Question Total Writes host

[diesel04]

Hey, few days ago3 days ago i bought Crucial MX500. My first SSD. I am a person who often "worries". That's why I also have a few questions and I hope that someone will calm me down. Thank you for your understanding.
Well, SSDs have their TBW. (my 180TBW). Supposedly, the TBW values for normal use are high enough that this is not a problem.

I installed the system on a SSD, Steam/battle.net and some games. Total 290GB according to CrystalDisk.
That's when I became interested in TBW. I understand that the system is responsible for regular GB increments.

And here is my question, with what frequency should GB increase per hour?
Current crystaldisk observations show that it is 1,5gb per h. (maybe 2gb, im not 100% sure) It's normal? if it isn't. What it comes from?
is it going to be reduced? So far I have disabled sharding, sysmain, index.

 

[USAFRet]

There is no universal "normal".

The system does indeed write to the drive, all the time.
How much depends on use.

Game recording will, of course, incur far more writes than autosave in Word or Excel.

But...
180TBW warranty for the Crucial.
2GB per hour

Assuming that 2GB per hour stays constant, and the system is doing this 24 hours a day....you would reach that 180TBW sometime in early 2033.


Don't stress.
In normal consumer use, it is near impossible to reach that TBW for any current consumer level drive.

 

[CountMike]

Just remember that warranty covers only SSD not data on it so back up !!!
It might work up to 180TB, might last much longer but also may die next moment and it's extremely difficult to retrieve data from SSDs.

 

[diesel04]

USAFRet

I may live in a cave. Your calculations are correct,. However, from 180TB, I subtracted ~40, for files that I will install myself, maybe too much? (only big files on my pc are games. which are rarely installed. I mostly play online.) I really don't know.

140TB : (2GB/H) = 70TB/70K Hours. I hope you understand my math.
So I'm getting 70k hours here. Assuming the computer runs 12 hours a day, that's 16 years. Im correct here?
I compared it with the current HDD which has 45k hours, that would be"theoretically potentially" 90TBW (ofc If 2GB/per h)
I calmed down a bit. But still "I'm having a rough time" for a stupid ~$50 drive.. i know, thats stupid.. Thanks for your respond.

CountMike
All data on the my SSD may be lost. I don't have anything important here. But thanks for advice I will remember this.

 

[USAFRet]

I may live in a cave. Your calculations are correct, I counted that too. However, from 180TB, I subtracted ~40, for files that I will install myself, maybe too much, (only big files on my pc are games. which are rarely installed. I mostly play online.) I really don't know.

No, thats not the way it works.

180TB - 40GB is not "140TB"
Rather, it is 179.960 TB.

1 TB == 1,000 GB


In any case, in normal consumer use, you will never ever get to that warranty number.
Ever.

The drive may die of other things, but because you used it too much, and imposed too many write cycles on it.

 

[Lafong]

140TB : (2GB/H) = 70TB/70K Hours. I hope you understand my math.
So I'm getting 70k hours here. Assuming the computer runs 12 hours a day, that's 16 years. Im correct here?

2 gb per hour, 12 hours a day, for 365 days:

2 x 12 x 365 is 8760 gb per year.

That is 8.76 TB of writes per year.

140 TBW divided by 8.76 TB per year is 15.98 years.

The TBW is mainly useful to the manufacturer as a way to deny you a warranty claim IF the 140 TBW is exceeded. You have virtually zero likelihood of exceeding 140 within the 3 or 5 year warranty period.

I don't see any cause for concern.

8.76 TB written per year is utterly ordinary. I write about 5. Some people write 15 or 20. Few write more than that.

Monitor your usage every few months to confirm that your writes are not increasing rapidly for unknown reasons. Other than that, carry on normally.

 

[diesel04]

USAFRet

You misunderstood me. By 40 I meant 40TB.
That is 140TB for a system that would use "2GB per hour". (this would be enough for 16 years, I wrote about it above).
And 40TB which I would use directly. Downloading the game or any updates.

But, what do u mean used to much?
I thought the lifetime of use was 1.8 Million Hours. (although I don't quite know how to understand this number. The maximum number of hours that the connected drive will last, unless it reaches TBW sooner, which will definitely happen?


Lafong
In conclusion, the increasing GB in crystalDISK, even though I was not downloading anything, confused me a lot. With HDD, I only had information about working hours, so I didn't even think about something like that.
I'll keep looking at how it looks, because even though everything is clear to me now, I'm still thinking about it.
Thanks for help.

 

[USAFRet]

You misunderstood me. By 40 I meant 40TB.
That is 140TB for a system that would use "2GB per hour". (this would be enough for 16 years, I wrote about it above).
And 40TB which I would use directly. Downloading the game or any updates.

How did you arrive at "40TB" for games and downloads?
Just a guess?

In any case, your current usage is absolutely normal.
Nothing to worry about.

Monitor that TBW once a week at most. Better, once a month.
Keep a graph over time.

 

[Lafong]

I'll keep looking at how it looks, because even though everything is clear to me now, I'm still thinking about it.
Thanks for help.

Reported writes during the first weeks of operation on a new installation are NOT representative of mid to long term writes. Windows does a lot of housekeeping early in its life.

3 TB in the first month is not likely to result in 36 TB in a year.

Monitor your own usage to assuage your worry. Monthly? Quarterly?

 

[CountMike]

Here's one of mine, that is in a PC working 24/7
Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB. It has Windows, many programs and APPs and some games. Pretty heavy use for anything except storafe.


Model : Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB
Firmware : 2B2QEXM7
Serial Number :
Disk Size : 500.1 GB
Interface : NVM Express
Standard : NVM Express 1.3
Transfer Mode : PCIe 3.0 x4 | PCIe 3.0 x4
Power On Hours : 6508 hours
Power On Count : 270 count
Host Reads : 66319 GB
Host Writes : 31655 GB
Temperature : 46 C (114 F)
Health Status : Good (98 %)
Features : S.M.A.R.T., TRIM, VolatileWriteCache
Drive Letter : C:

 

[USAFRet]

Also for comparison, my current C drive:

Samsung 980 Pro, 1TB

Total Host Writes - 10.2TB
Power On Hours - 5559 (231 days, first installed late Dec 2021)
Power On Count - 35

So, this may see 11TB in a full year of use.

If this were your MX500 and its 180TBW, 11TB/year = 16+ years.

 

[diesel04]

How did you arrive at "40TB" for games and downloads?
Just a guess?

Yes, just a guess.

Reported writes during the first weeks of operation on a new installation are NOT representative of mid to long term writes. Windows does a lot of housekeeping early in its life.

3 TB in the first month is not likely to result in 36 TB in a year.

Monitor your own usage to assuage your worry. Monthly? Quarterly?

This is interesting, and seems important information.

Anyway, thank you all for educating me.

Edit: Out of curiosity, does the number of computer starts affect on Host Writes ? because, I noticed that you both start your computers quite rarely compared to the time they were running.

 

[CountMike]

Yes, just a guess.

This is interesting, and seems important information.

Anyway, thank you all for educating me.

Edit: Out of curiosity, does the number of computer starts affect on Host Writes ? because, I noticed that you both start your computers quite rarely compared to the time they were running.

Mine is practically running 24/7 but not all the time booting from 970 but also from a 960 that has W11 Insider dev on it, so all drives (5SSDs and one HDD) are always in actual use, even at idle.

 

[USAFRet]

Edit: Out of curiosity, does the number of computer starts affect on Host Writes ? because, I noticed that you both start your computers quite rarely compared to the time they were running.

Except for vacations or major system updates, my systems are ON 24/7.

And no, starting the system up does not impact the Host Writes. That is almost all Read.

 

[diesel04]

Hey, I don't want to start another "twin" topic, so I'll ask here again.
After 7 months of use, the drive looks like this:
"

Spoiler: mx500

"

The only thing on it is windows10/chrome a few other programs. (nothing big is saved here)
Mine is 97% at 4.8TB at 180TB while I've looked at other drives and lots of them for example evo970 here from post #10 31.5TB and 98% at 300TBW.
(97% doesn't look terrible, I guess? Just asking why such a difference, especially since this evo already used 10% TBW while having as much as 98%.)

Why does this evo seem to use less even though it was filled more?

Second question, since June 6 I also have a new samsung evo 980 500gb drive. (without windowsofc). Since then, I keep several games on it. According to steam, about 37 hours have been played. (in the games that are on this disk). Still, "Power on hours" only shows 13h.
Why?

Or maybe I should transfer the system to samsung? (Aside from the difference in speed) Does it make sense to do it at all, would such a Samsung use less than the current mx500?

 

[CountMike]

Browsers do a lot caching/writing on system disk, easy 10 - 30GB a day.Couple of handy programs to find out what writes on disk and how much.

View file read / write counters of every application on Windows

AppReadWriteCounter is a tool for Windows that counts and displays the current file read / write operations of every application running on your system.

www.nirsoft.net

AppReadWriteCounter - The Portable Freeware Collection

www.portablefreeware.com

 

[MWink64]

Hey, I don't want to start another "twin" topic, so I'll ask here again.
After 7 months of use, the drive looks like this:
"

Spoiler: mx500

"

The only thing on it is windows10/chrome a few other programs. (nothing big is saved here)
Mine is 97% at 4.8TB at 180TB while I've looked at other drives and lots of them for example evo970 here from post #10 31.5TB and 98% at 300TBW.
(97% doesn't look terrible, I guess? Just asking why such a difference, especially since this evo already used 10% TBW while having as much as 98%.)

Why does this evo seem to use less even though it was filled more?

Second question, since June 6 I also have a new samsung evo 980 500gb drive. (without windowsofc). Since then, I keep several games on it. According to steam, about 37 hours have been played. (in the games that are on this disk). Still, "Power on hours" only shows 13h.
Why?

Or maybe I should transfer the system to samsung? (Aside from the difference in speed) Does it make sense to do it at all, would such a Samsung use less than the current mx500?

Remember, the TBW value is for warranty purposes. It's not a good indicator of actual drive lifespan. Host writes also aren't a great indicator of actual wear on the NAND. Write amplification must also be taken into account. Total NAND writes (not directly reported by the MX500) and average block-erase count are more useful. I generally advise people not to worry about TBW. Most will never come close to hitting that number during the drive's useful lifespan.

The reason that Samsung EVO is showing more lifespan remaining than you'd expect is probably due to those reasons I mentioned. On the flip side, I have a Crucial BX500 that's on track to reach 0% life remaining at about 55TB of writes, well short of the 80TB it's warranted for. It's already past its 3-year warranty, so it doesn't really matter.

Generally, I would say it's not worth moving your OS from the MX500 to another drive. However, I do see some oddities in your SMART values. The minor oddity is the fact that it's at 97% life remaining but only has 42 (2A) average block-erases. The MX500/BX500 usually decrement 1% for every 15 average erases. I'm not sure why yours is at 97% already. I wonder what NAND it has. By the way, your firmware is out of date. It's up to at least M3CR046.

The bigger concern is the Raw Read Error Rate and Reported Uncorrectable Errors. I have never seen these values above 0 on a MX500. These could be indicative of something wrong with the drive. I would suggest running a full test of the drive and seeing if the values change. Also, if you still have old SMART data from that drive, see if the Unused Reserve NAND Blocks value has changed. Do not compare this value to other MX500s, as it varies from drive to drive. As always, make sure you have a good backup.

Out of curiosity, what are the first four digits of the serial number?

 

[diesel04]

What program are you using to run the test you're talking about?
I downloaded Storage Executive (it's probably a program specifically for crucial drives) , it probably shows more accurately (not percentage).

Spoiler: storage executive mx500

By the way, I updated the firmware to M3CR046 in it
The only old data I have is crystaldiskinfo but I don't see any way to check if unused nand has changed.
These numbers from the serial number are 2224.

 

[MWink64]

Many programs can initiate a long SMART self-test. There should be a Device Self-Test tab in Crucial Storage Executive.

The raw SMART values look different in Crucial Storage Executive because CrystalDiskInfo is set to display them in hex, which can be changed to make it more readable to us mere mortals. In CrystalDiskInfo, click Function > Advanced Features > Raw Values > 10 [DEC].

If you still have the info from CrystalDiskInfo from when you first bought the drive, you could see if the Unused Reserve Block Count was the same.

 

[diesel04]

This is what it looks like on the graph, I don't know why it's "unknown". For temperature or stored GB it shows correctly.

Spoiler: diskinfo