Is Folding@Home bad for a SSD?

[Kneedragger]

I recently put my OS on a SSD and wanted to know if this is a good idea? I'm curious if it will shorten the lifespan of a SSD.

Thanks

 

[Bubbleawsome]

If you install F@H on the SSD it might degrade it, otherwise it won't because it is writing to your HDD. But I don't think F@H writes to the drive much.

 

[GLeeM]

I thought it writes to log at least 100 times per WU. Or at least every 15 minutes when it saves a checkpoint?

 

[theAnimal]

The default is every 15 minutes, you can change this up to 30 IIRC.

 

[Drsignguy]

You can set the verbosity to 5, which only writes warnings. As bubbleawsome has mentioned, it will degrade some. But by the time it starts to show some wear, you might have grandchildren by then.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Running DC apps WILL degrade an SSD. I would not recommend it. If you can, get a cheap mechanical HD (even an old IDE drive, possibly with an IDE-to-SATA converter) if you can, and put your DC data-files/work directories on the platter drive.

I burned through nearly 25% of the lifespan of a 30GB SSD, running BOINC on it for around 2 months.

 

[ZipSpeed]

Running DC apps WILL degrade an SSD. I would not recommend it. If you can, get a cheap mechanical HD (even an old IDE drive, possibly with an IDE-to-SATA converter) if you can, and put your DC data-files/work directories on the platter drive.

I burned through nearly 25% of the lifespan of a 30GB SSD, running BOINC on it for around 2 months.

Weird. I have a 60 GB Crucial M4 on a dedicated 24/7 BOINC cruncher that's been running for about 1.5 years and it shows 91% health. Just checked my 3770K that's been running WCG 24/7 since February of this year and it still shows 100% according to CrystalDiskInfo. Either I'm incredibly lucky or perhaps running DC on SSDs isn't nearly as detrimental as some make it seem.

 

[Drsignguy]

Running DC apps WILL degrade an SSD. I would not recommend it. If you can, get a cheap mechanical HD (even an old IDE drive, possibly with an IDE-to-SATA converter) if you can, and put your DC data-files/work directories on the platter drive.

I burned through nearly 25% of the lifespan of a 30GB SSD, running BOINC on it for around 2 months.

I agree with you, and I myself use HDD's for DC. Please correct me if I'm wrong though, doesn't Boinc do a lot more writing to a HDD/SSD than F@H? I noticed when I have run Boinc, it has a plethora of WU's ready and then stores them when complete, then it uploads them. F@H downloads whatever WU's it needs according to your hardware specs and when it is just about ready to complete a WU, it has one already downloaded and sends the completed one almost right away.

Where I am going with this is, if you burned 25% of a lifespan with Boinc, would it be the same with F@H or less, or even more based on how much they write to a drive?

Still, this is one of those reasons to have a HDD to limit the amount of writing to a SSD while running DC.

 

[Drsignguy]

Weird. I have a 60 GB Crucial M4 on a dedicated 24/7 BOINC cruncher that's been running for about 1.5 years and it shows 91% health. Just checked my 3770K that's been running WCG 24/7 since February of this year and it still shows 100% according to CrystalDiskInfo. Either I'm incredibly lucky or perhaps running DC on SSDs isn't nearly as detrimental as some make it seem.

Yea, that is interesting. I ran F@H for about a month on a SSD and all I saw was the LED flashing constantly. I did some config changes and it limited it some but still decided to put it on my HDD.

 

[Kneedragger]

OK, so I found this in a thread on their forum from a mod.

While the client is folding it is writing log entries every frame (i.e. every minute or two) to your HD. The only way I know of to stop that behavior, short of stopping folding altogether, is to install folding on to a USB/SSD drive so that it writes logs there instead of your HD which doesn't as much stop the behavior as move it to a non-mechanical drive.

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=88&t=23893

I think I will migrate it to something other than the SSD. I do agree with you guys that I will want to upgrade the SSD by this time, but I still don't want to shorten its life span.

 

[petrusbroder]

Interesting.
I have run Win 8 and BOINC on my daily-use-computer (office, photoshop, browsing) for more than 1½ year; BOINC running 16 hours each day. I have run the Folding@Home Holiday season race for a full month 24/7 on this computer (but then BOINC was not running)
It is Corsaire Force GT, 120 GB, firmware version 1.3.
The total run time of the SSD is 11596 hours, lifetime reads 6,63 TB, lifetime writes 7,76 TB, SSD life left: 100%, Life curve status 100, no uncorrectable errors, no fails, etc., etc. i.e. all is green.
On an other computer, which runs BOINC 24/7 I have the same brand and type of SSD for 1 year and 2 months, (10 224 hours), lifetime reads 7,24 TB, lifetime writes 8,36 TB and the SSD life is 100% left.
As I can see there is no wear on the SSDs observable ... YMMV.

 

[Kneedragger]

Interesting.
I have run Win 8 and BOINC on my daily-use-computer (office, photoshop, browsing) for more than 1½ year; BOINC running 16 hours each day. I have run the Folding@Home Holiday season race for a full month 24/7 on this computer (but then BOINC was not running)
It is Corsaire Force GT, 120 GB, firmware version 1.3.
The total run time of the SSD is 11596 hours, lifetime reads 6,63 TB, lifetime writes 7,76 TB, SSD life left: 100%, Life curve status 100, no uncorrectable errors, no fails, etc., etc. i.e. all is green.
On an other computer, which runs BOINC 24/7 I have the same brand and type of SSD for 1 year and 2 months, (10 224 hours), lifetime reads 7,24 TB, lifetime writes 8,36 TB and the SSD life is 100% left.
As I can see there is no wear on the SSDs observable ... YMMV.

Thanks for the info!

 

[VirtualLarry]

The total run time of the SSD is 11596 hours, lifetime reads 6,63 TB, lifetime writes 7,76 TB, SSD life left: 100%
As I can see there is no wear on the SSDs observable ... YMMV.

My OCZ Agility had 9TB written in two months or so. Granted, that small of an SSD has bad WA, but still.

 

[Drsignguy]

From all the war stories I have read about excessive writing to SSD's, I didn't want to take any chances. Besides, I have plenty of HD's so I might as well put them to good use.