"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 13 Aug 2014 06:19:09 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

Unlike HDs (which can last a week or several decades), SSDs have
a known finite lifespan.

Not a "known" lifetime. More like a bell curve of estimated lifetimes
based on uncorrectable errors.

I have to disagree. If a cell is good, on average, for 6000 write cycles, one
can easily compute how much data can be written to the drive before it becomes
useless.

Those unfamiliar with SSDs need to know that such drives -- including flash
drives -- include "leveling software" that spreads writes across the entire
disk. If a cell is good for 6000 writes, than a 256GB drive can tolerate
1536TB of data being written to it before becoming useless. (Of course, it can
still be read.)

A major problem with SSDs is that, to make them cheaper (for a given
capacity), the cells have to get smaller. And smaller cells won't tolerate as
many write cycles.

My boot drive is a 256GB SSD. Only about 25% of it is used, and most of the
files are OS files that aren't often updated or changed. Barring "some other"
disaster, I expect it to last 20 years or more.

When subjected to inappropriately heavy use, SSDs can fail rapidly.


I've had more problems with corruption due to unplanned power failures
than anything else.

Don't you have some sort of power backup?

While we're on it... I sometimes hear my SPS "buzzing" for no obvious reason.
The computer then often goes into Sleep mode, also for no obvious reason.