An interesting link I just came across here

SSDs


- Intel 0.1% (as against 0.3%)
- Crucial 0.8% (as against 1.9%)
- Corsair 2.9% (as against 2.7%)
- OCZ 4.2% (as against 3.5%)

Intel confirms its position at the top with a very impressive rate. It is followed by Crucial, which has improved its rate significantly but it has to be said that the M225 previously affected things quite a bit – on the C300s alone its rate was 1%. Corsair’s and especially OCZ’s returns are up however and OCZ is still clearly bringing up the rear. 8 SSDs have rates of over 5%:

- 9.14% OCZ Vertex 2 240 GB
- 8.61% OCZ Agility 2 120 GB
- 7.27% OCZ Agility 2 40 GB
- 6.20% OCZ Agility 2 60 GB
- 5.83% Corsair Force 80 GB
- 5.31% OCZ Agility 2 90 GB
- 5.31% OCZ Vertex 2 100 GB
- 5.04% OCZ Agility 2 3.5" 120 GB

Note the positioning of the Corsair Force 80 between the OCZ versions that are also both based on SandForce controllers.

I've not yet had an OCZ drive fail (2x V2s, 1xV3) but had months of issues with the SandForce controller bug on my V3; My brother hasn't had any issues which his Vertex 2s either.
However I would likely switch to Intel next time around - I'm currently looking to remove and/or replace the 320GB HDD in this system.

same ^^^

Same with no OCZ problems. Got a Vertex 2 64MB SSD and it runs perfect. Has my SWTOR and BF3 on it, pure as bliss.

What's the average failure rate of normal HDD's?

Interesting stats. I have two Crucial M4's and have been more than happy so far, but it's early days.

I'm currently waiting for my 2nd vertex OCZ to come back from warranty claim, after the first one died 3 months in

What's the average failure rate of normal HDD's?

from the same article ...

- Samsung 1.5% (as against 1.8%)
- Seagate 1.8% (as against 2.0%) (1.6% not including the 7200.11 160 GB)
- Western 2.0% (as against 1.5%)
- Hitachi 3.0% (as against 3.1%)

Surprisingly, Western Digital has been unthroned by Samsung and Seagate. Western's rates are up significantly and the competition has improved. Hitachi still brings up the rear by quite some distance, though its rate has improved slightly. Only three drives have a 5% or worse rate. These are listed below and the third is the 7200.11 160 GB which is at 16.4%: this is probably old stock with the problematic firmware of this series.

Here’s the breakdown model by model for 1 TB drives:

- 3.65% Western Digital Caviar Blue (WD10EALS)
- 3.59% Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C (HDS721010CLA332)
- 2.89% Western Digital Caviar Black (WD1001FALS)
- 2.79% Western Digital Caviar Black (WD1002FAEX)
- 1.61% Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 (ST31000528AS)
- 1.57% Western Digital Caviar Green (WD10EARS)
- 1.31% Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 (ST31000524AS)
- 1.27% Western Digital Caviar Blue (WD10EALX)
- 1.15% Samsung SpinPoint F3 (HD103SJ)

And the breakdown for 2 TB drives:

- 5.53% Western Digital RE4-GP (WD2002FYPS)
- 5.07% Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 (HDS722020ALA330)
- 4.75% Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 (HDS723020BLA642)
- 4.42% Western Digital Caviar Black (WD2002FAEX)
- 3.48% Seagate Barracuda LP (ST32000542AS)
- 3.40% Seagate Barracuda XT (ST32000641AS)
- 3.05% Western Digital Caviar Green (WD20EARS)
- 2.98% Seagate Barracuda Green (ST2000DL003)
- 2.20% Samsung SpinPoint F4 EcoGreen (HD204UI)

Overall, the 2 TB drives are less reliable than the 1 TB drives. Samsung’s models have the lowest returns rates in both ranges. Note that with the Western Digital RE4-GP (WD2002FYPS), there was quite a low sample (253) and half the returns (7) were made on a single sale: this abnormal rate for what is a “pro” drive can therefore be explained by a problem with transport.

I had 2 OCZ's both failed.
And failure is catastrophic... no data back.

That's really interesting.. my brother just had an SSD fail (not sure what the brand was) and lost all his data as well.

I'd always heard that SSD failures were sort of not bad ones to have because even if the writes fail you can usually still read the media. That seems to be complete bulls*** though from real-world reports, right?

I've had quite a lot of OCZ drives fail on me, some worse than others. Maybe six to ten, all Vertex 2's. I've used Corsair, Kingston and Crucial SSD's without any issues to date.

Very interesting regarding the failure rate on standard HDD's, my Hitachi drives have been rock solid, maybe I just got a good batch.

I am running Crucials atm. I suffered from the firmware 5000 hour rebooting issue they had, after flashing firmware though drives still run like a champ.

I have had a Gskill fail on me, I am also running two OCZ drives in other machines and they seem fine, not as fast as the M4s though.

With SSD's common place now, do people still use old fashioned RAM-drives?

What would be of more value, a Intel 520S 240GB SSD @ $340 or a Seagate SATA3 2TB 7200RPM Barracuda 64mb Cache @ $139.00?

I've had an 80gb intel x25-m fail, apparently the firmware shat itself and I was left with a 8MB bootloader partition or some such and nothing else visible.

I've had an 240gb OCZ Vertex II (~3 months i think) and a 256 Cricual M4 (1 week) die on me. Running the replacement m4 for a couple months now touch wood.

I no longer save documents on my desktop!

Then get with the times and move into Win Vista or 7... redirect the 'users' folder to another physical disk, and your problem is solved (sure the data transfer is a little slower... but the data isn't sitting on your SSD then...)

Surely these 'failure rates' are about manufacturing imperfections, and not 'the disk just dying'?

In the 20 odd years I've been playing with computers, I have had ONE 3.5" disk go south, and in the past two-three years I've had one Samsung and two Western Digital 2.5"s go south (one of the WD's was essentially 'spiked' into the ground by a guy I work with... he dropped it, 'went to catch it' and unintentionally threw it into the ground, as best I can figure, as hard as he could :P)

I'm currently running an OCZ Vertex 2 and it's running strong. 0 complaints from me.
(I was careful to wait til windows drivers included all the TRIM-ly goodness etc etc before switching, out of curiosity to those with a long list of dead SSD's behind you, were any of them running non-windows OS?)

Touch wood, I have OCZ ssds in my 3 machines at home and 8 or so machines at work.

Holy s*** I'm so glad I didn't listen to the sales guy who tried to sell me an OCZ, and listened to you guys instead and got the M4.

Even better, move it into your dropbox folder and store it in the cloud!

Even if my hard drives all died, all I'd lose is stuff I can reinstall, all my important stuff is backed up or accessible elsewhere. So if living on the edge and risking catastrophic failure of my hard drive is the price I have to pay for the sweetness of SSD speed, I'm happy to pay.

Same. I've got my OS on an SSD, other crap on a pair of striped disks for speed and everything I love is backed up elsewhere.

Would like to move my OS onto a SSD. I do have a 64GB OCZ Vertex 2 and I tried putting Win 7 on it, but just bloated too quickly for my liking, which ended up making things slower. Guess the 240GB model is my best option for a OS boot, the other cheaper Intel 520S is a 120GB one for $180 something so ends up being more expensive per GB.

I got the 120gig one and yeah it gets full pretty fast but I combat that by installing all the misc crap to the RAID'd disks and I've had the SSD sitting at about 50% capacity since installation.

Interesting that OCZ have an even higher failure rate in their RAM over their SSD's. Besides RAM, SSD's and power supplies, I don't think they make anything else. That article didn't seem to cover OCZ PSU's but given the RAM and SSD stats, I think I will avoid them.

That said, my OCZ RevoDrive hasn't miss a beat but there's currently not many other brands on the market with PCI-e SSD's is there?

Me and a mate both got Corsair Force F120s a couple of years ago and both are still going strong. Meanwhile I had two Seagate 2TB drives and a SanDisk 16GB MicroSD card crap out on me in that time.

So many reports of failures in this thread, makes me wonder whether the more intensive use by us techies kills these things or if we are just more likely to talk about it/send in a warranty claim.

i love this thread because i just picked up 4 x 240GB Intel 520 Series today.
pumped.