Comment Re:RAID (Score 5, Interesting) 552
The thing that really sucks about SSDs (at least, Sandforce-based drives) is the fact that 99% of their failures are due to firmware bugs that can be simultaneously triggered on an entire array at once (especially the sleep-related bugs). It's a mode of failure the creators of RAID 1, 5, and 10 never anticipated.
IMHO, the worst thing about SSDs (at least, those with Sandforce controllers) is the fact that they have mandatory full-drive encryption that can't be disabled, using a key you aren't allowed to set or recover, and gets blown away whenever you reflash the firmware. This means, among other things, if the drive's controller gets itself confused:
* You can't reflash data-recovery firmware onto the drive. The act flashing it would blow away the encryption key and render the data gone forever.
* If the drive decides you're trying "too hard" to systematically extract data from it while it's in a confused state, it'll go into "panic mode" by blowing away the encryption key. If this happens, your data is gone forever AND you have to send the drive back to OCZ or whomever you got it from in order to get it unlocked. For your protection, of course. And Hollywood's. Among other things, dd_rescue/ddrecover can trigger panic mode.
* You can't even do the equivalent of removing the platters from a conventional drive in a clean room and mount them to another drive for reading, because the data on the flash chips is all encrypted, and the key is unrecoverable.
This is BULLSHIT, and it's why I refuse to buy any more SSDs. I, as an end user, should be able to download a utility from somewhere, reflash the drive to firmware that includes an offline recovery mode that simply dumps the flash chip content from start to finish, and either disable the encryption or set it to a key *I* control, so the 99.99999% of the data on the drive that's good when the embedded firmware freaks out can be dumped and recovered offline.
If there's a God, Linus will go NUCLEAR over this, get a few seconds on CNN & other networks to rant about the unreliability of SSDs, and scare enough consumers to hit the industry HARD where it'll hurt the most... their bank accounts.
It might not be possible to make SSDs reliable, but DAMMIT, they should at least be RECOVERABLE. There were goddamn hard drives with recoverable data pulled out of laptops left in safes in the Vistamark hotel when a tower sheared it in half and buried it under flaming rubble, yet a SSD that dies if you so much as look at it the wrong way due to firmware bugs ends up being fundamentally unrecoverable for no hard technical reason.
And yes, I'm bitter about having my hard drive commit suicide for no reason besides Sandforce Business Policy. As long as they keep making controllers that cause drives to self-destruct at the drop of a hat, I'll keep doing my best to talk people out of buying drives tainted by their controller chips. Sandforce sucks.