<p>Whenever I see questions about SSD I am reminded of the following (a bit dated but probably still relevant, unless someone can reference an update?):</p>
<p><a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html">http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html</a></p>
<p>-Amos</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Dec 31, 2012 5:28 AM, "Gilboa Davara" <<a href="mailto:gilboad@gmail.com">gilboad@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
> It's a 180Gb Intel 520 Series SSD with firmware version 400i.<br>
...<br>
> I have an ext4 filesystem on it.<br>
<br>
Semi-OT: A word of friendly warning:<br>
I recently bricked a 120GB Intel 520 w/ the latest firmware (not sure<br>
if it was 400i) w/ ext4 on Fedora 17/x86_64. (Second bricked SSD in 12<br>
months)<br>
A *very* short power shortage crept under my APC UPS and bricked the SSD.<br>
Amazingly enough, the power shortage didn't crash the machine - which<br>
continued working off the main HDD software RAID array.<br>
Luckily for me I rather distrust SSDs (see below) and use it as fast<br>
cache-of-sort, so I only lost a couple of hours of work.<br>
<br>
IMHO SSDs have one huge drawback: Unlike HDDs that can be partially<br>
recovered from more-or-less any type of damage by recovering data<br>
around bad sectors or replacing a fried controller board, SSDs complex<br>
write scheme and complex firmware usually means that any type of<br>
damage / firmware error / etc usually bricks it with more or less zero<br>
chance of getting the data back.<br>
On the top of that, we (as in all of us) have 40+ years worth of<br>
experience in predicting the life cycle (and death) of HDDs. There's<br>
far less information about the life cycle of SSDs.<br>
<br>
In short, backup. A lot.<br>
<br>
- Gilboa<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div>