Question Enhance a ssd's span

[pchelp01]

Hi,

Switched to a mx500 2.5" ssd about 6-7 months ago in a pc. Specs- 8gb 2133 mhz ram, asus prime b350 plus mobo, ryzen 1600, gt 710. SSD is divided into two drives, c and d. OS is windows 10 home x64. PC is used for 8-10 hours a day to browse the internet and to do work in ms office. About a month ago the health of the ssd was 100% Checked today and it is 99%

https://imgur.com/a/45mf7Ig

View: https://imgur.com/a/45mf7Ig
As ssd's are expensive here so wanted to clear few doubts and also made some changes as mentioned below in windows in the past month, that might have contributed in this.

Only 2 drives created and here is how much space they cover in the ssd https://imgur.com/a/Loc8EMh Does c drive need more space?

In the 8-10 hours of daily usage the pc is put to sleep many a times, sometimes for more than an hour. Does it cause stress on ssd's to wake from sleep mode or should I turn it off simply rather than putting in sleep mode? Here are the power settings

https://imgur.com/a/xkdCiJ6

View: https://imgur.com/a/xkdCiJ6


Some websites say to turn on trim for ssd's. Where is this option located? Is it same like defrag?

https://imgur.com/a/HNJPpfx

View: https://imgur.com/a/HNJPpfx


Turned off search indexing few weeks back as read that it leads to consumption of space. Can this cause the ssd to reduce in health as some reddit pages say that since the search is not indexed so reads are increased? Tried to turn it on just now but its not showing anything. I think I disabled it using some tutorial which used some cmd command. How to enable it now? Nothing happens after rebuild is clicked https://imgur.com/a/qfWhlp2

Some websites say to turn off paging. Will it help? Current default settings https://imgur.com/a/sYGSwwe
This video shows a paging file is there in c drive

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7mAsofajw0
, which can be viewed after enabling to see hidden files and folders but I am not able to see any such pagefile in c drive. Why is that so?

After a week or so, all the work related files ms office, jpegs etc. are added to winrar and then that winrar file is copied to a pendrive to be copied elsewhere. Now adding files to rar will cause additional reads and writes but this is done because suppose you have a file created on say 15th. Now if its added to a rar file and then extracted somewhere else then the date will remain 15th but if it is simply copy pasted in pendrive then the date of creation will become the date of copying. About 4-5gb of rar files are created and then copied in a pendrive per week. Is there any other way which shouldn't lead to more writes?

How much is the temperature which is considered okay for a ssd and a hdd?

Installed an android emulator nox a week back. Needed it as phone does not support the latest versions of few apps. Nox has added tons of files in the pc and since it keeps on auto updating, and has no way to disable auto updates, so this might be causing a lots of reads and writes. Should this be uninstalled? For Nox to work, virtualization was enabled in bios. Does this have any impact on a ssd?

Please share more pointers which can help in making a ssd last long. One more point, not updating the ssd's firmware because once micron's firmware for some other ssd, made those drives go haywire but micron's service partner in our country refused to do rma citing that drive is damaged by incomplete firmware update done by the user.

Sorry for asking so many noob questions.

Thank you

 

[USAFRet]

Going from 100% to 99% in 7 months is normal and to be expected.
Nothing to worry about.

Partitioning the drive like that is not really recommended. 100GB is on the small side for the OS and applications.
That drive would have been better left as one big space.


Of course, maintain a good backup routine. Drive can and do die at any moment. 99% or otherwise.

 

[Lafong]

I wouldn't get anxious over firmware updates. As you say, they can go haywire. I've had bad experience with Crucial updates myself. If it ain't broke.......

Likewise, I wouldn't worry much about drive temps as long as they are not say 70 and above for long periods of time (hours). Your drive likely has a certain temperature at which it will throttle to protect itself. That temp on my data drive is 80, and the drive has never reached 80.

You can agonize over temps as you see fit.....maybe you strongly believe in a correlation between drive temps and drive failure. Truth is, your drive can die at any time and you'd be left to speculate on why.

Room temps affect drive temps in close to a 1:1 correlation.

I'd run Disk Cleanup periodically and otherwise just use the drive till it dropped, as long as you aren't seriously crowding capacity.

Temp sensor software may or may not read all the sensors in the drive. Sensor A may read 40 and Sensor B in a different location on the same drive may read 60. Maybe your software won't even recognize Sensor B at all, so you think the temp is 40.

I wouldn't pay excessive attention to "health status" percentage in Crystal. The drive will likely be usable at 0 percent and that should be a decade or more off unless you have a very unusual use case. Most people write under 20 TB a year. Many under 10. Me under 5.

 

[geofelt]

100gb is too small for the C drive/partition.
Many things default to the C partition.
What is your plan if the space starts to fill up?
You will start to lose performanc at 90% full.
If the cost of a ssd is important to you, you can manage space better with just one large C partition.
That conversion may be difficult now.

The health number is normal, and at 99% means little.
Do not try to "tweak" ssd settings. Such were proposed when a ssd was 40bg.
Trim is good and should be automatic.

SSD devices are good to go up to 70c.

DO NOT turn off paging, let windows manage it.
That was old time desperate advice.
A page file is necessary for memory management.

 

[pchelp01]

Going from 100% to 99% in 7 months is normal and to be expected.
Nothing to worry about.

Partitioning the drive like that is not really recommended. 100GB is on the small side for the OS and applications.
That drive would have been better left as one big space.


Of course, maintain a good backup routine. Drive can and do die at any moment. 99% or otherwise.

Thanks

Partitioning the drive like that is not really recommended. 100GB is on the small side for the OS and applications.

Why? The c drive has not breached over 70gb at anytime since the ssd was bought. Is there a way to merge both drives without reducing data?

Any advice about the rest of the pointers?

 

[USAFRet]

Is there any other way which shouldn't lead to more writes?

In normal consumer use, you will never ever have the drive run out of write cycles.
Likely you will never even reach the warranty TBW. And current drives have been proven to last far beyond that number.

Of course, it might die of something else, but trying to limit use to save writes is a waste of time.

Like buying new tires, and not driving the car so you don't wear out the tires.

 

[pchelp01]

I wouldn't get anxious over firmware updates. As you say, they can go haywire. I've had bad experience with Crucial updates myself. If it ain't broke.......

Likewise, I wouldn't worry much about drive temps as long as they are not say 70 and above for long periods of time (hours). Your drive likely has a certain temperature at which it will throttle to protect itself. That temp on my data drive is 80, and the drive has never reached 80.

You can agonize over temps as you see fit.....maybe you strongly believe in a correlation between drive temps and drive failure. Truth is, your drive can die at any time and you'd be left to speculate on why.

Room temps affect drive temps in close to a 1:1 correlation.

I'd run Disk Cleanup periodically and otherwise just use the drive till it dropped, as long as you aren't seriously crowding capacity.

Temp sensor software may or may not read all the sensors in the drive. Sensor A may read 40 and Sensor B in a different location on the same drive may read 60. Maybe your software won't even recognize Sensor B at all, so you think the temp is 40.

I wouldn't pay excessive attention to "health status" percentage in Crystal. The drive will likely be usable at 0 percent and that should be a decade or more off unless you have a very unusual use case. Most people write under 20 TB a year. Many under 10. Me under 5.

Thanks. Do hard drives also have a mechanism to protect themselves like ssds?
Any advice about the rest of the points?

 

[USAFRet]

Why? The c drive has not breached over 70gb at anytime since the ssd was bought. Is there a way to merge both drives without reducing data?

The annual or semi-annual Windows feature updates can often require 30GB or more free space on the C partition.

Merging? Not easily.

 

[Lafong]

Thanks

Why? The c drive has not breached over 70gb at anytime since the ssd was bought. Is there a way to merge both drives without reducing data?

Any advice about the rest of the pointers?

You're the best judge of how much space is needed for C.

Your C of 100 GB has about 42 occupied.

You know (or should know) what the growth rate of occupied space is...if it's 1 GB per year, why worry about 42 percent occupation. If it is 1 GB per month, maybe start thinking about it.

I wouldn't think about "merging partitions". If you need to enlarge C, get whatever is on D copied elsewhere and then delete the empty D and then enlarge C into that newly "unallocated" space.

As far as I know, HDDs don't have a mechanism to throttle themselves...at least I've never heard of it.

 

[pchelp01]

100gb is too small for the C drive/partition.
Many things default to the C partition.
What is your plan if the space starts to fill up?
You will start to lose performanc at 90% full.
If the cost of a ssd is important to you, you can manage space better with just one large C partition.
That conversion may be difficult now.

The health number is normal, and at 99% means little.
Do not try to "tweak" ssd settings. Such were proposed when a ssd was 40bg.
Trim is good and should be automatic.

SSD devices are good to go up to 70c.

DO NOT turn off paging, let windows manage it.
That was old time desperate advice.
A page file is necessary for memory management.

Thanks. The c drive has not breached over 70gb at anytime since the ssd was bought. Very few old softwares are installed and I haven't installed anything besides the android emulator. Is there a way to merge both drives without reducing data?

About paging, why can't I view that paging file in c drive as shown in that video although it is turned on. Why is that so?

Any idea about the search indexing file and the creating of rar files for backup?

 

[pchelp01]

In normal consumer use, you will never ever have the drive run out of write cycles.
Likely you will never even reach the warranty TBW. And current drives have been proven to last far beyond that number.

Of course, it might die of something else, but trying to limit use to save writes is a waste of time.

Like buying new tires, and not driving the car so you don't wear out the tires.

Thank you. About paging, why can't I view that paging file in c drive as shown in that video although it is turned on. Why is that so?

Any idea about the search indexing file and the creating of rar files for backup?

 

[pchelp01]

The annual or semi-annual Windows feature updates can often require 30GB or more free space on the C partition.

Merging? Not easily.

C is full 58.8 gb now. I can easily remove another 2 gb atleast. Let's round off the used space to 56gb. Is 44gb empty space in c ok as merging is not easy?

 

[pchelp01]

You're the best judge of how much space is needed for C.

Your C of 100 GB has about 42 occupied.

You know (or should know) what the growth rate of occupied space is...if it's 1 GB per year, why worry about 42 percent occupation. If it is 1 GB per month, maybe start thinking about it.

I wouldn't think about "merging partitions". If you need to enlarge C, get whatever is on D copied elsewhere and then delete the empty D and then enlarge C into that newly "unallocated" space.

As far as I know, HDDs don't have a mechanism to throttle themselves...at least I've never heard of it.

C is full 58.8 gb now. I can easily remove another 2 gb atleast. Let's round off the used space to 56gb. Is 44gb empty space in c ok as merging is not easy?

 

[USAFRet]

C is full 58.8 gb now. I can easily remove another 2 gb atleast. Let's round off the used space to 56gb. Is 44gb empty space in c ok as merging is not easy?

What do you use this system for?

"100GB" can work, but only if you are very very diligent about what goes in that partition.

 

[pchelp01]

What do you use this system for?

"100GB" can work, but only if you are very very diligent about what goes in that partition.

Browsing the internet, downloading files mostly photos, less than 5-10 videos related to work, ms office files, creating new ms office files, listening to music sometimes in mpc that's it. Ms office includes spreadsheets, pdf's etc. Downloaded files are around 4-5 gb per week, maybe a little more. And backup files in rar are around the same. Will shift everything to d drive and everything new to be downloaded to d drive. A question, if everything remains in d but shortcut of those files is kept on desktop which is in c drive then is it ok?

Is there any other way of taking backups rather than making rar files each time?Here is why we are rar'ing them Excel 1 last modified on 20th. If we copy this excel directory to pendrive and then open it elsewhere then the date displayed will be the date of opening. However if this excel file is added to rar archive and later extracted in another system then the date will remain the same.

 

[USAFRet]

Browsing the internet, downloading files mostly photos, less than 5-10 videos related to work, ms office files, creating new ms office files, listening to music sometimes in mpc that's it. Ms office includes spreadsheets, pdf's etc. Downloaded files are around 4-5 gb per week, maybe a little more. And backup files in rar are around the same. Will shift everything to d drive and everything new to be downloaded to d drive. A question, if everything remains in d but shortcut of those files is kept on desktop which is in c drive then is it ok?

And that is more daily manipulation than would be needed if it were just one large space.
Moving between C and D partitions.

Is there any other way of taking backups rather than making rar files each time?Here is why we are rar'ing them Excel 1 last modified on 20th. If we copy this excel directory to pendrive and then open it elsewhere then the date displayed will be the date of opening. However if this excel file is added to rar archive and later extracted in another system then the date will remain the same.

What sort of "backups" are we talking about?

 

[Lafong]

C is full 58.8 gb now. I can easily remove another 2 gb atleast. Let's round off the used space to 56gb. Is 44gb empty space in c ok as merging is not easy?

In your post 1, you said:

"Only 2 drives created and here is how much space they cover in the ssd https://imgur.com/a/Loc8EMh Does c drive need more space?"

That link says 58 GB free on C, out of 100 GB total.

Not 58 occupied. Circa 42 occupied.

That is 58 percent free; less than half full.

Forget "merging". You can enlarge C rather easily if it came to that, but it wouldn't be a "merge".

I've never had even 60 GB occupied on C. What you need is entirely personal to your situation.

 

[pchelp01]

In your post 1, you said:

"Only 2 drives created and here is how much space they cover in the ssd https://imgur.com/a/Loc8EMh Does c drive need more space?"

That link says 58 GB free on C, out of 100 GB total.

Not 58 occupied. Circa 42 occupied.

That is 58 percent free; less than half full.

Forget "merging". You can enlarge C rather easily if it came to that, but it wouldn't be a "merge".

I've never had even 60 GB occupied on C. What you need is entirely personal to your situation.

Thanks. Sorry for the error on my part. Why I am worried about it is because other members said that 100gb is too small for c drive. How can I enlarge c drive? You mean to say that free space from d will b added to c ?

 

[pchelp01]

And that is more daily manipulation than would be needed if it were just one large space.
Moving between C and D partitions.


What sort of "backups" are we talking about?

- What if instead of downloading a file to the desktop, I set the save as location to d drive? Is that ok?

- Backup as in whatever work is done is created to a rar file and is then copied to a usb drive. Still looking for a better alternative than creatinng rar files everytime. + @Lafong

- One more thing, I had disabled the search index a couple of weeks back. Have enabled it in services.msc now and I rebuilt the index many a times as it kept on auto pausing and was not finding the installed or system apps. It is searching for my files or folders but it does not search for the windows apps or the installed apps when I type them in the search bar, example paint, ms word etc. Googled about it and it seems that many people are facing the same issues https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ind-apps/8ef14b63-f727-40b9-b59f-699ecb02efef
These are the fixes that everyone is recommending everywhere, this link has just combined them in one post

[Fix] Windows 10 Search Not Working and Showing “We’re Getting Search Ready” Message

This is one of the most annoying and widely faced problems in Windows 10. I have received so many emails and comments from various readers regarding this irrita

www.askvg.com

The fix number 2, enabling cortana one, is the most commonly recommended one
I have followed all methods but nothing helped. Few questions-

This error is gone after running that coratana command in fix # 2

https://imgur.com/a/50PcRC6

View: https://imgur.com/a/50PcRC6


4. Rebuild Search Index Using Indexing Options>>>> Tried rebuilding this many times but it always get auto paused after indexing some two thousand some files

https://imgur.com/a/N8RQOpI

View: https://imgur.com/a/N8RQOpI
Also in the same screenshot check the size of the search index edb file in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows it is just 24 mb. Whereas people are reporting the search index edb file to be easily 1gb+

5. Search and Indexing Troubleshooter Tool>>>> Couldn't find this tool anywhere, where is it located exactly?

7. Fix Using Registry Editor>>> Which value needs to be changed, decimal or the hexadecimal one?

9. Restore Default System Display Language>>>> Have only one langauge

https://imgur.com/a/CIHqyyx

View: https://imgur.com/a/CIHqyyx
Is this ok?

Besides the above, in task manager, I could see this while indexing got auto paused

https://imgur.com/a/V3Sy1HX

View: https://imgur.com/a/V3Sy1HX

And this under background processes

https://imgur.com/a/6ifLA04

View: https://imgur.com/a/6ifLA04

How to resume the above process?

I do not want the search bar to include the personal files or folders, just the installed or the default apps, please help me out with that?

- Coming back to the original query of ssd, in some thread in some other website someone mentioned that since ssd's does not have any moving parts so whether one is using a pc or a laptop, the turn off hard disk option should be set to no here

https://imgur.com/a/sOMSQ33

View: https://imgur.com/a/sOMSQ33
Does this make sense?

- Any better option other than making a rar file of the files and folder and then copying them to a usb drive? Don't want the last saved date etc. to change

- Lastly is trimming=defrag? If no then if you don't mind then please eli5 trimming vs defragging?
As trimming is auto enabled by windows, then how frequently does windows do trimming? How frequently should one set defragging duration here?

https://imgur.com/a/7BENvQ8

View: https://imgur.com/a/7BENvQ8
And does it hurt a drive? I read that if defragging is done then recovering deleted files is very hard.

If there are any other pointers that will help a ssd last long then please share them too. Thank you for your time and support.

 

[Cellie]

As someone who has been running a 100GB partition for the OS for years and is diligent about where to download things, where set scratch disks and tmp when allowed to, besides installing large work software packages and some utils in another partition, I can tell you: Yeaaah, it's a little too cramped over here.

Many programs don't care at all they're being installed in another partition or are even supposedly portable, they'll sprawl themselves in appdata folders or use the OS partition as tmp to download and unpack their very large packages.

But its temporary, just during install, shouldn't be so bad, right? Not if you can't install or update something because you keep running out of space in the middle of it, given it's very hard to anticipate how much tmp space something will actually need in first place. Good rule of thumb is up to 2x the size of the package, if 2 GB then 4 GB, if 5 GB, 10 GB. It snowballs, and software grow larger by the day.

If you use sleep/hibernation then you'll have extra trouble. Pagefile can be set to another partitions, but hiberfil.sys will only ever sit at the root of the OS partition. There goes another 10 GB+.

Now I have more space to move things around I plan to increase its size, err sometime when I have the time.
Because seriously, it's unbearable. I'm sick of managing space this way.

There are very good reasons you might want to keep the OS in its own partition: EG Adobe Photoshop ridiculously large scratch disks. I want to keep them far away from the OS so the worst that happens when they devour a partition is to halt PS, not the entire system. But it this case, be sure to give the OS extra room to keep working down the line.

 

[USAFRet]

- What if instead of downloading a file to the desktop, I set the save as location to d drive? Is that ok?

Downloaded from where?
If through the browser, you can set the default location to anywhere you want.

 

[Lafong]

Thanks. Sorry for the error on my part. Why I am worried about it is because other members said that 100gb is too small for c drive. How can I enlarge c drive? You mean to say that free space from d will b added to c ?

You should have total control as to where any download will land...down to the level of what folder on what partition.

I operated for 20 years with a C of about 110 successfully; zero issues. Why? Because my occupied space was never ever over the mid 50s.

I did change to a 500 GB drive with a 500 GB C, but that was NOT due to lack of space or any performance issues with the previous drive.

Right now, my C has 51 occupied out of 500.

If your occupied space was say 70 out of 100 (70 percent of total C), maybe you worry about enlarging C. But your occupied space is under 50.

You are the world's foremost authority on how fast your occupied space might grow. If it grows 1 GB per week, you will soon have problems. If it grows at 1 GB per year, you won't.

The first step in enlarging C (for whatever reason) would be to copy whatever is on D to some other totally different drive....E or an external or whatever you can come up with.

Step 2 would be to the delete the empty D partition.

That would leave you with C plus "unallocated space" that used to be D.

Then you can add that "unallocated space" to C. All of it or some of it. Presumably all of it.

You should be able to do that from Windows Disk Management.

BUT...I don't see any current reason for you to do that since your current C has over 50 GB unoccupied and you don't appear to need more space on C.

And apparently your occupied space is not growing quickly.

You certainly can enlarge C if you are worried about it for whatever reason. Put everything on the entire drive into a single C partition, subdivided by a folder structure of your choice.

It's personal choice.

 

[NedSmelly]

@pchelp01 I think you're overthinking it.

Going back to "enhance a ssd's span (sic)": just set up over-provisioning, and continue with life.

 

[USAFRet]

Actual backup routine.

You shouldn't be relying on creating a rar and copying that somewhere else as your 'backup'.

You really need an automated routine, that does the whole drive. OS, applications, everything.

The general concept is 3-2-1.
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, at least 1 offsite or otherwise inaccessible.

 

[Lafong]

I turned off Windows drive indexing over 10 years ago and don't miss it at all.

No issues with that whatsoever.

I use the Everything search tool. It can find any file immediately...as fast as you can type a portion of the file name. It is free and very well known.

You may have some over-riding reason to keep indexing on. I have no idea.

Backup: I'm not clear on why you are involving RAR files on backups. I'd use imaging to back up the OS/applications partition and a garden variety "file by file" backup program to back up data files.