clear as mud, SSHD ?

[xwrench3]

i hear Linus talk about a limit to how many read / write cycles any given  SSHD will take before it starts to deteriorate, and eventually crash, burn, and die.  but there is this little question that pops up in the back corner in my brain every time i hear those words, by read / write, is the "read" mean using the information to load windows? i want to be perfectly clear about this. so say the SSHD in question has exactly 50,000 read / write cycles useful life span, does that mean that at 50,001 time it loads windows, it will have problems? or is the lifespan of read / write cycles mean burning and erasing information on the hd itself?

[DXMember]

no, you're overthinking it

MTBF is just a an average

don't sweat over it - you'll be fine

[porina]

Just to confirm, are we really talking about SSHD or SSDs? SSHDs are a bit of a niche, but SSDs are pretty much mainstream. Depending on the technology used, they do have a limited number of write cycles. Reads are essentially free and you can do as much as you like without wearing it out. Look at it like a paper notebook. You can make notes in it with a pencil. If you want to change something, you can use an eraser and go again. But after some time, the paper will wear out and you can't write any more. Only reading it doesn't wear it out in the same way.

 

As for lifespan, they should last a while. The write cycles are for the whole drive, including spare capacity included but not normally accessible. The drive is also smart enough to spread the wear so if you write a specific part over and over again, it gets mapped to different areas. Unless you're going to write large amounts of data to it continuously (like TBs every day) it should last many years.

 

Also you don't have to fear it suddenly dying one day from wear and tear. Built in monitoring will report how much life is left so there will be plenty of time to replace if you really do come close to wearing it out.

[xwrench3]

i did not know the difference between an SSD and a SSHD, until just now. i thought the correct terminology was SSHD, but now i know that is  Solid State Hybrid Drive, not Solid State Hard Drive. and yes, i meant SSD. i have heard a little about SSHD's, but never was real interested. it may be something to consider in a laptop, where there is not space for both.  thanks for clearing that up. and for clearing up my original concern.