Posted at 10:45 by Richard Swinburne with 28 comments
Kingston dropped an interesting titbit that we thought we'd pass on to all Intel SSD owners - of which there's soon to be a lot more once the latest value X25-X drives arrive.
Basically, the biggest unknown factor in NAND Flash technology is wear and tear. The cells have a limited amount of data writes, so don't last forever, even though intelligent wear algorithms mean an MLC drive will last 10 years having written a few hundred GB a day to it - far more than any normal user will do.
One question that will get more important as time goes on is the second hand market: How can you account for wear if you're buying it off someone else?
Well firstly download CrystalMark Info (the install package works better than the standalone) and run it.
On the bottom half of the program there's a SMART readout: check the E9 value like shown below, this is the Media Wearout Indicator. Currently this original 80GB X25-M is 97 per cent OK with 1821 hours on the go.
Unfortunately, the limitation is that this currently only applies to Intel drives because there's no industry standard for SSD SMART data. On other drives it might be there under a different name and address, or, not at all (JMicron drives for example don't feature it).
If you've got an SSD let us know if yours features the Media Wear Indicator or a version of it and how it's fairing up in long term use.
Basically, the biggest unknown factor in NAND Flash technology is wear and tear. The cells have a limited amount of data writes, so don't last forever, even though intelligent wear algorithms mean an MLC drive will last 10 years having written a few hundred GB a day to it - far more than any normal user will do.
One question that will get more important as time goes on is the second hand market: How can you account for wear if you're buying it off someone else?
Well firstly download CrystalMark Info (the install package works better than the standalone) and run it.
On the bottom half of the program there's a SMART readout: check the E9 value like shown below, this is the Media Wearout Indicator. Currently this original 80GB X25-M is 97 per cent OK with 1821 hours on the go.
Unfortunately, the limitation is that this currently only applies to Intel drives because there's no industry standard for SSD SMART data. On other drives it might be there under a different name and address, or, not at all (JMicron drives for example don't feature it).
If you've got an SSD let us know if yours features the Media Wear Indicator or a version of it and how it's fairing up in long term use.
Comments (28)
Discuss in the forumsOr does it not work like that?
Entirely depends on use. No NAND is perfect to start with so it may arrive lower than 100 percent.
I am slowly coming round to the idea that even if I leave the page file on I will upgrade an SSD before it wears out.
After all, how many people have got a 10 year old+ mechanical HDD in their computers?
Not in my main rig. But I do have a nearly 15 year old HDD in a hardware firewall box that does pretty much 24/7/365 duty.
smartmontools seemed to be the most useful tool I could find in my Linux distro's repository, info from 'smartctl --all /dev/sda'
Device Model: INTEL SSDSA2M160G2GC
Firmware Version: 2CV102G9
Good to know about this value, might check it again once I've had the SSD for more than a week.
But how much information does your firewall box write to the drive? Because when it's on and doing nothing, it doesn't wear. A typical MLC NAND SSD can withstand a few hundred GB per day and last years with modern random write algorithms (at least that's what Intel rates its NAND to do). SLC NAND can take hundreds of TB afaik. I forget the exact statistic, I have it buried somewhere.
I'd also suggest your 15 year HDD is doing extremely well!! What brand is it?
Not completely sure I can give a 'daily' figure for log size. It depends on whether I'm bored and surfing around a lot. :D A light day when I'm busy elsewhere will be a few dozen entries, a bored day will be hundreds or thousands of log entries.
It's a bit hard to compare writes on HDDs and SSDs anyway due to SSDs needing to write in blocks of, what, 4MB a time?. But then, a HDD can wear all the time it's on, because the motor needs to keep running. I was just illustrating that I have this habit of never, ever, throwing anything away... :o ...and so any electronic equipment I buy needs to last me. :D Bit annoyed ATM - I've just had two mobo's go on me in a week.
It's the HDD out of my first ever PC - an old Packard Bell (many memories of vomit inducing gaming in Descent on that system!). The drive itself is a Maxtor. :)
...
I'd be interested in those statistics if you can find them, as I've been slow to consider adopting an SSD as a boot drive for longevity reasons just as much (if not more) as price. :)
I am looking to buy a SSD around Christmas, so this is helpful knowledge for then.
my g2 has been on as much as your 80gb g1 ;)
given mine is still at 99%, it might stop the posters above worry quite so much about when its going to fail.
Tidy bit of info. I'm @1% wear with a 160Gb G2...
I do, I've got a WD200 manufactured on 10 Nov 1999 that AFAIK is still running perfectly (this in a machine that was on 24/7 every day for many years).
I too am wondering how SSD's will hold up with all of the constant reads and writes done by the modern OS and whether they will even last through their warranty period. I guess it's fine for us consumers if they don't make it.
My question is WHY DOESN'T THE TEMPERATURE "GAUGE" WORK on these drives.
http://forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=375&pictureid=6012
Because it generates about 1C of heat?
http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=250&Itemid=60&limit=1&limitstart=8
Mainly because as well as the wear level you also get info on the total amount that has been written on the drive.
http://i34.tinypic.com/2py3yfp.png
That's something I've never been too sure on..
A drive that lasts 10 years because of those algorithms but which loses a chunk of its performance by the 2- or 3-year mark and runs like a dog at the 5- or 6- year mark isn't so appealing - Can anyone confirm if that's the case or not?
Many of us replace drives more often than that, but it's still a consideration for someone who has yet to take the plunge with SSDs.
A speedy 64GB SSD used just as a boot drive for a bunch of OS partitions isn't going to get replaced quite as soon as a storage drive, for instance, since most OS installations don't inflate anywhere as fast as the data we store and collect elsewhere.
Ahh, thanks Bindi!
I can't decide if that's better or worse than what I surmised before.. Depends on the usage, I guess.
Will -all- the others just get slower and slower and eventually become unusable and unfixable?
Argh.
How did you manage to get 2 Western digital SATA drives 9-10 years ago when they only came out in 2003??