Posted on 05/18/2020 5:59:01 PM PDT by ducttape45
This post is an inquiry. I am investigating whether to purchase new solid state hard or mechanical drives for our company laptops.
Solid state hard drives are faster, of course, but I thought I saw somewhere that they have a limited predetermined life span. The older mechanical hard drives are of course slower but I'm more comfortable with them and if you find a good one they can almost last forever. Plus they are easier to retrieve data from if the O/S goes haywire.
The hard drives in our laptops now are 5400 RPM, whereas I always use 7200 RPM hard drives for desktops and laptops both. They also only have 8 GBs of memory, whereas I always ensure I can utilize at least 16 GBs of memory, 32 GB if possible.
So my quandary is simply, should I use SSDs or HDDs, and if SSDs have a limited predetermined life span should they even be an option?
Ed and I thank you for your support. (Mega kudos to the person who remembers what commercial that line came from!)
ShadowAce, any chance you can forward this via your ping list? Thanks.
Admittedly, I don’t know much about computers, so you might want to ignore my advice. But I always go by the old saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
SSDs do have a finite lifespan, but its much longer than you need.
Easy.
It’s a laptop and nobody should be storing their data there for more than a few days before also saving it to the server.
Go with lightweight flash, no reason to be a Luddite. And no reason for your users to perceive you as such.
The laptops in my org stay online 24/7/365, and I’m afraid we’ll reach that barrier a lot faster than most. I’m thinking that if I update to a 7200 RPM HHD and 16 GBs of memory, that would speed them up significantly.
Ive replaced several in laptops for our company. The end users love it. 10 times faster boot and office apps open on demand. I have had SSD in a server for almost 4 years now and zero problems. Just replaced one in a terminal server over the weekend. As expected apps open on demand and booted up in less than 15 seconds.
If I have an HDD failure those will be replaced by SSD. No going back thats for sure!
SSDs, and you shouldnt be depending on life of the drive given the regular backups of data you are doing. Right?
SSD performance delta over spinny drives matters if your peoples time is worth anything at all.
Go with SSD. Modern, well-known manufacturers (not some backwater no-name from Wuhan) will last—and allow millions of read/writes—longer than the laptop will keep it’s warranty.
Consider an iPad. it doesn’t have a hard drive. Just memory chips. Have you ever heard of an iPad no longer working because it can no longer hold data? Much more likely you toss it because it’s old and you can’t get the latest software version of iOS.
https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/ipad-hard-drive-21129.html
We use SSD’s in all company laptops, as obsolescence issues obviate any need to worry about drive mtbf, primarily for battery life improvement.
Our graphic workstations use SSD’s for OS and graphics programs, with a second conventional disk for all other local storage requirements.
No, they do NOT have a predetermined lifespan. Laptops benefit greatly from SSD since spindle drives are subject to drop damage. SSD also has significantly better performance and can bring new life to older laptops.
I thought it was surely Johnny Carson or Ed Sullivan. Turns out it was the Bartle and James commercials. At least that is what I found.
SSD. They detect bad blocks and remap them internally. I’ve had the same one in my work laptop for 8 years and no problems.
pros and cons to both
actually had this discussion with a buddy about a month ago
Once you use a laptop with an SSD, you will never want to use a old hard drive equipped one again. They are far and away the best performance upgrade you can make. Issues with them wearing out are way over stated, too. The average user could use a machine for more than a decade without wearing out the SSD. The other BIG upside is reliability and drop safety. With a spinning hard drive, if you smack the machine hard enough, the read/write arms in the HDD will bounce off the spinning platter and then your drive is toast. SSDs are far superior in this regard.
My advice is to make the switch. You won’t be sorry. Your data will be safer and your laptops will be usable far longer (in terms of performance).
Mechanical drives are fragile, I havent bought one and at least seven years. I could not imagine putting on any computer today. They are slow as well. Almost any solid-state drive will have better specs and a longer time between failure.
This should be easy.
90% of laptops supplied by companies to their employees for work use have SSD’s installed.
If its good enough for Intel and IBM, it should work fine for you.
I will never go back to HDD. The SDD runs circles around HDD and the cost is below where HDDs used to be not so long ago. Just back up often, which you would do anyway, and keep copies of any critical files in a safe place.
ssd’s do have a limited lifespan the ram architecture is now stacked so heat buildup can wipe out/eventually damage a broader area of the ssd. ram will get worn out start failing after so many write operations.
pricewise for the memory platter drives are superior. they have come a long way preventing physical damage occurring.
It’s not the powered on time that is finite but rather it’s the volume of data that can be written before the memory cells begin to fail. This limit is quantified in terms of DWPD, data written per day, or TWB, terrabytes written. IMHO it’s safe to estimate that a modern SSD will last 4+ years under typical office load. I’ve read that based upon data center usage SSD’s fail less often than HDDs. I say go with SSDs. Good luck.
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