Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I'm glad TLC exists; the 840 Evo is fast enough and reliable enough and it's much cheaper than a 2-bit MLC SSD.


I'm not saying it is a bad thing if you understand the tradeoffs and can work within them, but what I'm getting at is that a lot of consumers unfortunately don't.

The extreme endurance torture tests that get reported often don't tell the whole story either - the more flash cells are cycled, the "leakier" they become and retention goes down significantly. Figures I've seen for SLC are 10 years retention after 100K P/E cycles, earlier-generation MLC 5 years after 10K P/E cycles, newer MLC is 5 years @1.5~3K, TLC is 1 year @ <1K. Of course retention tests don't make for as interesting news articles as endurance ones since they're almost like watching paint dry, but IMHO they are just as if not more important, and manufacturers should provide warnings that flash-based devices are intrinsically unstable and their retention ability is measured in years. "Bit rot" is a reality with NAND flash. I only hope that people who think they've "backed up" data onto used SSDs, memory cards, and other forms of high-capacity flash don't find that much of it has literally self-erased and disappeared after only a few years.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: