Comment Better yes, still not a good as an HDD (Score 1) 82
I will say decent SSD are lasting longer than expected. But if you have a decent HDD, it will last even longer than that. I still have some 500GB WD Blacks in service. The last time I bought one of those was in 2008... That's 14 years and going nicely.
The most significant factor in life span is the environment:
- If you are using a mobile environment, HDD have a much-limited lifespan. When I was specing laptops before the affordability of SSDs became available, I'd estimate 3 years for a laptop HDD because of the vibration wear the drive would take. With SSD, that is orders of magnitude reduced. Also, laptops are often subjected to great thermal change. Running outside in direct sunlight. Cold winter's day. Is the drive spinning up and down much? Gotta save that battery life, so spin down the drive as much as possible... and cause more wear.
- On desktop machines, spin-ups and spin-downs are a big thing. So is the ambient temp too. If the house does not have AC, ambient temps can run from 60-90 Fahrenheit. Those high ambient temps will push up the internal drive temps to dangerous levels.
- Now in a server type situation, drives don't spin-up or spin-down often. The temps usually are not in either of high or low extremes. Placing home servers type machines in the basement is often done to keep down noise and have more consistent cheap cooling during the summer months. Most unheated basements go from about 45-70 Fahrenheit. That's perfect for computer hardware.
The most significant factor in life span is the environment:
- If you are using a mobile environment, HDD have a much-limited lifespan. When I was specing laptops before the affordability of SSDs became available, I'd estimate 3 years for a laptop HDD because of the vibration wear the drive would take. With SSD, that is orders of magnitude reduced. Also, laptops are often subjected to great thermal change. Running outside in direct sunlight. Cold winter's day. Is the drive spinning up and down much? Gotta save that battery life, so spin down the drive as much as possible... and cause more wear.
- On desktop machines, spin-ups and spin-downs are a big thing. So is the ambient temp too. If the house does not have AC, ambient temps can run from 60-90 Fahrenheit. Those high ambient temps will push up the internal drive temps to dangerous levels.
- Now in a server type situation, drives don't spin-up or spin-down often. The temps usually are not in either of high or low extremes. Placing home servers type machines in the basement is often done to keep down noise and have more consistent cheap cooling during the summer months. Most unheated basements go from about 45-70 Fahrenheit. That's perfect for computer hardware.