SSD Question

[PX-256m2s]

hi guys,
i bought a new comp, the boot drive is a plextor px-256m2s, that sata 3 256gb ssd. now i did three things, before reading on the internet that i shouldnt have. i ran ccleaner once or twice with the option securely erase free disk space, and also had windows defrag the ssd twice also reinstalled windows once, after i deleteted some essential system files accidentaly, while trying to move the user profile folders to D:\
now that i read about the write cycle wear i moved the temporary internet files of ie and firefox to the classic magnetic harddrive as well as the download folders and the windows memory swap.

i read they can take about 1000 write cycles but both the secure erase and defrag do several writes each time? can anyone who knows about this stuff give me an estimate on how much wear i put on my ssd?

i feel bad.

programs used were as mentioned ccleaner and the built-in defrag of windows 7 home 64 bit.

 

[groberts101]

I wouldn't worry as I highly doubt you only have 1000 PE/c(program erase cycles) nand on that drive. Would think it's at least 3000PE/c nand on there. Take the capacity times the PE/c rating and thats your theoretical allowance beofre it becomes read only. IOW, with a larger drive like that you can write many Petabytes before it becomes an issue to worry about.

Now that you know about CCleaner free space wipes writing 00's(HDD data) instead of the necessary 11's(SSD)?.. just avoid these mistakes in the future. Defrags don't write to the entire driuve either and simply move the neccessary data to defrag only specific data(should just be a few gigs to several or so). I would logoff idle the machine to allow GC to recover some of the trash and you should be fine.

 

[=Wendy=]

The PX-256M2S uses the Marvell 88SS9174-BKK2 controller and Toshiba 32nm toggle mode NAND, so it should be good for around 4500 - 5000 P/E cycles.

 

[PX-256m2s]

thank you both. i wont do either in the future. would be nice if microsoft and piriform included a warning not to use defrag/ secure erase on ssds. im sure im not the only person with a pc who doesnt/didnt know this stuff.

 

[PX-256m2s]

i did some calculations, 256gb x 4500 write cycles mean with perfectly even wear i may write 1,152,000 gb on that ssd before it breaks. max write speed under perfect conditions is 330 mb/s or 1 gb/3s.
assuming i write non stop 24/7 at max speed with perfectly even wear itll take exactly 40 days to reach the end of that ssds life?
assuming i defrag once a week, i couldnt live to see it happen. i understand that it doesnt help at all but it doesnt seem to hurt that much either?

 

[Martimus]

i did some calculations, 256gb x 4500 write cycles mean with perfectly even wear i may write 1,152,000 gb on that ssd before it breaks. max write speed under perfect conditions is 330 mb/s or 1 gb/3s.
assuming i write non stop 24/7 at max speed with perfectly even wear itll take exactly 40 days to reach the end of that ssds life?
assuming i defrag once a week, i couldnt live to see it happen. i understand that it doesnt help at all but it doesnt seem to hurt that much either?

There is no reason to ever defrag a Solid State Drive, so don't do it in the future. I think you were just giving an example, but just incase you were actually planning on doing it once a week, I wanted to make sure that you don't.

 

[PX-256m2s]

no, now that i know theres no benefit i wont. it just doesnt seem like much of a deal anymore that i did twice. thanks for worrying .
also, very nice psu you got there, i got a corsair ax750 because they didnt have yours on stock, else i would have gotten the seasonic.

 

[Zap]

thank you both. i wont do either in the future. would be nice if microsoft and piriform included a warning not to use defrag/ secure erase on ssds. im sure im not the only person with a pc who doesnt/didnt know this stuff.

It isn't that you "didn't know this stuff." It is that you "thought you knew better." Microsoft automatically disables the scheduled Defrag that it normally sets up for hard drives. You did an end run around this by manually running it. That's something which most "normal" users will never think to do. Also, secure erase all empty space on a new drive? Why do that at all? Why "warn" users against doing something which most of them would never ever think of doing?

The way you used to overclock CPUs? Yeah, that's all changed with Sandy Bridge. The way you used to "optimize" hard drives? Yeah, that's all changed with SSDs. Oh yeah, if you started using SSDs a few years ago and had to jump through hoops to keep performance from plummeting? Yeah, that's all changed too.

With technology, the only thing that stays the same is... CHANGE!

This post was brought to you by the letter H.

 

[PX-256m2s]

na its not that i thought i knew better than microsoft, ive just never had any defrags or virus scans on auto and used to do any of that whenever i felt like it. i found out i couldnt preset any defrags on c: after i read that it wasnt good for ssds. i wasnt trying to outsmart microsofts computer scientists or anything. i think a warning for something like this would be nice, as windows warns me for all kinds of less important stuff... im not as good with computers as most/all of you guys/girls.

on a side note in the bios it says my board is called p8p67 deluxe rev 1.xx. but the box it came in has rev 3.0 written all over. whats up with that? the asus check tool says its b3 stepping and all sata ports will work properly, but doesnt tell me what rev and cpu z also calls it rev 1.xx.

 

[SolMiester]

OP, have you really moved your temp internet files to another drive??....Thats half the benefit of having an SSD!

 

[PX-256m2s]

yeah i had to use that about:config in firefox to do that but i did. however theres some stuff that windows writes on c: and i cant change also there are programs thatll write stuff on c: even when i install them on d:
i think ill just stop worrying about the ssd, use it till it fails, by then ill probably get one twice as big, faster for half the money. im just wondering if it was idea to spend that much money on an mlc, i could have gotten a smaller slc, im only using 27-28gb on c: anyway, everything else is on the cheap 3tb classic harddrive.

 

[nanaki333]

there are defrag programs out there that are ssd safe. i use perfectdisk with the consolidate free space option.

 

[PX-256m2s]

what im wondering is if theyll be able to increase the write cycles on mlc as they seem to be focussing on those at the moment or if cheaper slc will become mainstream in the future. if you use a desktop its kinda annoying but you can work around it by doing most writing on that megnetic drive, but as most ppl use laptops with only one drive i think something has to happen. worrying about writing on your drive that was in a way produced to be written on (well reading from it too of course) isnt much fun.

 

[Martimus]

on a side note in the bios it says my board is called p8p67 deluxe rev 1.xx. but the box it came in has rev 3.0 written all over. whats up with that? the asus check tool says its b3 stepping and all sata ports will work properly, but doesnt tell me what rev and cpu z also calls it rev 1.xx.

The chip is stepping B3, but the Bios is rev 1.xx. It is refering to two different things, and you don't need to worry about them being different. (If it was the old chipset, it would be stepping B2 not 1.xx.)

I like the PSU, and I can't even hear the fan when it turns on over the rest of the system. Your PSU is darn good too, so I wouldn't worry about getting it over mine.

 

[PX-256m2s]

i know the board revision and the chipset stepping are different numbers, chipset stepping is named by intel and the board revision is made up by asus. i was just wondering cause on the box it says on several different places 'P8P67 DELUXE REV 3.0 - New B3 Revision' and the bios (build 1503, the latest i believe) calls it P8P67 Rev 1.xx. im not worried that i got pre-fix cougar point, im wondering why asus and my retailer call the board revision 3.0 and then call it 1.xx in the bios.

 

[PX-256m2s]

and im not unhappy with the corsair psu as its your seasonic relabeled, but yours is slightly newer slightly tweaked with slightly nicer stats and only costs slightly more, so i would have gotten yours if they had had it in stock
our systems are kinda alike anyway, i have a 2600k, that asus board, gskill ram, only 8gb though and only 1333, cas 7, that plextor drive obviously, hitachi 3tb hdd, the cheaper of the two they sell, gigabyte 580gtx, noctua c14, the slightly weaker psu , hp bluray writer in a lian li pc-9f, which doesnt cool the internals as well as your haf i guess but im shallow and i think the 9f looks pretty. samsung 24" LED, wish i had spent an extra 150 bucks on that acer 27" though as i like watching movies and the 30" displays arent down to a price i can pay yet.