HDD, SSD Reliablity

borgward · 01-19-2022, 06:32 PM

Been using WD Black HDD's for many years. No problems. Fast enough for old laptop. Think SSD would only marginally improve performance on my old Intel Pentium Dual Core laptop , except maybe for boot time. Even though SSD's have no moving parts people I know have experienced short life span on them. Who makes the more reliable SSD's?

What additional hardware is required to put them into a laptop that originally had a HDD?

jefro · 01-19-2022, 07:16 PM

SSD can greatly improve speed in some cases. WD makes a black ssd I'm pretty sure I read that. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...vme-ssd-review

Many SSD's are made with overhead to compensate for degradation. Not sure they can fully compete mtbf yet but I like them a lot. Not in my nas yet.

Might need an adapter for power/data or size of drive.

Not all older hardware will work correctly on ssd's. They may have some timing/controller issues.

michaelk · 01-19-2022, 07:34 PM

I would expect a SATA SSD to have the same timing/controller as a SATA mechanical hard drive.

I think Crucial makes decent SSDs as does WD. SSDs have a Terabytes written endurance value (TBW) which is suppose to indicate how many bytes you can write to the drive over its lifetime. Another metric is Data Written Per Day which is the number TB you can write to the drive everyday for the life of the warranty which is typically 5 years.

I had many flash drives fail but no SSDs yet.

Fearless Fred · 01-19-2022, 08:52 PM

Although many modern 2.5" form factor SSD's can often reach 550Mbps read speeds, and nearly as fast writes, you would never actually get these speeds on older hardware, as the SATA 1 spec you probably have in an old dual core would limit it. If its old enough to still have a CD or DVD in it, attached by SATA to the motherboard, then the entire SATA bus will be restricted still further, meaning you may only see 150Mbps reads and writes max.

Its still a worthwhile upgrade though as an old mechanical 2.5" SATA drive would typically max out at around 30Mbps due to the delay in head/platter alignments.

Most 'reports' about SSD's being prone to early failure were based on incorrect interpretation of some testing information that came from Intel and were about the server market, but headlines grab attention and get repeated even when wrong.

SSd's are actually extremely reliable, and to 'wear out' a drive you would need to be writing and overwriting massive amounts of data daily, typically far beyond the use an average consumer needs. I don't buy anything else these days, and have never had an issue, and between myself and my family, we use them a lot.

If its a laptop, you shouldn't need anything but an SSD as it is a 2.5" form factor SSD replacing a 2.5" form factor HDD and all connectors are identical, often its not an SSD that fails, but the SATA ribbon cable attaching it, likewise, some ribbons can limit SATA speeds in my experience on older hardware.

mrmazda · 01-20-2022, 12:58 AM

SSDs can be erratic, and disappointing:

Code:

# parted /dev/sda print
Model: ATA Patriot Burst El (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 120GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  264MB   263MB   primary   fat16           type=06
 2      264MB   2781MB  2517MB  primary                   hidden, type=17
 3      2781MB  4039MB  1258MB  primary   ext2            boot, type=83
 4      4039MB  120GB   116GB   extended                  type=05
 5      4039MB  21.5GB  17.4GB  logical   linux-swap(v1)  type=82
 6      21.5GB  25.7GB  4194MB  logical   ext3            type=83
 7      25.7GB  44.5GB  18.9GB  logical   ext4            type=83
 8      44.5GB  63.4GB  18.9GB  logical   ext4            type=83
 9      63.4GB  82.3GB  18.9GB  logical   ext4            type=83
10      82.3GB  101GB   18.9GB  logical   ext4            type=83
11      101GB   120GB   18.9GB  logical   ext4            type=83
# hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 340 MB in  3.02 seconds = 112.64 MB/sec
# hdparm -t /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 250 MB in  1.41 seconds = 177.18 MB/sec
# hdparm -t /dev/sda5
/dev/sda5:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 926 MB in  3.02 seconds = 306.15 MB/sec
# hdparm -t /dev/sda6
/dev/sda6:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1452 MB in  3.03 seconds = 479.35 MB/sec
# hdparm -t /dev/sda7
/dev/sda7:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1538 MB in  3.00 seconds = 512.59 MB/sec
# hdparm -t /dev/sda8
/dev/sda8:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 206 MB in  3.02 seconds =  68.18 MB/sec
# hdparm -t /dev/sda9
/dev/sda9:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1552 MB in  3.00 seconds = 517.21 MB/sec
# hdparm -t /dev/sda10
/dev/sda10:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1502 MB in  3.00 seconds = 500.59 MB/sec
# hdparm -t /dev/sda11
/dev/sda11:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 1538 MB in  3.00 seconds = 512.10 MB/sec
# hdparm -t /dev/sda2
/dev/sda2:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 168 MB in  3.02 seconds =  55.69 MB/sec
# hdparm -t /dev/sda3
/dev/sda3:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 966 MB in  3.00 seconds = 321.62 MB/sec
#

syg00 · 01-20-2022, 01:54 AM

I have one of the early i7 laptops - Feb 2010. For the latter years I was unhappy with the hard-disk performance, and eventually swapped it out for a faster one. Imperceptible difference, probably due to issues similar to those mentioned by Fearless Fred. Has now been retired, but still worked when I last checked.

fatmac · 01-20-2022, 04:12 AM

Beware, not all BIOS will work with a SATA SSD, my Toshiba Satellite 32bit won't, for one.

jefro · 01-20-2022, 02:40 PM

I replaced an Atom box with a ssd and the performance improved but it also would lock up once a month.

SlowCoder · 01-20-2022, 03:23 PM

On a whim I upgraded my Lenovo 330 (8th gen i3) from 1TB SATA HDD (5400rpm) to 1TB SATA SSD (Samsung), and saw immediate performance improvements throughout the system. I was quite amazed at how much latency the HDD had compared to the SSD; quite a bottleneck. I don't do any real heavy processing, like video editing, on the machine, but I never wait for an app or file to open. Takes about 15 seconds to boot from power on to gui login, compared to about 30 on the old HDD (same distro and installed software).

In short, a worthwhile upgrade.

I forget the TBW on my SSD, but it's high enough for me to be comfortable replacing my spinner. I'd say about 95% of my 650GB stored data is pretty much static. The rest is system management (packages, a little bit of swap), temp files, web browser cache, etc. Barring a catastrophe, it'll be a long time before I hit my wear limit.

Arnulf · 01-20-2022, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by borgward

Think SSD would only marginally improve performance on my old Intel Pentium Dual Core laptop , except maybe for boot time.

An SSD especially improves performance in any case of reading data from it e. g. starting programs. SATA SSDs are normally equipped with a SATA 6.0 GB/s interface. They mostly work at SATA 3.0 GB/s controllers without any problems. Problems may occur at SATA 1.5 GB/s controllers. If your laptop has a SATA 1.5 GB/s or 3.0 GB/s controller you don't need very fast SATA SSDs like Crucial MX500 or Samsung Evo series. An inexpensive SSD will make a better job than a HDD on a SATA 1.5 GB/s or 3.0 GB/s controller.

Swapping may be a SSD killer feature. Add enough RAM¹ and disable any swap partitions or files.

¹Add ≥ 8 GiB RAM to run Linux x86_64 without swap.

fatmac · 01-21-2022, 04:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arnulf

¹Add ≥ 8 GiB RAM to run Linux x86_64 without swap.

No need, I use 2GB ram on a 64bit quite comfortably - Linux isn't Windows!

Arnulf · 01-21-2022, 06:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatmac

No need, I use 2GB ram on a 64bit quite comfortably - Linux isn't Windows!

Linux itself (Slackware64 14.2 Kernel 4.19.81) runs on an ancient x86_64 system (with Pentium D 820) with 2 GiB RAM (maximum in this system).

Think about running larger programs like LibreOffice or Gimp on a "full featured" GUI like KDE.

SlowCoder · 01-21-2022, 08:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatmac

No need, I use 2GB ram on a 64bit quite comfortably - Linux isn't Windows!

Yep, Linux isn't Windows, which means you have many options. Some option are very memory friendly, some are not so much. 2GB RAM will barely handle a modern full-featured GUI (KDE/Cinnamon), and Firefox.

boughtonp · 01-21-2022, 08:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arnulf

Think about running larger programs like LibreOffice or Gimp on a "full featured" GUI like KDE.

2GB is enough to run KDE Plasma 5, LibreOffice Calc and GIMP all at once, with multiple multi-layer/sheet files open and edited, and still have an entire 1GB memory to spare, with 0 swap usage occurring.

If the system is going to be used for browsing, that's when you might need more than 2GB...

obobskivich · 01-22-2022, 11:18 AM

My experience has been a mixed bag with SSDs - but usually the failures are all cribdeaths, whereas hard drives (IME) can be either bad out of the box, or will eventually fail as they age (they *are* mechanical devices after all), but it isn't uncommon (again IME) to see 'modern' hard drives (that is, drives made in the last 10-20 years) run up to near 100,000 hours without issue. Very old drives (from the AT days) were much less reliable, and it never ceases to amaze me that whenever the 'SSD vs HDD holy war' starts up, it seems like some people want to forget that hard disks have come a long way from Conner and the IBM DeathStar...

As far as who makes good SSDs (or how to tell what is a good SSD), ideally a high TBW spec coupled with DRAM cache is the goal - there are plenty of manufacturers who offer such drives. I would also avoid Samsung drives on linux (and Mac) systems, because they use a proprietary controller that has issues with TRIM (which means it ends up being blacklisted, which leads to write thrashing (which reduces the life of the drive) - IME they also cause instability on linux (tested on both an 870 and a 970 - on Windows they work just fine)). There are plenty of other offerings that use more mainstream controllers (e.g. from Phison, Realtek, Silicon Motion, etc) and pair them up with quality NAND and DRAM (e.g. ADATA, HP, Intel, Seagate, Sabrent, PNY, TeamGroup, Kingston, Corsair, Crucial, SanDisk (now part of WD) etc have all made such drives - if you're noticing the trend its largely RAM and flash manufacturers, along with traditional hard drive makers, that occupy this space). That isn't to say 'just get this brand' is a good path - most all of the manufacturers I've listed also offer very cheap value options that are DRAM-less, use cheaper NAND, have low endurance, etc because they're built to a price point as well. So it wouldn't hurt to read some reviews prior to settling on any specific model.