How to Save my DRAMless SSD from early deth

WarPigs · December 17, 2019

I have a 1tb A55 ACE Silicon Power SSD and it has no DRAM and I want it to survive past 3 year warranty and live to see 15 years or more. What can I buy that is under 30 bucks that can save this thing and upgrade my laptop that is no longer for gaming (but can be used for some lighter games?)

Was looking into optane but was discouraged and told simply to buy better SSD (YEAH IF ONLY I KNEW WHAT DRAM SSD WAS OR HAD TIME TRAVEL!!! I GUESS I SHOULD JUST THROW IT AWAY INTO A LANDFILL AND LET IT POLLUTE THE WILDABEASTS!!!)

Jurrunio · December 17, 2019

DRAM or not has nothing to do with durability. 15 years is quite a tall order though for any SSD not meant for server use (and even so, still a high rank). Nothing you can do with it especially only $30

mariushm · December 17, 2019

The life of the SSD is entirely dependent on the amount of writes you make on the SSD.

DRAM cache can maybe help the controller combine multiple small writes into fewer bigger writes, giving the SSD controller more time to find empty pages in blocks with fewer erase cycles, where the data can be written.

But we're talking something like 5-10% reduction in the erase cycles at best.

You still have a limited number of writes onto the SSD, like let's say 100 TB for every 120 GB on the SSD

A typical 1 TB TLC SSD will be rated for 350-500 TB of writes over the life of the drive. Warranty is gone whenever 3 years go by or you write more than that amount of TB to the disk.