SSDs, tonic medicine and the next flash / flu pandemic
by Zsolt
Kerekes, editor - November 11, 2010
One of the quirky
things for me as a writer is that sometimes an article which I may have
written 3 to 5 years ago shoots up the reader popularity charts and overtakes
newer content - because arcane issues - which once upon a time only
SSD business experts cared about (akin to
how many
angels can you fit on the point of a needle) eventually start to
affect ordinary people at the receiving end of the technology adoption cycle.
When
that happens - I do updates with sidebar mini articles and links. And after
a while the content in those add-ons can grow to nearly the same size as
the original article. Result? - You get some very messy looking web pages.
A
good example of this phenomenon is my
classic article
about SSD endurance myths. Nowadays everybody has heard of flash endurance
and its possible impact on
SSD life. Some SSD
makers are so proud of their special talents in endurance wizardry that
they focus on it in their marketing.
For SSD users - the risk of
flash SSD wear-out due to ineffective endurance control is like that of
influenza. Just because you've already had it before - or been inoculated
against the previous strain doesn't mean you are invulnerable to what may
happen in the next flash / flu pandemic.
Even if you have read my
original myths article back in
2007 - the new
add on bits, follow ups and perspectives might make it worth another look.
SSD oems mostly didn't want to say much about endurance 6 or 7
years ago - and they didn't want to disclose how they managed it. Now you can't
shut them up! So there's a lot of new material tossed in there which didn't
exist when the article was first written. I've linked to the best of external
articles too.
When I glance at SSD discussion sites it's clear that
many people still don't understand that there are many more approaches to the
management of flash media - its defects and problems - than just the single
issue of endurance - and that there are also different approaches to managing
the headline process called "wear leveling" too.
You may ask
- why should you need to know? Can't you just trust the brand label on the
product you buy - and assume that the SSD designers knew what they were doing?
If you look at other things you buy - like medicine, food or cars - it takes
decades of government regulation and standards to make sure that what you buy
doesn't kill you - and might do some good.
A good way to think about
SSDs is like vitamin supplements or medicine for computers. It can make new
computers more sprightly and keep older computers running longer. Governments
are too slow to regulate what goes into SSDs - and even
storage standards ORGs are
too slow and only start brewing the coffee for the inaugural meeting years after
the market has already begun. You have to be careful about swallowing any
new pills just because you found they got a good write-up on the internet. And
it's the same with SSDs too.
Nevertheless reading the
list of ingredients can help if you
understand the words.
And endurance management is just one of many.
...
Spellabyte stirs the
the anti-wear-out potion.
...
"It's like putting the
wrong tires on your car. Everything's OK on the daily commute. You see the
difference when you hit snow or drive around a bend at 120 mph."
It's hard enough understanding the design
of any single SSD. And there are so many different designs in the market.
Have
you ever wondered what it looks like at the other end of the SSD supply chain
- when a user has a damaged SSD which contains priceless data with no usable
backup?
