Sick of SSD life questions? Lets squash this rumor.

[Coup27]

I am doing the research as we speak. One element of my research is checking forums for experiences and ideas. But it appears that your reply hasn't provided any useful information. Do you have any?

Yes. Number 1, stop worrying. Unless you put your SSD into a server or data cruncher, you will not wear out the life span of the NAND. Your SSD will survive gigabytes of writes per day without it being a problem.

Many SSDs can report "health" aka life expectancy. Programs such as SSD Life can do this.

Unfortunately this forum has a lot of misinformation about SSDs and general hysteria from people who don't understand them because they haven't taken the time to read good articles which would give them the knowledge they need. Most of the problems you will read about were either down to poor SSD choice (ie OCZ / Sandforce) or people not setting them up correctly.

If you want a shortcut, install your drive in AHCI mode with aligned partitions, install your OS, ensure you're using the latest storage drivers from your motherboard manufacturer and then forget it. Give your SSD as much abuse as you feel like.

 

[Cerb]

As for the C300, I'm not familiar with the problems you mentioned, but note that the Intel 320 was introduced about the same time the Crucial m4 was (March 2011), and the C300 is older.

You're right, there. Crucial has kept around a long time, in relative terms (still fixing bugs, too), while 320 is Intel's last gen.

 

[IGemini]

SSD : Corsair Force F115
Firmware: 2.4
Controller: SandForce SF-1222
Size: 115GB
Power On Hours: 9318
Lifetime Writes: 5.13 TB
Life Curve Status:
SSD Life Left: 100%
Trim enabled? (y/n): Yes
OS: Windows 7
Is this the OS drive? (y/n): Yes

Despite the knocking of SandForce, I've never had a problem with my drive.

 

[corkyg]

Getting back to the initial question - yes! Now we have this one:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2267956

I have concluded that any SSD I get after today will outlive me! (Based on current actuarial tables.) <LOL>

 

[Yellowbeard]

We had a forum member do some testing that closely paralleled the XS testing.

http://www.corsair.com/blog/force-series-ssd-life-testing/

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wow those are some neat stats at that forum. Did not realize they could handle that much.

I'd be curious to know how they would do in a server environment as well. Wonder if anyone has done some testing. Specifically, raid 5/6 with 40+ heavy use VMs on them. I wish I had the spare money to try this stuff out.

I have two SSDs in my new rig, one for windows 7 and one for Linux (most active). All my data is on my server. Still looking good considering they get very little writes. I am using ext4 though which is a journaling file system and normally not recommended for SSDs.

Linux drive:

  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   084   084   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0/7414712
  5 Retired_Block_Count     0x0033   100   100   003    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours_and_Msec 0x0032   098   098   000    Old_age   Always       -       2587h+53m+00.130s
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       109
171 Program_Fail_Count      0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
172 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
174 Unexpect_Power_Loss_Ct  0x0030   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       30
177 Wear_Range_Delta        0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       1
181 Program_Fail_Count      0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
182 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   030   030   000    Old_age   Always       -       30 (Min/Max 30/30)
195 ECC_Uncorr_Error_Count  0x001c   120   120   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0/7414712
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0033   100   100   003    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
201 Unc_Soft_Read_Err_Rate  0x001c   120   120   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0/7414712
204 Soft_ECC_Correct_Rate   0x001c   120   120   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0/7414712
230 Life_Curve_Status       0x0013   100   100   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       100
231 SSD_Life_Left           0x0013   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
233 SandForce_Internal      0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       1379
234 SandForce_Internal      0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       584
241 Lifetime_Writes_GiB     0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       584
242 Lifetime_Reads_GiB      0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       1331

Windows drive:

  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       1023
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       24
170 Unknown_Attribute       0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
171 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       0
172 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       0
173 Unknown_Attribute       0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
174 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       0
181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total  0x0022   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       124554772497
183 Runtime_Bad_Block       0x0032   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       0
184 End-to-End_Error        0x0033   100   100   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       0
188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       0
189 High_Fly_Writes         0x000e   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       90
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x003a   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   100   001    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       0
202 Data_Address_Mark_Errs  0x0018   100   100   001    Old_age   Offline      -       0
206 Flying_Height           0x000e   100   100   001    Old_age   Always       -       0

Not sure any of that means much as for it's life left though.. seems that model does not have that info in smart. It's a Crucial M4. The other one is an OCZ vertex 3