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geekhack Community => Other Geeky Stuff => Topic started by: Dreamre on Fri, 05 June 2015, 21:57:05

Title: Power Loss Protection for SSDs
Post by: Dreamre on Fri, 05 June 2015, 21:57:05
Hi there,

I've googled this, but I haven't had any luck, but are there any consumer grade SSDs with power loss protection? More specifically, does anyone know if the Samsung 840 Pro has it? I know the 850 Pro doesn't. I've also heard some Crucial SSDs have it, but apparently they're fake, but marketed to have it.

Thanks for your help  :D!
Title: Re: Power Loss Protection for SSDs
Post by: tp4tissue on Sat, 06 June 2015, 04:20:10
Hi there,

I've googled this, but I haven't had any luck, but are there any consumer grade SSDs with power loss protection? More specifically, does anyone know if the Samsung 840 Pro has it? I know the 850 Pro doesn't. I've also heard some Crucial SSDs have it, but apparently they're fake, but marketed to have it.

Thanks for your help  :D!

Even if consumer grade SSDs did have power lose protection. "would you trust it?" LOL


Anyway, A decent sized UPS + regular-SSD is cheaper than the cost of an enterprise SSD alone..

So, that's the more reliable way to go is you want power-loss protection.

Mission critical servers usually have "Both a UPS and Enterprise SSD-s" ,  but the UPS is the more important safety line.

The power protection for SSDs doesn't really do anything besides prevent -corruption-  which is not critical at all in a desktop environment..
Title: Re: Power Loss Protection for SSDs
Post by: jamster on Sat, 06 June 2015, 08:00:44
IIRC, power loss protection in an SSD is basically capacitors that store enough energy to let the device finish writing before it goes dark. It's so that the device doesn't brick itself as a result of power loss, not for anything more than that.

I read a bunch of reviews lately that did talk about power loss protection in consumer drives, so it does exist. I can't remember which ones are supposed to have it though.
Title: Re: Power Loss Protection for SSDs
Post by: dante on Sat, 06 June 2015, 08:06:46
The zen answer to your question is to stick with laptops.
Title: Re: Power Loss Protection for SSDs
Post by: heedpantsnow on Sat, 06 June 2015, 11:32:29
I've got several old SSDs in my desktop. I have an Aquaero that reads a flow meter and shuts down the computer (cuts power) if needed. My old pump was on a bad splitter and the shutdown happened 1-3 times per day.

My OS eventually got corrupted, but none of my SSDs were ever bricked.

YMMV but I can't imagine that the bricking scenario happens that often.
Title: Re: Power Loss Protection for SSDs
Post by: IvanIvanovich on Sat, 06 June 2015, 12:05:20
Now, if it's just to avoid general annoyance, then using a UPS is the way to go. I got a pretty decent but relatively inexpensive Eaton 5S 1000. My building has uneven crappy electricity, and I got tired of mini brownouts resulting in sudden reboots. I never noticed yet anything bad happening with data corruption before I got the UPS though. Even still, I have all my data backed up on other disks too.
Bit flipping isn't that uncommon still sadly on many SSD model with sudden power loss during writes. Most of the time just that data chunk is lost... but it can be severe as well if it happens during some garbage collection move... huge chunks can be corrupted potentially. Also, nand with smaller nm process seems to be more easily effected by this.
Title: Re: Power Loss Protection for SSDs
Post by: Dreamre on Sat, 06 June 2015, 22:24:57
Thanks for all of your help guys. I'll pick up a UPS.

Many thanks all!