SSD Type Drives Better?

My understanding is that using them to put data on and off for listening sessions is not a good idea. They have very high failure rates when used like that and they may last 6 months if lucky. The life expediency on SSD drives is only about 2 years under normal wear and tear. I use one as my main boot drive but not for storage of any kind where data would change often.

Hevac, I have SSD in Macbook Air. It is perfect and Apple products are very reliable. The only limitation is amount of writes to each sector that is resolved by controller that shuffles the sectors to extend life. For typical use I might expire earlier. Everything fails eventually, but SSD at least doesn't have moving parts. For music server application it is perfect - a lot of reads, few writes.

09-29-12: Hevac1
My understanding is that using them to put data on and off for listening sessions is not a good idea. They have very high failure rates when used like that and they may last 6 months if lucky. The life expediency on SSD drives is only about 2 years under normal wear and tear. I use one as my main boot drive but not for storage of any kind where data would change often.

I had Kingston SSDs in a laptop and a desktop that both died in less than a year. Any particular brands to recommend that are reliable?
But once used in a system, it is hard to go back to disk type. They're much faster in every aspect.

Any particular brands to recommend that are reliable?

My perception has been that it is a moving target. Reliability changes as new models are introduced, technology improves, and even perhaps as manufacturers release firmware upgrades for their drives. Also, I believe that the general trend has been towards greater reliability in the past couple of years or so, probably due in part to improvements in wear leveling and related techniques in the drives, and more universal compatibility of controller hardware and operating system software with those techniques. Things like "Trim" and "Garbage Collection".

FWIW, I've used a Crucial SSD in a moderately used desktop computer for about 2 years; an OCZ Vertex 4 SSD in a very heavily used laptop for about 6 months; and another OCZ Vertex 4 SSD in another laptop for about 1 month, all with no problems. All of those SSD's are 128 gB in size, and rated for SATA 3.0 interface speed (6 gbps), although I'm running them at slower speeds due to limitations in the surrounding hardware. All of them are being used as "system drives" (the main internal drive containing the operating system and program files). It should be kept in mind that system drives will be written to vastly more frequently, and therefore experience more rapid "wear," than drives used just for storage and reading of data (assuming, at least, that a comparable percentage of the storage capacity of each drive is in use), due to writes that are made by the operating system and program software, invisibly to the user (although most of those writes will involve far less data than a CD rip).

I would recommend that anyone considering purchase of an SSD peruse the user comments at NewEgg.com on any drives that are being considered, while keeping in mind that those comments typically reflect incidences of DOA drives and infant mortality to a disproportionate degree.

Regarding the original question, there have been lots of reports of improved sonics with SSD's. I second Kijanki's comments about that. Timing differences, reduced fluctuations in current draw (resulting in less electrical noise), absence of motor-generated RFI, etc., conceivably all play a part, ultimately resulting in reduced jitter. My guess is that those differences will generally be more significant in the case of internal drives than external drives.

But once used in a system, it is hard to go back to disk type. They're much faster in every aspect.

My sentiments exactly. Perhaps "hard" should even be changed to "impossible." :-)

Regards,
-- Al

Al, thanks a lot. The good thing is SSDs are getting more affordable and hopefully as you said more reliable.