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1 in 3 SSD failure rate 'unfounded'
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 20th March 2008
Dell has used its blog to issue a rebuttal against claims that 30% of SSD drives are being returned.
Dell – whom it must be said has something of a vested interest in selling the currently high-margin SSD devices – has claimed the twenty percent failure rate reported by various news agencies based on the Avian report is “unfounded and wholly inaccurate.” The company goes on to claim that data gathered from Dell centres world-wide shows that SSD reliability can be ranked equal to or even greater than that of traditional mechanical hard drives.
In a post to the Direct2Dell blog the company has stated that the return rate figures reported by Avian Securities “don't even vaguely resemble what's happening in our business” and that the analysis company “did not contact us while doing their research.”
For its part, Avian Securities isn't fighting this one. Managing partner Avi Cohen has suggested that the discrepancy was brought about by his company using “early data on returns” and not up-to-date figures on total sales, and has said that his company will not be challenging Dell's rebuttal.
So, if you've been reading elsewhere that the sky is falling in on owners and users of solid-state storage devices you may want to think twice about putting on your hard-hat. According to Dell, at least, “it's just not true.”
Anybody own a Dell unit with factory-fitted SSD want to comment on the company's take on customer satisfaction and return rates? Has anybody actually had an SSD fail on them unexpectedly? Share your comments over in the forums.
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Comments (17)
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Yes, they were getting a hefty return rate, but not due to failures, instead due to not performing as well as customers expected for the considerable extra price.
which would make a LOT more sense :)
Nope. Random Access speed is SSD's party piece (It has a 0.00001ns random access time). At the moment, it's bandwidth. While a hard-drive may take 200ns to get from block to block, it can then transfer that block at a full 150Mb/s. SSD's on the other hand, get to a block instantly, but can only transfer at 33Mb/s (Or more, or less depending on the SSD).
LOL yes, that's what I meant
Ive seen SSDs claim 100+MB/s now - OCZ's for example comes close iirc
Friend of mine ordered two of the 32GB Sandisk ones from overclockers.
Unfortunately they're out of stock at the moment with no ETA for more coming in. :(
Still, watch this space.
As for high failure rates, I can't imagine how that would even be possible.
There's no moving parts so even dropping one while its on would be no worse than dropping your solid-state MP3 player.
And yes, we've sold SSDs in RAID. They can do some pretty awesome stuff, but it costs as much as the rest of the computer!
i don't think that is true as well.
we have been hearing FUD here and there. it feels like there's something going on in corporate back rooms or some misunderstanding.
initially, some executives in HDD recovery businesses were quietly telling us SSD crash will mean data is irrecoverable. that's full of "bollox" - borrowing a word from someone i know.
believe it or not, SSD has hit SATA-1 speed and beyond, as of now. We're not seeing them in market, yet. Some smarter SSD controllers are there already.
Prices are dropping in Japan market for certain type of SSD that uses less reliable MLC NAND (as oppose to SLC NAND) but they put a lot more into the package to makeup for the faster failure rate. These "backup" are hidden. At the end, it is expected to work for 5 years. I think Toshiba is doing that and they got nice controllers.
Rubbing my hands in anticipation. at least 6 more months baby, 6 months.... :O
The early sample Samsung one we reviewed last year was extremely slow and designed for notebooks (we were just wondering if it made any difference to PC use with zero random read cost) but that still works just fine. When prices come down we'll definitely look at some more :)
TR look at SSDs in notebooks now and again and they've never had a problem afaik.
the really expensive ones like the MTrons and the OCZ ones are fast but holy crap are they pricey
reckon another year or 2 and they'll be a worthwhile buy :)
He got a 64GB SSD drive, and he was very very happy
until it broke down just before a demo and had to swap back to a normal harddrive
He got it replaced, then it broke again...
Make your own judgement..
Bad batch, crap brand, unlucky?