# Solid state drives



## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

So I got myself a 256gb toshiba SSD for Christmas and after reading a lot I'm hearing lots of positive things about it. The one thing that concerns me is some people who seem to know a lot about how they work say that you can only write so many times to a ssd befor it will fail. Is this something an average PC user like myself should be concerned about?


----------



## theJman (Mar 3, 2012)

Yes, SSD's have a shorter life span than standard hard drives do. Whether or not that will ultimately affect you depends upon a number of factors though; amount of usage, type of usage (read vs write), the "layering" employed by the manufacturing, etc. That being said...

The real world lifecycle of SSD's is a bit of an unknown currently because they've only been in general use for a few years now. My exposure to them has been somewhat limited, but I can't recall any of them 'dying of old age' as it were. I'm not talking about a large sampling though, so my experience may not be indicative of the breed.


----------



## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

Thanks for your thoughts, I'm not a heavy gamer and really plan to just put the OS and program files on this drive. I will put my movies and music on the standard drive. I wonder how Mac users who only have SSD drives in their laptops feel. It can't be that big a concern.


----------



## Harpmaker (Oct 28, 2007)

That is a VERY good question, and I'll be looking for answers just as you are. :T

I've been looking into SSD usage on and off for a while now and I'll condense what I have learned into the following. Not all SSD's are made the same, but they all share some things: 


They don't like Windows versions before Windows 7 because older versions of Windows don't have the TRIM function and does something to support the memory deletion of SSD's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM_(SSD_command)
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/276929-32-enable-trim
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/10

RAID is generally a bad idea with SSD's.

There is a difference between brands on how the drives are made which affect how they operate and how fast they slow down via use. I've been given the impression this changes often, sometimes literally from model to model; and they is no "perfect" SSD for all purposes yet.

Basically, if you are using the drive in a Win7 machine don't worry about it.


----------



## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

Yes, I'm using it on my desktop with win8.
From what I have read Toshiba is one of just three or four actual manufacturers of SSD so I'm hoping that makes them a good choice.


----------



## robbo266317 (Sep 22, 2008)

As Don said, as long as you are using win 7 or later the operating system knows how to use the drive to maximise it's lifespan.
It's similar to memory cards for cameras, you should fill the card completely and then erase it rather than just using a small part over and over.


----------



## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

Thanks guys, great advice and info!


----------



## Andre (Feb 15, 2010)

I have had an Intel SSD for about 3 years. It has always been recommended to use it only for OS and as the main depositary for your program files, which hardly ever change so the problem of writing over the memory blocks in the chipsets is minimized and longevity increased. I have everything else on a standard HD including programs that don't required the SSDs speed, like ITunes, Kobo...etc


----------



## theJman (Mar 3, 2012)

tonyvdb said:


> I wonder how Mac users who only have SSD drives in their laptops feel. It can't be that big a concern.


I'm not sure that's much of an indicator; when has Apple ever cared about how much of your money was spent on hardware?


----------



## Infrasonic (Sep 28, 2010)

No SSD has failed due to being written too much and that includes those that have been put under extreme data usage for many months on end. Bottom line - don't worry about it and enjoy the blazing fast speed.

If you were running Windows 7 I'd recommend disabling the defragmenter but Win 8 detects whether you have an SSD and/or HD and will only defrag the HD (now called Optimize Drives instead of Defragmenter).

As Harpmaker mentioned TRIM is important (also called Garbage Collection), most SSD manufacturers have software available to make sure it is functioning.


----------



## theJman (Mar 3, 2012)

Infrasonic said:


> No SSD has failed due to being written too much and that includes those that have been put under extreme data usage for many months on end. Bottom line - don't worry about it and enjoy the blazing fast speed.


I wouldn't necessarily say 'no' drives have failed due to usage, otherwise why would it be common knowledge they have a shelf life? (although it's probably more accurate to say they wear out, and not that they actually fail) It is pretty well understood they won't last as long as a physical driver will, especially if they're used heavily, so the concern is legitimate. It may not be worth worrying about but it is something to be cognizant of, at least in the context of usage.


----------



## Infrasonic (Sep 28, 2010)

theJman said:


> why would it be common knowledge they have a shelf life?


Because it's how the memory works: the data is written to a block of memory which must be erased before being written on again, called program-erase cycles (or P/E). Most drives will have a manufacturer stated P/E anywhere from 1000 to 100,000's depending on the memory type (TLC/MLC). So in theory once you've reached that threshold (which you can check by using your SSD software) your drive could begin to start slowing down or fail.

Now that I looked at this info again I have to say that I was wrong, one drive has failed after extensive testing. So it is possible but under normal use it would take longer than a humans average lifespan :T

I should also note that it is possible for the SSD Controller to fail on the drive which has nothing to do with the memory P/E, I've seen it first hand. SSD's are much more reliable than HD's but it's always smart to backup your data no matter how you store it.


----------



## HatlessChimp (Dec 31, 2013)

i have plenty of ssd's in various computer builds for me and my mates and had none fail yet. But on the other hand Ive had tons of hdd's fail. Mainly Western digital hdd's. Best to always keep important stuff backed up. One thing to remember is, Do not perform a full format on a ssd. This WILL shorten its life. eventually


----------



## pharoah (Jul 21, 2012)

ive been told not to defragment an ssd as well.in fact i have disabled the windows defrag on both machines i have with ssd's


----------



## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

I have pretty much been running SSD's in my office computers and laptops since they came out. We are on our 4th year running SSD RAID 1 on our dedicated server for the O/S and MySQLi database... and those drives see some serious use. Our backups are on a 2TB HDD... but the bulk of this forum runs consistently and heavily on SSD's.


----------



## informel (Jun 21, 2011)

pharoah said:


> ive been told not to defragment an ssd as well.in fact i have disabled the windows defrag on both machines i have with ssd's


Defragmenting a SSD is useless, it is not mechanical, so re-arranging the file sequencially has no effect


----------



## informel (Jun 21, 2011)

Infrasonic said:


> No SSD has failed due to being written too much and that includes those that have been put under extreme data usage for many months on end. Bottom line - don't worry about it and enjoy the blazing fast speed.
> 
> If you were running Windows 7 I'd recommend disabling the defragmenter but Win 8 detects whether you have an SSD and/or HD and will only defrag the HD (now called Optimize Drives instead of Defragmenter).
> 
> As Harpmaker mentioned TRIM is important (also called Garbage Collection), most SSD manufacturers have software available to make sure it is functioning.


I remember one using SSD for surveillance and the first one died after 2 weeks.
OS was XP and of course when you do surveillance, you are constantly writing, so not good for this application


----------



## informel (Jun 21, 2011)

tonyvdb said:


> So I got myself a 256gb toshiba SSD for Christmas and after reading a lot I'm hearing lots of positive things about it. The one thing that concerns me is some people who seem to know a lot about how they work say that you can only write so many times to a ssd befor it will fail. Is this something an average PC user like myself should be concerned about?


I have been working in the computer field for over 35 years and the SSD drive the best thing you can buy for your computer.

I just replace an HDD for an SDD in my syster in law's laptop and it is not a new laptop, it has a core 2 duo, but with the SSD, it boots in 20 secondes.

Computer is still my day job and I am changing regular HDD like crazy (most are still under warranty), it looks like the manufacturers never recovered after that big flooding in thailand.


----------



## Savjac (Apr 17, 2008)

I am by no means an expert on these things but everything I hear is that they are very very reliable and should last much longer than a spinning drive. I cant prove it of course as they are newer to the market but my ssd in my Mac and PC have been flawless with no issues and the read/write speeds are stunning.


----------



## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

Sonnie said:


> I have pretty much been running SSD's in my office computers and laptops since they came out. We are on our 4th year running SSD RAID 1 on our dedicated server for the O/S and MySQLi database... and those drives see some serious use. Our backups are on a 2TB HDD... but the bulk of this forum runs consistently and heavily on SSD's.


That's reassuring, using them as a server means that they are getting a lot of use.
Thanks Sonnie.


----------



## ksrigg (Dec 21, 2013)

From my research, SSD lifespan exceeds that of a standard HD. I think there was a time ( a long time ago) when there might have been an issue, but I think that is pretty much no longer a concern. You should e backing up to a secondary location anyway, so I don't see it as a problem. Putting an SSD in my notebook is probably the best money I have ever spent on a computer EVER. It makes an obsolete slow piece of junk blazing fast....faster than a lot of the newer computers with regular hard drives. I just took another Notebook to a computer guru to have an SSD installed. ()It also had other problems, like a broken power supply plug which solders to the motherboard, so I couldn't get the part..you will love the SSD. I could not stop trying to convert people in my family after I put the first one in an old MacBook. It is now blazing fast.


----------



## NBPk402 (Feb 21, 2012)

I run SSD in all of our NUCs... I am hoping they last as one is our home automation server. I love how fast they access our data and boot. I can't wait to be able to replace our 4TB drives with SSDs, when they become available and cheap.


----------



## phillihp23 (Mar 14, 2012)

I replaced the hd in my laptop and Desktop in the past six months with SSD and no problems. The boot time is incredibly fast. Love it and have since convinced some of my freinds to upgrade there laptops. Pefect time for a upgrade to SSD is when your considering an OS upgrade. Do it all at once....thats what i did, installed Win 8.1 Pro on both laptop and Desketop.


----------



## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

Update:

I have now installed two SSDs in two PCs one Kingston 120gb in a laptop and a second Toshiba 256gb in a desktop and both have dramatically sped up boot times. The surprising thing is the Laptop that is only a dual core with 4gb or ram boots into win7 in just under 20 seconds. My desktop thats a quad core with 8gb of ram still takes a bit over 40 seconds to boot into win 8.1. Another issue I had was there is a bug in Win 8.1 that does not select SSD as the drive and keeps it as a HD meaning it does not turn on TRIM and does not disable disk Optimization. You need to run a shell command and force it to run the System Assessment Tool that Microsoft has removed from the normal location that it was under Win8


----------



## dannyandmal (Dec 29, 2011)

I've had an SSD in my Dell workstation for over a year and is by far the best upgrade I could have made!


----------



## dannyandmal (Dec 29, 2011)

Another thing, programs install much faster than with a rotating hard drive.


----------

