11–20 of 80 posts
* a machine that crashed once is 100 times more likely to crash again; the more it crashes, the more it's prone to fail again.
* overclocking significantly reduces reliability. One CPU vendor (AMD or Intel, but unspecified) is much worse in this regard, too.
* conversely, underclocking improves reliability.
* branded computers are more reliable than beige boxes.
* laptops are more reliable than desktops.
Very useful -- I will take this analysis into account when it's time to upgrade my current personal machine or configure the next one! Thank you for posting this here. The only thing I would have wanted to see but didn't in this analysis is how failure rates vary for different types of disk subsystem -- specifically, traditional hard drives versus the newer solid-state devices. I suspect, but don't know for sure, tha…
Very useful -- I will take this analysis into account when it's time to upgrade my current personal machine or configure the next one! Thank you for posting this here. The only thing I would have wanted to see but didn't in this analysis is how failure rates vary for different types of disk subsystem -- specifically, traditional hard drives versus the newer solid-state devices. I suspect, but don't know for sure, tha…
Lack of moving parts is great, but flash allows a finite number of write cycles.
Very useful -- I will take this analysis into account when it's time to upgrade my current personal machine or configure the next one! Thank you for posting this here. The only thing I would have wanted to see but didn't in this analysis is how failure rates vary for different types of disk subsystem -- specifically, traditional hard drives versus the newer solid-state devices. I suspect, but don't know for sure, tha…
So far numbers I've seen seem to acknowledge a failure rate of SSDs in the same ballpark as spinning rust but it's only been slightly over a year that most SSDs are actually reliable. Many, many old models were absolutely terrible. Hence I think it may be difficult yet to draw reliable conclusions.
Very useful -- I will take this analysis into account when it's time to upgrade my current personal machine or configure the next one! Thank you for posting this here. The only thing I would have wanted to see but didn't in this analysis is how failure rates vary for different types of disk subsystem -- specifically, traditional hard drives versus the newer solid-state devices. I suspect, but don't know for sure, tha…
Funny, I suspect that SSDs have much higher real-world failure rates. (My personal, limited, anecdotal evidence is that my 64 GB Crucial M4 SSD lasted about a year as the root drive in a busy Linux desktop, while I have a stack of about a dozen hard drives that have been retired due to being too small or too slow while still working fine.) Lack of moving parts is great, but flash allows a finite number of write cycle…
The much larger weight and volume of desktops would seem to make them easier to cool.
The result most surprising to me is that laptops are between 25% and 60% less likely than desktop machines to crash from a hardware fault during the first 30 days worth of measurements. The much larger weight and volume of desktops would seem to make them easier to cool.
There are a lot of insights in the paper, but I'd really like to know about this: "The table shows that CPUs from Vendor A are nearly 20x as likely to crash a machine during the 8 month observation period when they are overclocked, and CPUs from Vendor B are over 4x as likely" Obviously it's 5 times difference in probability to have unstable system if overclocked between Intel and AMD but they don't say which one is…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny, I suspect that SSDs have much higher real-world failure rates. (My personal, limited, anecdotal evidence is that my 64 GB Crucial M4 SSD lasted about a year as the root drive in a busy Linux desktop, while I have a stack of about a dozen hard drives that have been retired due to being too small or too slow while still working fine.) Lack of moving parts is great, but flash allows a finite number of write cycle…
dripton: I hear you, but note that I'm not interested in write-cycle limits nor MTBF stats obtained in a lab setting; I'd just like to know the real-world rate of hardware failure of SSDs.
I think Intel released some information on the reliability of their SSDs a few years ago but that was likely because they knew they were doing best and their enterprise customers are very interested in that for their data-centre rollouts.
The very limited information I've seen suggests to me that a few years ago SSDs had a much higher failure rate than HDDs (double in the first 6 months) but that has been falling very quickly with each new generation of SSDs (and as the profit margin grows and manufacturers have to work on reputation to justify the markup).