[SOLVED] Gigabyte SSD Lifespan Query

Liquidraine

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Feb 22, 2014
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Hey guys.

I bought a Gigabyte SSD back in July of this year and i wanted to check if the values from S.M.A.R.T. and the SSD Toolbox software appear in order.

The PC is on most of the day, probably anywhere from 13-16 hours, sometimes even 24 hours a day.

Gigabyte state is a 3 year warranty or 100TBW (whichever is first). I just noticed a dip from 99% to 96% over a month and wanted to ensure this is normal behaviour.

I am building a new PC when the parts arrive which will involve a new installation of Windows (likely) so the disk will get erased entirely and rewritten with Windows 10.

I'm not one to care about bootup times, Windows installtion times or speed of access so this is my first SSD in over 25 years of PC use and during those years i've only ever had one HDD fail on me and it was an old IDE type. My previous Windows SATA drive (256GB Seagate) was in use for going on 8 or 9 years and still works.

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Solution
It's DRAM-less, so it will generally have higher write amplification. Looks like 2.8GB of host writes as recorded by the drive - that drive has 100TB TBW for its warranty which means 97% remaining by that metric, however with rounding and perhaps write amplification there may be more NAND writes. So nothing to be alarmed about, especially as that number doesn't reflect actual lifespan.

What fzabkar states above about erase count is true - however it likely also counts SLC erases which are less impactful on the flash. To avoid a technical explanation, Intel estimates the impact to be 0.4 with dynamic SLC + TLC (and most if not all of your writes will be through SLC) for example.
It's difficult to gauge remaining life (despite having a concrete number).
One thing to note is that SSDs will sometimes (normally?) slow down during their expected life cycle of 3-5 years. This is due to several factors, including the complex algorithms used for wear-leveling. It's also best to keep an SSD below 75% full to retain as much of its original speed as possible and help it have a long life. It looks like you're only at 2.8GBs written?? That seems off.

As long as performance hasn't dropped substantially I'd say go ahead and use it for now but if the 'remaining life' continues to tick down every month get it replaced before the warranty expires.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
It's difficult to gauge remaining life (despite having a concrete number).
One thing to note is that SSDs will sometimes (normally?) slow down during their expected life cycle of 3-5 years. This is due to several factors, including the complex algorithms used for wear-leveling. It's also best to keep an SSD below 75% full to retain as much of its original speed as possible and help it have a long life. It looks like you're only at 2.8GBs written?? That seems off.

As long as performance hasn't dropped substantially I'd say go ahead and use it for now but if the 'remaining life' continues to tick down every month get it replaced before the warranty expires.
"One thing to note is that SSDs will sometimes (normally?) slow down during their expected life cycle of 3-5 years."

I've had one and only one SSD do that. 128GB Kingston. Became noticeably slow over time.

Other ones, however....including a pair of 6 year old 840 EVO's...are running just like Day 1, and the same as their newer and larger 850 and 860 cousins.
 

Liquidraine

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Feb 22, 2014
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It looks like you're only at 2.8GBs written?? That seems off.

As long as performance hasn't dropped substantially I'd say go ahead and use it for now but if the 'remaining life' continues to tick down every month get it replaced before the warranty expires.

The disk was a clone of my old HDD. I only have the OS and my programs on it, web browser cache and the standard files that games save to the user/documents folder. All my games, confidential data and otherwise important stuff (music, movies, Office documents) are kept on my other discs.

The written data amount seemed odd to me as well.

I also cannot find anywhere what 'average erase count' means on Gigabyte's website. That is 38 at the moment according to the SSD Toolkit software.
 
My most recent SSD failure wasn't due to usage/age.

Brand new I was getting -
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjLCgZ8P-HzihW5SUAK-OQ_srTSq?e=tX8O40

Then one day it started doing this -
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjLCgZ8P-HzihW3N1pBN7gOuQNGC?e=tVxcyV

It was also crashing the WD SSD dashboard. WD replaced it and I've been back up to the original speeds for almost a year now. WD support determined that the controller was having issues. I think they just got tired of me sending them pic after pic and email after email of the before and after. :LOL:
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
My most recent SSD failure wasn't due to usage/age.
Same here. The 960GB SanDisk in the above pic died. Power OFF, come back 10 minutes later, power oN.
Hey...where's the Sandisk? Dead dead dead.

33 days past the 3 year warranty. I knew it was over, Sandisk knew it was over. They gave me a new one anyway.
All 605GB data that was on it, recovered exactly as it was at 4AM that morning. This is what backups are for...;)
 
I also cannot find anywhere what 'average erase count' means on Gigabyte's website. That is 38 at the moment according to the SSD Toolkit software.
Each block needs to be erased before it can be rewritten. That's called a P/E cycle (program/erase). The NAND cells are rated for a finite number of P/E cycles before they wear out. Wear levelling attempts to spread out these P/E cycles over the whole NAND array over the lifetime of the drive. Some blocks will be erased more often than others, so SMART will report an average (or max/min/average).

Assuming that wear levelling is perfect, then the amount of data written to NAND would be ...

  • 240GB x 38 = 9.1 TB

Actually the number would be slightly higher, as it would include overprovisioned space.

Therefore, it would appear that there is a bug in Gigabyte's "dashboard" software.
 

Liquidraine

Distinguished
Feb 22, 2014
15
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18,510
Each block needs to be erased before it can be rewritten. That's called a P/E cycle (program/erase). The NAND cells are rated for a finite number of P/E cycles before they wear out. Wear levelling attempts to spread out these P/E cycles over the whole NAND array over the lifetime of the drive. Some blocks will be erased more often than others, so SMART will report an average (or max/min/average).

Assuming that wear levelling is perfect, then the amount of data written to NAND would be ...

  • 240GB x 38 = 9.1 TB
Actually the number would be slightly higher, as it would include overprovisioned space.

Therefore, it would appear that there is a bug in Gigabyte's "dashboard" software.

That will be Chrome then i guess. Do you think i should move the cache off the C drive or is it not worth worrying about?

I mean if it's nearly 10TB in 4 months and it has 100TBW warranty then it has roughly 36 months left assuming the same level of usage?

This whole set number of writes was one of the reasons i stayed away from SSD's for so long. I don't mind replacing them it's just a pain having to reinstall Windows on a new drive 😁
 
It's DRAM-less, so it will generally have higher write amplification. Looks like 2.8GB of host writes as recorded by the drive - that drive has 100TB TBW for its warranty which means 97% remaining by that metric, however with rounding and perhaps write amplification there may be more NAND writes. So nothing to be alarmed about, especially as that number doesn't reflect actual lifespan.

What fzabkar states above about erase count is true - however it likely also counts SLC erases which are less impactful on the flash. To avoid a technical explanation, Intel estimates the impact to be 0.4 with dynamic SLC + TLC (and most if not all of your writes will be through SLC) for example.
 
Solution

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
That will be Chrome then i guess. Do you think i should move the cache off the C drive or is it not worth worrying about?

I mean if it's nearly 10TB in 4 months and it has 100TBW warranty then it has roughly 36 months left assuming the same level of usage?

This whole set number of writes was one of the reasons i stayed away from SSD's for so long. I don't mind replacing them it's just a pain having to reinstall Windows on a new drive 😁
"10TB in 4 months" is not an actual measurement.
In the first few weeks/months of a drive life, it incurs a LOT more writes than the next year.

You'd need to track over time. Weekly or monthly.