[SOLVED] Are SSD really this delicate?

[Andrea Burgio]

I read multiple times that you should minimize writings on a SSD, for example: here, here etc. I have a Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2, and since it's pretty expensive, I would like to keep it for a long time (at least 5/6 years). I've had an hard disk (which was super cheap even when i bought it) for 10+ years and still works great (but i don't use it anymore). I like the SSD i have now, it's very fast, boot up times are amazing and everything, but i can't be worried every time i install something on it. For example now i'm installing Matlab, it's a 20+gb program and has a lot of files, but i feel like i should not install all the components since probably i won't use them all. I also reset my computer and reinstall windows a lot of times (since i like to experiment with my computer), but now i'm worried that it would reduce the life span of the SSD if i do it. Are SSD really this delicate? Should i really be worried about downloading, installing, copying, moving etc files in them? Because if it's really like this i'd rather have a hard disk than feeling like every time i do something i'm getting closer to the SSD death. What do you guys think?

 

[punkncat]

The number of writes to the device is very high. I would not let this be a consideration that sways you in comparison to the day to day plusses you will see using one (for OS) as opposed to a hard drive.

 

[Andrea Burgio]

The number of writes to the device is very high. I would not let this be a consideration that sways you in comparison to the day to day plusses you will see using one (for OS) as opposed to a hard drive.

So should i just ignore the fact that writings reduce the life-span of the SSD? And is this also valid when i format the SSD? Does it reduce its life span?

 

[USAFRet]

SSD's dying from too many write cycles is a long dead concept in the consumer world.
When SSD's were new and small, yes.

The drive firmware has alleviated almost all of that worry.

And the amount of actual writes you do to the drive is much less than people imagine.
You'd have to do a full wipe of the entire drive, twice a day, every day, for several years to see any effect.

I have 7x SSD's in my main system. Some of them going back to 2014, in near constant use. ALL my applications are installed on these.

Combined, their TBW to date is around 80TB.
In comparison to the warranty TBW of a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO, 600TBW, that is just barely over 10% of that number.

SSD Product Warranty | Support | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Samsung ensures the best quality in all products and services beyond customer expectations. Warranty policy, conditions for Samsung Consumer and Portable SSD.

www.samsung.com

An in actual endurance testing, consumer level drives last far far beyond that warranty number.

 

[USAFRet]

So should i just ignore the fact that writings reduce the life-span of the SSD? And is this also valid when i format the SSD? Does it reduce its life span?

If you were to do a Full format, every single day, for several years....then you may have issues.

 

[punkncat]

So should i just ignore the fact that writings reduce the life-span of the SSD? And is this also valid when i format the SSD? Does it reduce its life span?

Basically, yes.

Most SSD will have a utility program that can show you the number of writes. Once again, I stress it's a LOT of writes.

I have rarely seen an SSD fail. I have NEVER had a Samsung SSD fail. I am not saying it isn't possible but it's just not something to be concerned about.
One of the items I have been able to pick up was used Samsung 8 and 9 series SSD between 250GB and 1TB. All of them were used in an office enviro for years. I have utilized them for budget builds, family and friends, and so forth and never had issue with any of them.

 

[SkyNetRising]

I read multiple times that you should minimize writings on a SSD, for example: here, here etc. I have a Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2, and since it's pretty expensive, I would like to keep it for a long time (at least 5/6 years).

All those concerns are valid.
I have had Samsung 970 evo die on me. It didn't die completely, it thinks, all write cycles are exhausted, and it locked itself to preserve data.
TBW value was not even close to advertised, when it locked ~<10TB (it should have survived 300TBW).

If you like to do a lot of experiments with writing data/installing/reinstalling, then get some cheaper sata SSD for that.

 

[kanewolf]

All those concerns are valid.
I have had Samsung 970 evo die on me. It didn't die completely, it thinks, all write cycles are exhausted, and it locked itself to preserve data.
TBW value was not even close to advertised, when it locked ~<10TB (it should have survived 300TBW).

If you like to do a lot of experiments with writing data/installing/reinstalling, then get some cheaper sata SSD for that.

ANY drive can die at ANY time. That is what backups are for. I know that @USAFRet has a story of a drive failing after just a few months.

 

[USAFRet]

ANY drive can die at ANY time. That is what backups are for. I know that @USAFRet has a story of a drive failing after just a few months.

1x HDD, 3TB WD. Died at 5 weeks out of the box. Went from seemingly great to dead in about 36 hours.

1x SSD, 1TB Sandisk. Died at 3 years, 33 days. 33 days past the 3 year warranty. No idea why, just dead dead dead. Nowhere near its TBW warranty number. No sign of life. SanDisk did me a solid, and gave me a new one anyway.

 

[punkncat]

I have one of, if the first SSD I ever got. It's a Crucial v4 2.5" 32GB SSD. It's date code is 1306.
It was used in laptop for a moment, moved into a FreeNAS setup for some years, and have been using it as a "usb" drive of sorts. Just very recently it's gotten to where it may or may not initialize and you can't (for instance) watch a whole movie from it without it failing. Been pretty good.
The only other one I have had fail was a Sandisk of a batch known for it.

 

[USAFRet]

In both of my instances above, full drive backups allowed 100% data recovery.
Any drive can die at any time.

 

[PrinceTexasLoaf]

My dad's gaming computer has an ssd from 2010 and the computer is still used daily if that gives you an idea of ssd lifespan.

 

[King_V]

600TBW. Time-wise, the warranty is only 5 years, but, lets stretch out your 600TBW to 10 years.

That's 60TB per year. 60,000GB.

Or, 5TB (5000GB) per month.

Or, 164.4GB per day. EVERY day. For 10 years.

Can you conceive of any situation where you're going to write that much data EVERY day?

 

[hotaru.hino]

To throw in some anecdotal evidence for not worrying about SSD lifespans, the two systems I had clocked in at about 5-6 TBW after several years of use as my OS/App SSD. So give or take 2TBW per year at worst. Considering Samsung now offers 150 TBW of endurance for the 250GB model of their current SSDs, I'm more likely to bite the dust than the SSD.

So it's really best to ignore the TBW endurance rating.

 

[neojack]

just install samsung magician and check for the SSD's lifespan.
when there is like 10% left, the SSD will lock itself, no writes would be possible but you could still read the data.

But it could still die from other problems so always backup your data !

I use macrium free to image my system, and i have an unlimited data plan with spideroak as remote backup and sync between my computers.