Okay to fill up an SSD with data? What about an M.2 SSD? Same concept?

[wguidero]

Is this harmful to the drive? (well solid state drive). I have a 500gb m.2 i just bought and don't know if it's harmful to fill it up with storage or not? I'm talking no space left on it (1GB maybe).

I don't plan on altering the storage at all beyond this point. Maybe a few folders a year. I'm using it for sample libraries (constantly reads data when writing music).

This isn't my main OS SSD, this is a secondary M.2 SSD.

 

[jacobweaver800]

Is this harmful to the drive? (well solid state drive). I have a 500gb m.2 i just bought and don't know if it's harmful to fill it up with storage or not? I'm talking no space left on it (1GB maybe).

I don't plan on altering the storage at all beyond this point. Maybe a few folders a year. I'm using it for sample libraries (constantly reads data when writing music).

This isn't my main OS SSD, this is a secondary M.2 SSD.

Should be fine, as far as I know there hasn't been any testing on degradation to SSD's due to filling them up, in theory it should be fine.

 

[captaincharisma]

it should be fine but the performance of SSD drives take a hit if they are close to full

 

[wguidero]

Thanks

 

[Barty1884]

"Harmful" depends on the way you look at it.

From a health of the drive perspective, there shouldn't be any issues.
From a performance standpoint, it will likely slow the drive down due to how SSDs manage storage; wear leveling, TRIM, garbage collection etc.

10-15% is the standard for over-provisioning (OP) to ensure performance remains as optimal as possible.

Modern SSDs typically either have this functionality built-in (where there's an unseen +X GB of storage) or via Software (like Samsung Magician or similar).

As strictly a storage drive, it's probably not AS important as the performance hit wouldn't be as noticeable as it would with an OS drive.... but would still be recommended.

 

[USAFRet]

1. It affects performance

2. It affects overall lifespan.

As it gets close to "full" there is less free space to shuffle things around as writes happen. Consequently, individual cells get written to more often than they should.

 

[Rdslw]

it should be fine but the performance of SSD drives take a hit if they are close to full

nand is nand, no mater if sata or nvme.
2 points:
1. nand degradation - if you fill ssd with data to 90% and use only 10 % some ssd's don't balance how nand will be worn out. It means this 10% will be hit repeatedly with more writes and it might die faster. Not sure if newer drives sorted out this problem.
2. speed - around 80% full drives will start to slow down. It gets extreme around 95% where macbook 2016 drive from 1.3 GB/s fell down to 50 MB/s. Not very good experience from that. Never do this to your boot drive

ssd gets damaged with write. IF you just "READ" then it will last forever