Question Using a Western Digital WD Blue SN570 SSD for booting Windows 11, which is a DRAM-less SSD. Am I destroying my SSD's health?

[p1xel8or]

Saw a reddit comment about how constant booting of Windows 11 will destroy an SSD without DRAM because the DRAM is supposed to take the brunt of the "writes". BUT I saw another comment which said that using a DRAM-less SSD for booting Windows is fine because booting is mostly "reads" with very few "writes". I've been a console dude my entire life, so I've no idea what's right and what's wrong. My PC specs are listed below in case it matters:

i9 13900K/GIGABYTE RTX 4090/32GB RAM/GIGABYTE Z790 UD AX MOTHERBOARD/EVGA 1300 GT 80 GOLD PSU

 

[Lutfij]

If this drive merely deals with the OS, then yeah you're overthinking it. by the time the SSD conks out, you should be able to source another one and that which is of a better build quality.

What capacity SSD did you pick up?

 

[Lafong]

"Am I destroying my SSD's health?".......................

The 1 TB version of the SN 570 is warrantied for 600 terabytes of writes during the warranty period....whatever that is. Probably 3 years, maybe 5 years?

I write about 1 TB per month on my dramless WD NVMe drive. You can easily track how much you write.

The chances of you writing more than the TBW rating of your drive during the warranty period is EXTREMELY low. And the drive could easily last much longer than the warranty period.

The drive could die in the next 10 minutes and it is certainly closer to death than it was yesterday. You get to decide if that is "destroying" it.

 

[p1xel8or]

If this drive merely deals with the OS, then yeah you're overthinking it. by the time the SSD conks out, you should be able to source another one and that which is of a better build quality.

What capacity SSD did you pick up?

500 GB, It has Windows and a few game launchers installed (Steam, Blizzard, Ubisoft Launcher etc)

 

[hotaru.hino]

Modern DRAM-less drives use system RAM to do the housekeeping, rather than DRAM-less drives of old which could use part of the flash memory itself for normal operations.

In any case, unless you're constantly deleting and writing the drive's capacity as fast as possible, you're not "destryoing" it. In my case, I put down 1.5-2 TBW every year on my boot drives. Considering the 600 TBW guarantee of the SN570, I'll be surprised if anything else on the drive even lasts 10% as long as the math would suggest how long it would take to wear out the flash.

 

[USAFRet]

Did this reddit person give any specifics and examples about this use case killing the drive?
No, he did not.

It is fine.
Leave it alone, don't stress.

 

[p1xel8or]

Thank you all! Will sleep a lot easier tonight!