 5 years. All of mine are Intel. http://techreport.com/review/26058/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-data-retention-after-600tb FWIW...
I've had two SSDs. One died after eighteen months. The other, after about 13 months, is showing bad sectors like the first one did. I suspect it will conk shortly. No more SSDs for me. Spinners forever.
LOL! 1. Apparently they are better now... don't hear many stories about problems. 2. Perhaps you bought "too cheap" before. Certain brands, especially OCZ, had LOTS of problems before... but apparently have bugs worked out now.
I think you're probably right. The lesson here may be to watch what you're buying. In both cases, these are EOM drives, one in an ASUS Aspire notebook (the one that died), the other in a Dell Precision tower (a single "disk error" that periodically winks into view...uh-oh). So lesson here may be...buy aftermarket, and buy the best.
My experience has been different. Never had an SSD go bad, and I've had some for 5 years. However, my experience with spinners has been the opposite, forcing me to do two backups of critical data. Currently using WD RED NAS Spinners for large backups and so far no problem but I did get one DOA from Newegg when ordering my drives. Important data in many cases is not something you can afford to lose, take your time to use the right stuff and backup correctly ie Two Backups, Separate Location.
I guess I'm just weird. I've never once had a spinner go bad on me. Not once. Ever. And I'm batting .500 on SSDs. Maybe not even. But again, might just be the hazards of OEM. For SSDs, just not spinners.
I've had about a dozen. One failed.... but Intel replaced quickly under warranty. Had backups, of course.
I have an Intel 40GB SSD when they first came out... 3+ years now. Worked okay. Another Intel SSD, about 120 GB for the laptop, 2+ years. Worked okay. Recently got a Sandisk 256GB for the laptop, a few months. So far okay. Guess just have to wait and see. Maybe still within the bell curve. On the other hand... all spinner drives, even dated back to PCs that were bought over 10 years ago... no problem experienced (Not that I use them much any more... just for online backup storage)... Technology advancements... wonderful. I still remember that days that we used to need to issue a PARK command to park the hard drives... if we forget... oh, drive hosed... young folks probably have no idea what that is...
Obviously, you made the right choice back then by not being cheap with your tools. There are different tiers out there, like with everything.. Different NANDs, different controllers (very important); going by I/O numbers alone is not prudent. Intel is primus inter pares, of course. Micron workstation and server class is also very dependable. Thank you for sharing
In the early days of SSDs, Intel was regarded as "most reliable", though never fastest. Reliability is the reason I bought Intels. (OCZ was especially bad with firmware problems.) Now you don't hear much about problems with any SSD maker these days, so it's likely they all got through their growing pains.... even OCZ.