How SSD power faults scramble your data

[Night Hawk]

In a rush to run out and buy an SSD? Here's something you may want to consider since with every new technology there always seem to be... one or more things to learn?!

Summary: Flash SSDs are non-volatile, so what could go wrong when power fails? A great deal, even on high-end "enterprise" SSDs.

We've got over 50 years experience with spinning disk in all kinds of conditions, ranging from notebooks to massive big iron arrays. SSDs, not so much. And boy, do we have a lot to learn.

see full report

 

[lehnerus2000]

Thanks Night Hawk

Thanks for that info.

This probably explains why my friend's laptop is screwed up.

He has some weird power fault (if his laptop flexes, it switches off) and his SSD and OS are corrupted.
It's only 18 months old.

 

[Night Hawk]

I've held off from buying any myself until the companies get all of the bugs worked out. Having used a number of flash drives which are based pretty much on the same technology I know they can be voilitile at times as well.

I guess for anyone who goes out and buys one the best advice is to always have a full system image backup or two just in case the poiwer goes out! :shock: "data loss... data corruption... data lost... ..."

 

[lehnerus2000]

Backup SSD Image

I guess for anyone who goes out and buys one the best advice is to always have a full system image backup or two just in case the poiwer goes out! :shock: "data loss... data corruption... data lost... ..."

Agreed.

Even though I've offered to "walk him" through the procedure, my friend refuses to do it.

 

[Night Hawk]

Even when working with mechanical drives too many times I hear about people losing a number of files or photos from not taking the time to take precautions like a good backup if not a full image backup. The Golden Rule of Thought has always been to back up the backup of the backups of the backup since there ever is any 100% fail proof method while frequent backups can save the day when any mishap appears!

With any new technology or not quite so new as most would believe SSDs are when in fact not since they have existed since the 90s the technology is still invulnerable to mishaps. The article brings up the issue of degradations of data and OSs when power is lost. I have seen blackouts, shorted supplied trip 20A breakers and never once lose a single file on a mechanical as a result while it appears SSDs are subject to compromises.

Once I got into 7 and found that the need for the old dual boot of two versions would no longer be needed the option for system images became automatic. For a laptop one thing I tend to check is the power plan's advanced settings for the power button itself. Whether SSD or mechanical when a friend reported it kept booting up in safe mode I took a look at his mom's Vista laptop and each time the F8 boot menu was appearing due to bad shutdowns.

The power button was set for sleep not shutdown and the kids would simply close the lid after hitting the power button where each day the F8 was coming up. You have to wonder if seeing that setting changed on your friend's laptop could be a help in preventing the irregular power outages since the battery is constantly draining when not shutdown fully. I noticed the Vista laptop was running too slowly likely from a weak battery despite having the ac cord plugged when going to check where the problem was on that one. The laptop was bought in late 2007.

 

[carwiz]

Anyone that doesn't have every PC connected to a UPS is playing Russian Roulette. Black-outs, brown-outs, lighting, surges and noise on power lines are pretty common no matter where you live. All of these are like spinning the cylinder and pulling the trigger. They can all cause data corruption or hardware failure no matter what kind of disk drive you have.

 

[Night Hawk]

That is a well known fact as well. Here I seen a few good ones knock power out for days as well as know what happens when a power supply shorts out! I used to test supply boxes(electrical) and watch the caps on the ac transformers smoke! BOOM! and there she goes! as everyone gathers around to watch the smoke rise from the well no ashes with ceramic caps that is!

On the present case the first board was cooked when the supply went! The 20a breaker went tripped showing just how fast and how much pull basic electricity can have. I still keep looking for surge protection strips that handle even more then the last now using some that will take a 2200 joules line surge.

A UPS can get very expensive at times and only provide a few hours of battery time where I can simply grab a 7 laptop if needed. The board being fried however was beyond what any UPS could do there being an internal mishap. How do you protect against a faulty supply that cooks a board? The data remained intact however as well as the drives. How an SSD might have fared is unknown but in that circumstance probably wouldn't have been effected either not like what others are running into however.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi everybody
failures especially these days with SSD's are overrated -- I've had 6 SSD's for about a year now and NONE have gone defective.

In any case since the capacity of SSD's are relatively small and in general only used for storing things like OS'es on them so they should be backed up regularly.

However if the electronics DOES get fried then that's the same risk you have when using any piece of equipment that uses electronics -- even Aircraft suffer catastrophic power failures from time to time --try watching on National Geographic that excellent program "Aircrash Investigation" --especially just before making your next flight. (Fortunately though modern aircraft can usually recover from this situation due to backup systems and the EPS that is activated if all engines fail).

A typical Windows 7 or Windows 8 OS installation can be backed up in about 7 mins these days if it's on an SSD and you save the backup on to an internal spinner or even a USB3 external HDD. Backing up to an external USB2 drive will take a little longer but probably still take less than 25 mins.

You don't even need to do a daily backup as your OS is not (usually) likely to change very much from day to day.

Backup your other data of course too - and do it regularly -- if you don't you've only yourself to blame when things go wrong -- even if it's not your fault.

As for power outages etc -- the worst place I suffered that wasn't in some 3rd World Banana Republic hell-hole - but in a surprisingly wealthy part of LA -- I usually stay in the Santa Monica / Malibu area when I'm in LA - love Venice Beach etc etc -- but any time it rained you could guarantee you'd have a power outage or two. -- Fortunately rain isn't that common there though --but when it does --don't even THINK about using an umbrella.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[indianacarnie]

Having only a laptop I don't really "have a dog in the fight" so to speak, but think jimbo45 is on the mark here. SSDs, from all I can find are at least as reliable as an HDD these days. ANY drive can go bad and/or lose data at ANY given time. Just the nature of things. If you don't have a back-up ready, then thats on you. If you are in situations that you think could involve a catastrophic data lose, then either back-up more often or turn your machine off if the data involved is that valuable. I'll be keeping my SSD and my normal back up procedures. (Nice article though)

 

[Total]

I have all my computers / tv system \ electronics connected to a 3.1 KVA ups . Will run everything for 2 1/2 hrs , but the back up natural gas generator does start in 12 seconds when the power goes out .. Everyone SHOULD buy a UPS , good advice ..

 

[lehnerus2000]

Physical Problem

The power button was set for sleep not shutdown and the kids would simply close the lid after hitting the power button where each day the F8 was coming up. You have to wonder if seeing that setting changed on your friend's laptop could be a help in preventing the irregular power outages since the battery is constantly draining when not shutdown fully.

He uses Hibernation.

His problem is physical.
When he is using his machine, it will lose power if he moves it a certain way (i.e. if he picks it up by the left side using one hand).

 

[Night Hawk]

Sounds like a loose connection or bad spot on either a connection(cold solder point) or possibly a crack in the main board if the laptop has been banged around a bit?! I would tend to suspect a cold solder point or loose connection is where to begin looking however. The connections for the battery would be where to start as well as the power switch.

Now for an effective backup a full system images provides you the OS as well as all of the programs as the primary backup. For individual files and folders regular manual copy and paste to a second drive or data tossed onto removable medial like data dvds is a common thought as well as simply downloading multiple copies for each item to be stored locally on C for ready access as well as storing a second download of same on a storage drive.

Why copy and paste? That's simple simce you can backup each item on the spot as you go along while when going to restore a regular scheduled backup or full image you only bring back what was included at the time the backup or image was created. The daily incremental manual backups do far more to guaranty all files are safe in the event of any mishap.

 

[Lee]

I have two SSDs one is four years old and has been through at least five brown outs without any problem (Intel 25 M 80 Gig). The other one (SanDisk Extreme 240 Gig) is one year old and has been through one brown out without any problem. . .knock on wood (being my house is built from logs). . .

 

[lehnerus2000]

Agreed

Sounds like a loose connection or bad spot on either a connection(cold solder point) or possibly a crack in the main board if the laptop has been banged around a bit?! I would tend to suspect a cold solder point or loose connection is where to begin looking however. The connections for the battery would be where to start as well as the power switch.

I agree with your assessment (my friend and I worked as electronic repair technicians).

He has a long warranty, but he is too addicted to using his machine to send it "back to the shop" for repairs.

 

[Cr00zng]

The research paper states that the tests used Debian Linux 6.0 with Kernel 2.6.32. I have not used Linux regularly for awhile, but in the past this OS was more sensitive to power failures than Windows. At times in the past, power failure would result in the Linux system not starting up, while Windows did. Again, the latest version of Linux may not be as sensitive to power failure as in the past. Anyway...

During Sandy Storm my system's MB got whacked with the power failure to the point that the MB needed to be replaced. Being three years old system, with new MB came new CPU, memory, etc. The 128GBs OCZ Vertex SATA II and other HHDs stayed. Windows 7 on the OCZ SSD started up without a hitch, just needed one reboot to install the new drivers. The system was backed up and restored to an Intel 256GBs SSD. One could say that this Windows 7 installation is three-four years old by now and survived more than one power failure. The OCZ was put in an old laptop and it still working just fine.

Just to state the obvious... The time it takes to backup Windows 7 depends on a number of things, such as drive size, storage used, backup interface, etc. My Intel SSD has about 50% its space used up and backing up to an external HDD on the eSATA III interface takes about 16 minutes with Macrium free version. The fastest I've seen the backup to complete was under three minutes with an other system with SSD III and eSATA II HDD. That was at the very beginning of this machine life; after two years with all the software and data added, it takes around 12 minutes.

 

[Night Hawk]

I have two SSDs one is four years old and has been through at least five brown outs without any problem (Intel 25 M 80 Gig). The other one (SanDisk Extreme 240 Gig) is one year old and has been through one brown out without any problem. . .knock on wood (being my house is built from logs). . .

The article brings up a list of vulnerabilities while it shouldn't be taken that all SSDs would be effected on this alone. I think that this type of problem will tend to be more individualized rather then effecting all drives on any type of a large scale. It simply cautions however that this is something to keep in mind.

Sounds like a loose connection or bad spot on either a connection(cold solder point) or possibly a crack in the main board if the laptop has been banged around a bit?! I would tend to suspect a cold solder point or loose connection is where to begin looking however. The connections for the battery would be where to start as well as the power switch.

I agree with your assessment (my friend and I worked as electronic repair technicians).

He has a long warranty, but he is too addicted to using his machine to send it "back to the shop" for repairs.

That won't help any! It's just like my old Vista case is apparently having a problem after seeing a new board, supply, drive all go in to get it running again and suddenly a month after replacing the main drive Windows has troubles installing with hangs?

My friend wouldn't pull out the case so I could through it checking individual things as well as not using his usb hub which is suspect as well as the optical since both Vista dvd and usb install key methods failed. XP was finally installed with problems and no internet yet however. I still need to know why neither dvd or flash drive attempts failed however.

With 5 WD 1tb drives(mechanical) I guess I can knock on wood as well as the next not having seen any big problem after an early heavy snow storm knocked power out for nearly a week as well as other 3-4hr. interruptions over the last several years. The supply and board had gone belly up on the last case(2008-10) however while the big one hit in 2011.

 

[GeneO]

I've been running SSDs for over a year now and have dropped the power many times without any issues.

UPS have there own issues.

There is no substitution for backups for your system and multiple copies of your data and with checksums if it's integrity is important,

 

[Night Hawk]

UPSs do have issues at times! On that I can agree when looking into them and what I was finding. As for frequent backups that is the course of wisdom many often forget however. And then the day comes when something goes wrong and... "my data!"

When downloading anything when possible I download more then one copy of each thing in case of a bad download as well as having a backup since one goes to a folder on the main drive while each other will go to an identical folder on each of the two storage drives. Incrementally backing things as you go along works hand in hand with creating full system images when possible for the OS and all programs.

Now when going to run that first download and it fails that gets dumped and I simply copy one of the other downloads over if not launching it from the other drive. Not everything is stored long time on the main drive however. That will depend on just what it is.

As for outages in general I don't live in an area prone to seeing many. Of the few seen over the last several years most are only for a few hours only. A couple of good size too early in season snow storms with ice and heavy snow blew out a main transformer back on Oct 31, '11 that lasted for nearly a full week being a rare incident.

The heavy snow came while the leaves were still on the trees bringing lines down as well. 2010 however saw other areas hit with severe ice and outages lasting weeks here in the northeastern corner of the country. Trees split in half coming down on houses at times. The hilly moutainous areas see the bulk of damages as a general rule.

Now for an SSD or mechanical the same rule of thought about frequent backups should apply. Having a disaster recovery plan is what would be emphasized. With SSDs however you are dealing with the static memory over the magnetic coating on platters seen with mechanical drives.

Static memory is obviously more sensitive to certain conditions while gaps in the coating on platters produce bad sectors on mechanical drives. Wear on read/write heads and the armature also result in a drive fail while fluxuations of current and sudden dropoffs like blackouts could corrupt data on any drive not just SSDs but which tend to be more susceptible. The worst enemy for any drive or simply for hardware in general would be a heftly line surge or lightning strike which would send a surge through at times.

A defective component like a bad cap in a supply shorting things out when pushing a few extra amps into the board can cause all types of problems not just with drives where at time they actually survive while the supply and board may fail completely! The last build saw an old supply take the board with it without harm to anything else. The first board and supply for this build saw the supply go belly up and trip a 20A ac wall out right through the surge protection even as well as cooking the new board ordered with it! Fortunately all drives as well as data survived when the replacement MB was the exact same make and model.

So the Golden Rule of Thought for the day is simply backing up the backups made of the backup of the backups of the backup(s) made of the backup of the... Sometimes those old data disks just had to be tossed since you could no longer even read what files were originally burned on them when either upgrading systems or the OS or both which was usually the case. For each technology you have to be prepared for whatever setbacks are possible and simply put "be prepared"!

 

[Magissia]

I could not agree more.

Here, i never put a SSD alone, if i put an SSD in a computer, i make sure there's a hard drive with it, a clone the SSD to the hard drive for backup.

Something that could be nice is a hybrid mirroring raid, that would mirror everything from the ssd to the harddrive, without slowing down the SSD (because of the synchronisation)

Yes, we can sort-of do that, but i don't think we can do that hardware side at this time.

Was a nice read.

 

[Night Hawk]

I think you may find some have tried working with SSD arrays over trying to mix drive types. The two primary drawbacks here are 1) much higher price 2) small capacity drives

When planning the present case out I wanted drive capacity as well as trying 7 out on a Sata III drive and still going back to a Sata II after a second clean install was needed. That came up from changing brands of memory to get the 1.5v memory needed while I was able to recycle the 1.9v memory by using that for another new build at the time to run the 64bit Home Premium.

Now that SSD capacities have grown up as far as 1tb which is the size of the four HDs Sata II and III drives presently in use it may a consideration for the next build at some point. Personally this one is set up just where it needs to be and is working well enough to simply run it for some time still. The latest Octocore cpus? A little faster seeing 4.2ghz might be a consideration? Or might not be either since a quad core 3.4ghz model suffices thank you!

For the next build or eventually on this one possibly I would still be seeing the twin primary storage drives as well as a second drive for images from the host as well as trying out different OSs on the front end of it. The idea even for mechanical drives is one backs up the other since the second storage drive originally saw system images stored there waiting to see what the next would look like following 7 for the second drive. 8 flopped!

At this time knowing that the next version won't work out the second OS drive can now be bumped to the image storage role and an SSD could replace the present 7 host drive in theory which would then still see the present 7 host drive turned into either another second OS test drive once again or a second drive for storing even more system images? Then the test of how an SSD would work here would begin.