So I noticed a lot of builds these days have SSD as the primary program drive, housing the OS and any other major programs you want to run on a PC. Given that SSD drives eventually wear out due to their design (though there are good algorithms to spread this out) what does everyone think regarding this philosophy. Obviously a lot of you believe it is perfectly acceptable but I am curious as to your thoughts behind it?
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SSD Wear Rates?
- Thread starter VtPC83
- Start date
DaveSimmons
Elite Member
Under normal use the wear-leveling will keep the drive working for 5-10 years before it switches to read-only access, and by then you'll be building a new system anyway.
How many 5 year old platter drives are you using on a daily basis now?
How many 5 year old platter drives are you using on a daily basis now?
frostedflakes
Diamond Member
All computer parts wear out from use. Hard drives, fans, even solid-state components like RAM and CPUs. The important question is, how long does it take to wear out? Obviously a couple years is unacceptable for most people, but once you get up to 10+ years it becomes kind of irrelevant. Parts become obsolete pretty quickly and after a decade or two aren't really useful or worth anything.
Good SSDs have reached this point, write endurance is good enough that there's no way a user is going to wear it out within a reasonable amount of time. This thread might be a good place to start.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm
Basically a handful of guys are hammering SSDs with writes in the name of science to see how much you can write to them before they fail. The 40GB Intel 320 (25nm NAND) has had 271TB written to it and is still going strong. The 64GB Samsung 470 (34nm NAND) is up to 322TB. Might not sound like a lot, but keep in mind that your average user will probably write between 5-15GB/day to their SSD. Just to be generous let's assume 20GB/day, which is probably pretty unrealistic but we'll use it anyway. At that rate, you could write to the SSD for 37 years before reaching 271TB, and remember that 271TB isn't even the limit, just what has been written to the SSD so far. May go up to 300TB, may go up to 500TB or 1000TB or more, we'll just have to wait and see. Also keep in mind that larger SSDs will have more flash to spread wear over, so in theory the 80GB Intel 320 should be able to handle two times as many writes, the 160GB four times as many, etc.
So like I said, it's a non-issue with a well-designed SSD and desktop workload. The drive will be obsolete or will have failed in some other way long before your average user reaches the write limit.
Good SSDs have reached this point, write endurance is good enough that there's no way a user is going to wear it out within a reasonable amount of time. This thread might be a good place to start.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm
Basically a handful of guys are hammering SSDs with writes in the name of science to see how much you can write to them before they fail. The 40GB Intel 320 (25nm NAND) has had 271TB written to it and is still going strong. The 64GB Samsung 470 (34nm NAND) is up to 322TB. Might not sound like a lot, but keep in mind that your average user will probably write between 5-15GB/day to their SSD. Just to be generous let's assume 20GB/day, which is probably pretty unrealistic but we'll use it anyway. At that rate, you could write to the SSD for 37 years before reaching 271TB, and remember that 271TB isn't even the limit, just what has been written to the SSD so far. May go up to 300TB, may go up to 500TB or 1000TB or more, we'll just have to wait and see. Also keep in mind that larger SSDs will have more flash to spread wear over, so in theory the 80GB Intel 320 should be able to handle two times as many writes, the 160GB four times as many, etc.
So like I said, it's a non-issue with a well-designed SSD and desktop workload. The drive will be obsolete or will have failed in some other way long before your average user reaches the write limit.
Zap
Elite Member
The tl;dr version.
Gigantopithecus
Diamond Member
Zero. However, my 5 year old platter drives didn't cost $200 and are no longer anywhere near the fastest things around for my purposes. I seriously doubt that the performance increases of the SSDs that are available in 2016 will matter overmuch to typical desktop users. If you buy an SSD today, I think it's more than reasonable to consider it an investment that you expect to last longer than a platter HDD.
DaveSimmons
Elite Member
^ in 5 years you can expect ~3 doubling in transistor count = 2^3 = 8x, which is 8x capacity for a SSD. So a replacement would only cost $25, or you can spend $50 for twice the storage that you have now 🙂
DirkGently1
Senior member
What on earth makes you think a Solid State drive wouldn't outlast a mechanical drive? 😵
T_Yamamoto
Lifer
LOL. my moms 80 gb 7200 RPM HDD is going strong! it has like a atheon 2800 or something in it....lol. 256 ram.. xDDD but all in all, its still working
Gigantopithecus
Diamond Member
Reading comprehension, yo.
DaveSimmons
Elite Member
^ yikes, at that wear rate, your SSD might only last 2,000 months!
mnewsham
Lifer
Either that or it just doesn't report the NAND lifetime properly.
Soooooooo, SLK: Do ya feel lucky? Well do ya? :awe:
DirkGently1
Senior member
AT my current usage level the nand on my drive will only last 240 years or more. I would like to know who i should take my grievances to as this is clearly unacceptable. The drive is also silent and produces little in the way of heat as the power draw is clearly too low. I'm afraid that these advances in technology will just have to stop right now!
mnewsham
Lifer
Step 1: build your computer 😎
Step 2: Boot into the windows 7 installation DVD
Step 3: When asked to select the drive to install the OS to select the SSD (usually the smallest of the drives)
Step 4: continue with the installation
Step 5: finish with the installation
Step 6: boot into windows
Step 7: stop reading these steps
That's it? Its the same bloody steps as installing onto a normal HDD? :thumbsup:
mnewsham
Lifer
Yep, that's it, just make sure AHCI is enabled in the BIOS, windows 7 will do the rest.
Zap
Elite Member
Yes. Why would it be different?
There are things to tweak based on the size of the SSD. If you have a 60gb or less, its a good idea to remove the hibernate files out of the system and remove/relocate the memory page file depending on how much RAM you have. I have removed my page file entirely and its been 5 months with no issues.
DirkGently1
Senior member
^^ Please ignore the FUD about the page file. There is so much misinformation about these days it's hard to navigate, but i expect better from the AT forums. This guy seems to think he knows better than Microsoft about how to manage an OS install. It seems to be the 'in' thing to regurgitate any old nonsense and pass it off as the gospel truth.
What FUD?? All I am saying is to save space on a smaller SSD drive and if you have enough RAM, it is ok to remove the page file. That is all. There is no misinformation or anything like that. And I don't think I know anything better than anyone. I am just sharing what I have done.
Throckmorton
Lifer
Supposedly Windows needs some page file. How about making it 256mb?
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