Read/Write NVMe / SSD

[ubuntu-guru]

I got into the realm of SSD drives 4 years ago. I had a standard HDD, and went with my first SSD which was an Evo 850 as my OS drive. Upon getting into these drives, I started reading about the way they work, and their "lifecycle" which from what I understood, was based on the amount of writing done to the drive. So when I setup the SSD, I ensured only the OS was installed there, and some programs. Not no games. I diverted anything downloaded from the internet to my HDD to save on writes. And I ensured any caches or programs like Sublime / Visual Studio Code did autosaves to the HDD. Because I'm in them a lot, I knew these would write a LOT.

 

Because I wanted to benefit from the SSD speeds for my most popular games that would actually take the benefit; I bought a Crucial MX500 500GB NVMe as my D drive for games. I left the SSD for Windows, and had heard things about the Crucial NVMe not being as reliable in a sense towards so much writing, so that's why I kept the Samsung SSD as C:.

 

Fast forward; I'm going to upgrade my C to a Samsung 970 Plus NVMe.

 

How does it currently stand with writing to them and their overall health. I just want to ensure all the stuff I do, doesn't make it die out before it's time. 4-5 years ago people seemed to have more of a concern with it, but I just wanted to double check before I decide "Ok, everything will go on C now" and it run my OS + games + program caches, etc.

 

I ran Samsung Magician today on that SSD, and currently it says the health is Good, and that it has written 60.3TB in the 4 years I've had it. And Random IOPS ( 50048 Read / 43945 Write ) (What do these mean anyway? As there's a prograss bar for both read / write, and they're about half full on each). And with these current stats; how much life does it have left? And also, that 60TB is the computer on 24/7. It gets a restart every 2 weeks, but it's never off.

 

Thanks

[Chiyawa]

Okay, first thing first:

 

Indeed last time, the SSD is pretty much not reliable, because the more you write to them, the likely they will fail. This is still the case for today's SSD, but they have improve much since then. Still, for the most safe one, always do a backup of your SSD regularly.

 

You are right in one thing. Flash memories (including SSD) are better at read than write, that is because Writing to the flash chip would require a higher voltage to be applied on the flash chip, which is probably the greatest risk for any type of flash memories. Because of this, many manufacturer uses TBW (TerraBytes Written) to let user know how much data can be written to the device before it can probably fail. SSD are a bit different from conventional flash storage media such as SD cards or flash drives, because those only have 1 flash chip while many modern SSD have 2 or more chips, so the controller can balance the wear level of the chip, increasing the life cycle.

 

Another to note is the heat. flash chips are fast, they do generate a lot of heat. the controller will always monitor the heat level and reduce the transfer speed of the flash chip to protect it from being damage. This is a big concern because although the chip could withstand more than 180 c before failing, the solder joint aren't and will melt at 120 c, technically disconnecting the flash chip from the copper traces of the motherboard. But you don't have to worry because most modern controller can cut off the SSD when it gets too hot (most of the time about 75c or 95c), and unless you use your SSD near a furnace or extreme heat source, you should be fine. A good heat sink is in order if you plan to write lots of data at once.

 

So, back to your question:

3 hours ago, oorty said:

So when I setup the SSD, I ensured only the OS was installed there, and some programs. Not no games. I diverted anything downloaded from the internet to my HDD to save on writes. And I ensured any caches or programs like Sublime / Visual Studio Code did autosaves to the HDD. Because I'm in them a lot, I knew these would write a LOT.

Technically, you can install games to your SSD. Most of the time, your system only read the files, but not writing to it. You can also divert the safe files to your SSD too. For Windows Operating system, however, many system files are being written and overwritten, and it is unavoidable. So you won't be able to save on writes if you put your OS in SSD. Even though you set the pagefile and hibernation file to your HDD, but most NT kernel file such as ntuser.dat will always be read and overwritten. So, technically, you can install games to your OS without worries. All the while, your system will only read the files from the installed games and rarely write backs anything (except when they have updates) and as an added bonus, it will boost your game loading time. The only problem you may face is not enough storage space.

 

3 hours ago, oorty said:

Because I wanted to benefit from the SSD speeds for my most popular games that would actually take the benefit; I bought a Crucial MX500 500GB NVMe as my D drive for games. I left the SSD for Windows, and had heard things about the Crucial NVMe not being as reliable in a sense towards so much writing, so that's why I kept the Samsung SSD as C:.

There are a lot of factors that make a poor SSD, and even if the SSD is poorly made, the failure rate may be much way lower than you think. SSD is quite a complex circuitry system, and if one failed, most likely they will fail totally. Crucial MX500 is not a bad SSD. The downside is that it is only uses SATA, which means they only have 600MB/s transfer rate at maximum, and they are DRAM-less SSD (which I'm still researching why this matters so much until people just make a fuss. I use a DRAM-less SSD, and so far I didn't face any issues at all). However, even with a transfer speed of 560MB/s, there's not really much difference between the time to boot up Windows or playing games.

 

As far as reliability goes, there's no guarantee when an SSD decided to quit. Always make a backup of your SSD regularly. I got a Samsung EVO 970 failed (twice) after 2 weeks of operation (because in Malaysia, sometimes we get a second grade good, and Samsung is known to do that often. I have more Samsung products failed on me than I can count (TV, monitors, even microwave, to list a few)).

 

4 hours ago, oorty said:

How does it currently stand with writing to them and their overall health. I just want to ensure all the stuff I do, doesn't make it die out before it's time. 4-5 years ago people seemed to have more of a concern with it, but I just wanted to double check before I decide "Ok, everything will go on C now" and it run my OS + games + program caches, etc.

Well, there's no definite way to be sure that it's okay to put everything into the SSD, but you should not be concern about this. modern SSD are pretty much a tough cookie and they are less prone to failing than their ancestor. But just to make sure to do backups often.

 

4 hours ago, oorty said:

Random IOPS ( 50048 Read / 43945 Write ) (What do these mean anyway? As there's a prograss bar for both read / write, and they're about half full on each)

Actually, random IOPS means the total instruction the SSD controller can process. According to the spec sheet from Samsung, the maximum read IOPS is 94k - 98k and write IOPS is 88k to 90k IOPS depending on the capacity. So technically, what the bar shows was correct. Depending on the system operation, environment, the condition of the drive and the wear level of the flash chips and many more, including the fragmentation level which is hidden, the results can be vary. You can try to trim your drive and see if the numbers goes up. As electronics aged, their performance will be reduced, but that doesn't mean they are bad. They can still perform well, but not as fast as they used to be.

 

4 hours ago, oorty said:

how much life does it have left? And also, that 60TB is the computer on 24/7.

How much life does it still have is very hard to estimate. It can be still usable after 10 years, or it could failed within two month. No one can answer that accurately.

 

The SSD specs listed 75TBW endurance for 120GB and 250GB, while 150TBW for 500GB and 1TB. If you are using 120GB drive or 250GB drive, your drive still has about 20% life left, so if the condition is unchanged, maybe it can last another year. This estimation is theoretical and are not guarantee on actual life span.

 

If you are using 500GB or 1 TB, theoretically, the SSD has 60% of life left and can still last another 6 years if condition is unchanged.

 

 

Well, hope that helps you a little.

 

Regards,

Chiyawa

[ubuntu-guru]

Dang, thanks, that helped out a lot. I appreciate the detail.

 

I ran SMART on the drives afterward (used magician for the samsung, and the crucial app for the MX500 m.2). Apparently the Crucial M.2 says that it has only had 3TBW thus far. Which makes sense, I've had it for about a little under a year, and most the games on that drive are games that stay there. I don't constantly uninstall / install as I only have maybe 3-4 games I play on a periodic basis. And the crucial app states that I'm at 96% health. Not sure how "accurate" that is, or even if the TBW is accurate completely, but according to the app, it's doing fine, and runs at approx 32C give or take a few higher or lower.

 

The samsung ssd I have is a 500GB, so as you stated, I should be around 60% remaining. It's the OS drive for now, so it makes sense to have so much data being written to it. I tried to reroute downloads and stuff as much as I could, but as you said, since it's the OS drive, it's going to constantly write. Since the Evo 970 Plus is going to be the new OS drive, I guess I can use the 850 Evo for just extra storage for a few more games. I've had it 4 years, so I don't want to put any work-related files on it and risk it dying now that I've gotten 4 years out of it, but games should be alright. The Samsung Magician doesn't give me any type of detailed status of the drive; it just says "Good" (as seen in screenshot I attached).

 

So according to your info, and what the apps are telling me, these two will be alright for just extra storage, and I'll just use them until they decide it's time to go out.

 

Then I'm debating on a 4TB HDD just for the majority of my normal work, older games that don't benefit from SSD that much, etc.

 

Good to know all that info though, I appreciate it a lot. Helps me sort of get an idea of where Flash storage is at. As for the NVMe and m.2, I have heatsinks that actually came with the motherboard with 4 PCIE 4.0 slots and that will be getting installed as soon as the new NVMe gets here.

Again, thanks for all the info, that was a lot more than I expected

[Chiyawa]

On 6/5/2020 at 1:47 PM, oorty said:

Not sure how "accurate" that is, or even if the TBW is accurate completely, but according to the app, it's doing fine, and runs at approx 32C give or take a few higher or lower.

It should be accurate as those are actually extracted from S.M.A.R.T. data. S.M.A.R.T. is a feature that takes record of the drive's history, such as total read and write. If you use other tools like Crystal Disk Info, you can see a list of the S.M.A.R.T. value of your SSD. Many of the values show are not really make sense if you don't know what each value is, but you study it a little, you can be surprise how much information they can have. That also said, S.M.A.R.T. is still not a very reliable source as the data can be manipulate.

 

As for the TBW, it is very accurate if the data is not tampered. Every Gigabyte that was written to the drive will be counted and written in the SMART data.

 

On 6/5/2020 at 1:47 PM, oorty said:

So according to your info, and what the apps are telling me, these two will be alright for just extra storage, and I'll just use them until they decide it's time to go out.

Actually, any flash storage is very good as storage media, and the way solid state works, they are actually ideal for backup and archives. Since they have one of the advantage that out surpass HDD, which is the speed, many people find it useful as an OS drive or primary drive, as OSes don't have to wait very long to read and write lots of small data (many in the form of 4kB or less, which is why we have Random 4k read and write in storage test, to determine how well the storage device handle when the OS request a lot of small data from it), boosting their speed dramatically as a result. Originally, SSD was create to help speed up the system by acting as a cache for frequently use application as their capacity is very small, but as their capacity grows, they became more like a HDD, able to store good deal of data into it.

 

Back to your question, yes indeed you can still store data into the drive (and probably use them as an OS drive if you like), but if there's important document you need to save in there, make sure you back it up to a HDD as well. The reason is because the chances to recover data from a failed SSD is far more slim than in HDD.