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Do you care about SSD wear?

Do you care about SSD wear?

  • I'm constantly checking amount of written data

    Votes: 1 2.1%
  • I'm checking it just occasionally

    Votes: 5 10.6%
  • I'm just monitoring its overall health with SMART

    Votes: 8 17.0%
  • I don't care about anything, i'm just using it

    Votes: 33 70.2%

  • Total voters
    47
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I've bought myself a SSD drive and i'm wondering how do you care about SSD wear.
Do you constantly check how many gigabytes of data have ben written to the drive, you check it just occasionally or you don't care about it at all?

For me it's somehow hard to get past the fact that i know that writing to the drive is effectively destroying it bit after bit. I've removed SSDlife because it was showing amount of data written to the drive and i was constantly checking it. Now i'm using just CrystalDiskInfo which is just showing HDD health status.
 
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I honestly don't care, I'm running 2 VertexII in Raid0

So far I don't see performance degrading. I do keep my programs on a separate drive and I have disabled pagefile and indexing and all the other tweaks your supposed to do, but that's about it.
 
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I dont care either ... Been using the Vertex II 50gigs for 6 months now ... and the perfomance is the same as day 1 .

Cheers,
 
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I should be getting my first SSD tomorrow. I'm sure when I first get it I will be a little cautious when implementing the necessary tweaks but then once I'm done with those I won't even think about. After all, it has warranty and it's in my system to do just that - alot of fast reading and writing :)
 

sneekypeet

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I had this conversation with TheMailMan and here was my take then. As long as you realize it is more volatile than a standard HDD, and you prepare for the worst by backing up the data, who cares. Isn't that what the warranty is for?
 
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Benchmark Scores Faster than yours... I'd bet on it. :)
THIS ^^

But, unless I start writing 10GB /day for 18 years, Im not going to kill it via USE, so there is not reason, even though it is more 'volitile' than mechanical to even waste precious seconds testing it. There are of course other reasons SSD's die. ;)

The ONLY reason I check this (through OCZ Toolbox) is before I sell the drive so those that are paranoid can have (false) 'peace of mind'.

What Does This Really Mean For SSDs?

Let's put everything we've explored into some rational perspective. Here is what we know about hard drives from the two cited studies.

1. MTBF tells you nothing about reliability.
2. The annualized failure rate (AFR) is higher than what manufacturers claim.
3. Drives do not have a tendency to fail during the first year of use. Failure rates steadily increase with age.
4. SMART is not a reliable warning system for impending failure detection.
5. The failure rates of “enterprise” and “consumer” drives are very much similar.
6. The failure of one drive in an array increases the likelihood of another drive failure.
7. Temperature has a minor effect on failure rates.
 
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Hi

Don't care too much as I only have OS on SSD, all progs and file are on other hdd's or backed-up

atb (all the best)

Law-II
 
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I haven't got one yet, but they've all got 3 year warranties, so I figure if it's within that time I can get it repaired. After that the performance, and price to GB ratio of these things should be many times better so I wont mind an upgrade.
 
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I just started running 2x ocz vertex I 30gb in raid 0 for my OS drive. I figure I got them for so dang cheap that even if they degrade a little I don't mind just as long as they keep working overall.

Loving it so far. These things are pretty dang fast. I know their are faster these days, but for the price im happy.
 
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I set up a ramdrive for my temp and cache directories, so that my SSD doesn't wear due internet and TPU goofing. I noticed that 90% of my writes were due to internet /browser activity, so it was a no-brainer to move browser cache into ramdrive. As an added benefit, when I turn off the PC, all browser traces are lost ;)

If you have an older SSD without a nice on-board cache and the newer wear levelling algorithms, then writes and write amplification is something to keep in mind. I do recommend ramdrive to anyone running an older SSD that is getting hit by their browser. Set it up, and forget it.
 
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I set up a ramdrive for my temp and cache directories, so that my SSD doesn't wear due internet and TPU goofing. I noticed that 90% of my writes were due to internet /browser activity, so it was a no-brainer to move browser cache into ramdrive. As an added benefit, when I turn off the PC, all browser traces are lost ;)

If you have an older SSD without a nice on-board cache and the newer wear levelling algorithms, then writes and write amplification is something to keep in mind. I do recommend ramdrive to anyone running an older SSD that is getting hit by their browser. Set it up, and forget it.

Care to expand or link to a tutorial for ram drive set up, I have eram but have never taken the time to look at it.
 

robn

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I don't have ssd. If I had I wouldn't care.

My attitude as well, though I'm seriously looking at getting a Crucial M4 or similar. Price is the blocker.

SSDs having a defined write-limited lifespan is better than HDDs' situation where lifespan is defined by several unpredictable mechanical factors. All in all HDD lifespan is equally short.

Basically using a mechanical disk is killing it as the bearings wear, the fragile surface material degrades, the voice coil heats, and so on. Ironically not using a mechanical disk (e.g. shelving a USB backup HDD) also risks failure, as fluid bearings can stick.
 

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Read the entire article at the link in post #6 by EarthDog. It explains everything you need to know.
 
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just using it like a regular drive, paging file got to go on another drive to get more space on the ssd that's about it
 
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Care to expand or link to a tutorial for ram drive set up, I have eram but have never taken the time to look at it.

Here: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=107670

PS. I don't agree with the stats in Earthdog's link. There are some big assumptions in those calculations that I don't agree with, and their results are very very different from analysis I have seen elsewhere. Example - those stats in the link are based on calculations assuming write amplification of 1.75 (absolutely not true for older SSDs) AND on a GB written per day and not on a number of files basis. A single file of 10GB behaves very differently than 10,000 files of 1K. They also assume COMPLETELY used up all write cycles over the whole drive assuming the drive is empty and therefore the whole drive capacity is available. Pretty lame assumptions in real world scenario. IMO that analysis, as is, shouldn't have got passed the editor at tomshardware. I'm not impressed with their editorial.
 

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Don't care unless there's a problem, and if there is Corsair will take care of it.
 
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Don't care unless there's a problem, and if there is Corsair will take care of it.
I guess that also means you don't bother with backups and your PC has non-essential and replaceable data and applications. Yes, this is an OK scenario for many home users but absolutely not acceptable for business or critical files. You can't just say, let it fail, and replace under warranty, if your PC contains important data or files that could be lost.

It concerns me that manufacturers might be developing and improving SSD technology to meet "consumer speed but non essential data" scenarios rather than "fast with integrity" scenario that is what I want. We will not know for a few years... but I bet this forum will start getting the war-stories of SSD integrity in a couple years time!

BACKUP ESSENTIAL FILES. Live recklessly in the fast lane once you have backed up! :pimp:
 
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I honestly don't care. I have four SSDs in two machines, and when they die, they die. Everything important must be backed up anyway, on either HDD or SSD, so why should I treat it any different?

When it decides to die, I have my warranty.
 

Wile E

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I guess that also means you don't bother with backups and your PC has non-essential and replaceable data and applications. Yes, this is an OK scenario for many home users but absolutely not acceptable for business or critical files. You can't just say, let it fail, and replace under warranty, if your PC contains important data or files that could be lost.

It concerns me that manufacturers might be developing and improving SSD technology to meet "consumer speed but non essential data" scenarios rather than "fast with integrity" scenario that is what I want. We will not know for a few years... but I bet this forum will start getting the war-stories of SSD integrity in a couple years time!

BACKUP ESSENTIAL FILES. Live recklessly in the fast lane once you have backed up! :pimp:

Only if you don't back up. If you don't, it's your fault. If you have back ups, then it's a total non-issue aside from having to rma.
 
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I have been buying vertex 2 60gbs, they are only $109 new. I buy one have it for 6 months or so and sell it for something else. Not fussed at all about wear. :)
 
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So solid state drives wear? But theres no moving parts
 
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