Quote:
Originally Posted by ElDiabloConCaca  Also, remember that solid-state storage also has a definite, finite lifespan -- unlike spinning disc hard drives, which have an estimated lifespan, but can theoretically run forever. I've got 10-year-old hard drives still in service that haven't shown a single symptom of failure. I don't think that solid-state drives are estimated to last 10 years. |
Are you referring to the limited erase-write cycles or something else? Is there a reason flash media would not last as well in archives (i.e., not in use) than HDs?
As for the limited writes, I think this is basically a non-issue now. The number of writes has increased a lot over the years (it's in the millions now), and with the storage size ever increasing, you can go a loooong time without overwriting any one part that many times (intelligent file systems try to wear out flash drives evenly).
There was an article about this a while back (I think this is the one:
http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html ) that concluded that with even wear leveling, it would take over 50 years of
constant writing at max speed to wear out a 64GB flash drive. That would increase proportionally as storage size increases and write endurance increases.
Obviously that's not a real-world scenario; in the real world there would be large parts of your disk that would very rarely change, so the wear on the rest of the disk would be higher. But even so, keeping lots of space free at all times is normal these days (and recommended in OS X even with HDs). I think I can safely expect to die long before I wear out the writes on modern flash media.