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Solid state drives (SSDs) are inherently more reliable than their rotating platter counterparts; after all, they feature no moving parts. But with so many SSD choices on the market today, it is wise to look past the "speeds and feeds" instead address the meaningful differences. One such differentiator is the way in which STEC SSDs are tested at our factory in Orange County, California.
The overall goal of the STEC SSD testing methodology is to ensure a quality product and to catch defects that less rigorous testing methodologies may not. Quality is engineered into each SSD from design inception with appropriate design tolerances, proper component selection, and conservative component derating. Every SSD is then 100% verified by a test environment that is informative, versatile, thoroughly exhaustive and reflective of the real world, mission-critical conditions our demanding customers use our drives for every day.
To improve reliability, every STEC solid state drive goes through a comprehensive set of steps designed to fully exercise the drive and reduce infant mortality defects. After the drive's power supply circuitry is verified and controller firmware is loaded, the interface is checked. The SSD line currently supports ATA, Serial ATA, and Fibre Channel interfaces.
Each drive is then placed in a thermal chamber and each block is read/write tested while cycling through and beyond the temperature range for which that product is sold. In other words, for industrial temperature drives rated to operate at -40oc to +85oc, each would actually be tested from -45oc to +90oc. This stress testing is optimized to weed out defects so that they are not shipped to our customers. This all-encompassing approach to drive testing ensures that we deliver product that lives up to our customer's 24/7 expectations.
The STEC manufacturing facility is ISO9001 and ISO14001 certified. Quality control audits are regularly used to verify and make certain that procedures are in place and followed to ensure reproducible quality with every step in the process. Ongoing reliability tests are performed to monitor initial quality as well as long-term reliability of the SSDs we produce. STEC's comprehensive approach to solid state drive testing is setting the standard for the industry. Our manufacturing test operations have earned trusted supplier status from world-class OEMs after numerous audits examining the quality of our test procedures. The net result for all STEC customers is a final product with fewer than industry average infant mortality rates and reduced long-term support costs.
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