Thread 'Any harm to SSD ?'

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vnessie

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Message 45812 - Posted: 27 Sep 2012, 5:43:10 UTC

Hi there,
My laptop is using a SAMSUNG 830 series soild state drive. I want to know If I keep my BONIC software working, there would be a large amount write in my SSD or not.
Thanks!
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ProfileJord
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Message 45815 - Posted: 27 Sep 2012, 9:26:52 UTC - in response to Message 45812.  

re only an SSD in that laptop, or also a (normal) hard drive? For if there is, you can put the BOINC programs directory on the SSD and the Data directory on the hard drive. The Data directory is what gets written to.

But even then, it'll take several thousands of years for the drive to break, even if you put the data directory on the SSD.

Explained from this Kingston HyperX 3K review:
Intel's 50nm MLC NAND was rated for 10,000 program/erase cycles. Smaller transistor geometries, although tempting from a cost/capacity standpoint, do come with a reduction in program endurance. At 34nm Intel saw its p/e count drop to 5,000 cycles, and at 25nm we saw a range from 3,000 - 5,000. Modern day SSD controllers include wear leveling logic to ensure that all cells are written to evenly, so even at the lower end of the Intel 25nm range there's more than enough lifespan for a typical client workload. Let's do some math on a hypothetical 100GB drive with four different types of NAND (3K, 5K, 10K and 30K P/E cycles):
[pre] SSD Endurance
3K P/E Cycles 5K P/E Cycles 10K P/E Cycles 30K P/E Cycles
NAND Capacity 100GB 100GB 100GB 100GB
Writes per day 10GB 10GB 10GB 10GB
Write Amplification 10x 10x 10x 10x
P/E Cycles per Day 1 1 1 1
Total Estimated Lifespan 8.219 years 13.698 years 27.397 years 82.191 years
[/pre]
Assuming you write 10GB to your drive every day (on the high end for most client workloads), and your workload is such that the controller sees an effective write amplification of 10x (due to wear leveling/garbage collection the controller has to write 10x the amount of data to NAND that you write to host), you'll blow through one p/e cycle per day. For 25nm 3K p/e cycle NAND that works out to be 8.219 years, at which point your data will remain intact (but presumably read-only) for 12 months. Heavier workloads come with higher write amplification factors, but for client use this math works out quite well.

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vnessie

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Message 45822 - Posted: 27 Sep 2012, 17:05:48 UTC - in response to Message 45815.  

Thanks a lot!
I am going to move my projects to my SSD now.
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Jim1348

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Message 45826 - Posted: 27 Sep 2012, 22:30:32 UTC - in response to Message 45822.  
Last modified: 27 Sep 2012, 22:36:44 UTC

I would add one caveat (though I agree with it for almost all of the BOINC projects):

If you run the Clean Energy Project Phase II (CEP2) on World Community Grid, the writes can go through the roof. I have measured it around 70 GB per day per core on a Core2 Quad at 2.5 GHz. You can limit CEP2 to only one work unit downloaded at once, which is the default setting, but if you run unlimited work units, the writes could be over 250 GB/day, since each core can run one work unit at a time.

I now run CEP2 on a Core i7-3770 (8 virtual cores), and haven't even bothered to measure the writes, since they would be many more than I would want on an SSD. So I now place the BOINC data folder on a ramdisk, and all the writes are to my main memory, not to the SSD. I currently use Primo Ramdisk, but have also used DataRAM Ramdisk, which has a free version if you don't need more than 4 GB.
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Chris Granger
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Message 45843 - Posted: 29 Sep 2012, 20:11:24 UTC

I believe that article is showing an expected lifespan of eight point two years, not eight thousand two hundred years, etc. If these drives were designed to last several thousand years, we wouldn't ever be having a discussion about their appropriateness as a data drive. ;)
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rodelaax

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Message 47630 - Posted: 3 Feb 2013, 19:21:53 UTC
Last modified: 3 Feb 2013, 19:38:51 UTC

Are there any issues with a SSD (with the system runing), if I install the "Program Files" and "Program Data" on another Drive ( a HDD)?

Is, in such a case, the SSD still affected?
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Message boards : Questions and problems : Any harm to SSD ?

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