Why Consumers Can Expect More Flaky Flash SSDs

[mutantmagnet]

Intel has been in the computer news in recent weeks for suspending further shipments of its new X25-M - SATA 2.5" MLC flash SSD due to a serious design problem.

Potential customers were advised that shipments will resume after what is euphemistically called - a "firmware upgrade".

This is not the 1st time that Intel has shipped a flaky SSD, and it's not the 1st time that a flash SSD manufacturer has shipped products where the design was incompletely verified (or specified) in the 1st place - requiring a frantic firmware upgrade to make its operational use more satisfactory.

And it won't be the last either. These stories have become commonplace.

More inside.

This article touches on a thought I've been having when reading reviews of SSD performance on Win 7.

I think the rising popularity of SSDs has caught MS and other OS designers completely off guard. Anything they've done now to address the performance of SSDs is a bandaid and from my limited educational guess a crappy one at that.

But it's not just OS designers but software designers in general. The performance of various applications doesn't feel write for the performance SSDs should offer over spinning drives. For example I think the loading time differences in applications should be a lot wider just like how loading times for games on N64 cartridges are practically nonexistent compared to PS1 CD games way back when.

Another thing that bothers me is that benchmarks at dedicated review sites don't offer a good idea of an SSDs performance in the real world.

The only time I ever saw compile time being used as benchmark was on another messageboard. I don't video edit or photoshop but I doubt many people are impressed with the results of the benchmarks.

Personally when people on this forum criticize SSDs they do so because of price per GB which I think is simply wrong. The price is steep but not a big deal to me. What matters more to me is the actual performance of software on SSDs. I'm hoping in the future this gets clarified through traditional information channels but I think this article gives some good advice for anyone interested in SSDs as more than storage medium.

 

[novadude]

That's from August, so anyone reading this shouldn't be alarmed.

Furthermore, most of their worries are either about regular practices for businesses now (get it to market, issue updates to fix problems later) or oddly placed in that testing SSD's as HDD's is somehow lacking. You don't see WD or Seagate advertising their drive's 4k random write speeds, it's all about linear write speeds and interface speeds there as well.

 

[JohnleMVP]

Harddrives are a lot faster then optical disk, so naturally the performance difference between a harddrive and a SSD won't be as great as a N64 cart and a CD. SSD's are still a pretty new technology so its going take some time before we see instant on or almost instant loading times. Coming from a VR to an SSD I can definitely feel the different and I'm very satisfied.

 

[mutantmagnet]

That's from August, so anyone reading this shouldn't be alarmed.

Furthermore, most of their worries are either about regular practices for businesses now (get it to market, issue updates to fix problems later) or oddly placed in that testing SSD's as HDD's is somehow lacking.

No that is the point of the website. The linked article is directed to consumers and his point ultimately is expect more shenanigans in the future for a few reasons like poor metrics and unquantified standards for consumer class products.

Even though it was made in August doesn't mean it has become irrelevant yet. As a case in point the ioxtreme reviews and user feedback has been all over the map.

 

[dorkbert]

Fact of the matter is that most manufacturers are memory vendors. They are treating SSD as memory when in practice SSD should be treated as disks, with all the error recovery algorithms of disks.

 

[novadude]

Even though it was made in August doesn't mean it has become irrelevant yet

The part that you cut out and reprinted here is, without the date, a bit alarmist. I was just pointing out to everyone else that that section isn't current news.

No that is the point of the website. The linked article is directed to consumers and his point ultimately is expect more shenanigans in the future for a few reasons like poor metrics and unquantified standards for consumer class products.

Like I said before, it is far more common to be a consumer essentially beta testing products now days than to have a product with all of the kinks worked out. Most businesses feel that they lose more money being out of the market than in it with a product that isn't 100% Besides, thanks to consumer surveys they've found that more people are happy with companies that provide good support than those that provide products that don't need support.

 

[SicKlown42012]

The SSDs themselves aren't flaky pieces of hardware, but the firmware that's being put on them can be. As these companies get more experience with writing these, the problems we've seen will go away. I expect SSDs to have a better failure rate that platter based disk within the next year or so. I just can't wait to see what Western Digital comes out with. I'm surprised as hell that they haven't released a consumer SSD yet, considering storage is their focus.