Spotify has (potentially) been killing your hard drive

[gtx1060=value]

wait, is this for the online app too, or just for the downloaded ones?

On 11/11/2016 at 2:29 PM, Rune said:

 

 

So, I've been using Pandora simply because I don't like how Spotify looks. It appears that was a correct decision. Later on in the article, they state that this will be fixed in a soon to be coming update, but I don't think that excuses them from having to deal with the hardware they have already potentially killed. Who knows how many devices have already failed?

Source here: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/for-five-months-spotify-has-badly-abused-users-storage-drives/

 

On 11/11/2016 at 2:35 PM, Jed M said:

Another. fucking. Spotify. issue.

 

[0ld_Chicken]

I checked my drives, I had Spotify installed to an SSD but it seems to be doing fine.  I've been using it as a boot drive for about 2 years now and it still reports 98% life remaining.

 

2 hours ago, EJOE said:

Same man. Also how's that cpu? I was looking at buying it.

I really love mine, primarily because it's a good overclocking chip, but I don't know that I'd feel the same about every other 4790k.  Don't get me wrong, they're fantastic CPU's, but at this point I'd definitely look into 6700k and newer if the price difference isn't too large.  DDR4 has it's advantages and its pretty cheap now days

 

If you're near a microcenter in the US then check this out

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Urishima]

For those that are interested in the exact mechanics behind this issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/5c6xgi/spotify_excessively_writes_data_to_your/d9uda9z/

 

"Spotify maintains an internal database/cache of info that's displayed in the client as a SQLite database. It's named mercury.db and is about 71mb on my Macbook. The problem is that they were issuing SQLite VACUUM commands to repack the database very often, possibly after every write to it. VACUUM works by writing the database to a new file and swapping it with the existing file. If the client is writing to the DB often and vacuuming after every write, it's very easy to imagine 100gb of writes in a day.

People both in that thread and on Hacker News have confirmed that if you hex edit the Spotify binary to change the VACUUM string to gibberish, the massive writes stop. I wouldn't recommend doing that now that an update is available."

 

And https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/5c6xgi/spotify_excessively_writes_data_to_your/d9umpjm/

 

"VACUUM is a non-standard command that does different things in the few databases that support it, but the common thread is that it cleans up after earlier operations that may have left the database in a less optimized state.

In both Postgres and SQLite, it cleans up after changes/deletions that left holes in the database page files. In SQLite it also merges the write-ahead log into the database. It's normal to VACUUM maybe daily as a scheduled task during non-peak hours, absolutely not normal to do it hundreds or thousands of times a day."

[Orangeator]

Yep, I have been trying to figure out for months what has been writing to my SSD for so long. It has already lost 50mb/s transfer speed. Fck you Spotify. 

[Instillingererno]

On 11/12/2016 at 5:37 PM, Paragon_X said:

Fucking spotify.....

Last time i checked i was about 1.1Tb then 5 months later i get this 

Beat this

[ProjectBox153]

Wow. Sometimes I still use Spotify on my PowerMac G4 MDD. I like the look of it. Surprisingly the program still works! But I guess I'll be sticking with the web player for a while.

[PurpleDido]

Was this true for the mobile version?

[Godlygamer23]

On 11/11/2016 at 5:35 PM, pyromaniac said:

You need to chill bro...

I'm not sure what the issue was with his comment. 

[pyromaniac]

2 hours ago, Godlygamer23 said:

I'm not sure what the issue was with his comment. 

lol thanks for quoting me with no context. 

[Godlygamer23]

1 hour ago, pyromaniac said:

lol thanks for quoting me with no context. 

Plenty of context. You didn't like the original comment, stating that he needs to chill, when the comment had nothing wrong with it. 

[pyromaniac]

32 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Plenty of context. You didn't like the original comment, stating that he needs to chill, when the comment had nothing wrong with it. 

You need to chill bro...

[Paragon_X]

On 11/14/2016 at 11:43 AM, Captain Chaos said:

Indeed, record labels only pay the artists about 15-25% of what they receive from the online retailer. 

Funnily enough, they pay the artist 50% of what they get from CD sales (which is roughly the same as from digital downloads). 

So if you want to support the artist, buy CDs instead of MP3s.  You get better quality sound, have a physical copy to rip again and again if you lose your files or if they go corrupt (good luck downloading a song 3 times on iTunes) and if you shop around a bit it's often cheaper than buying the whole album digitally.  It's a win-win-win situation really.

 

It's also important where you buy or sell.  The big stores (7digital, Google Play, iTunes etc) typically take a 30-ish percent cut, but Bandcamp for instance only takes 15% on digital music, 10% on CDs and merch. 

 

Anyway, on topic :

 

@Paragon_X : Those numbers are still okay.  8.5TB in 5 months is 1.7TB per month.  That means it'll take another 39 months until you reach the 75TB cap of the warranty.

It's also 289 months (or 24 years) before reaching the 500TB mark where SSDs usually begin to fail due to NAND wear. 

(Actually, when Tech Report tested the endurance of SSDs, their 840EVO lasted until somewhere between 800 and 900TB.  So at this rate you should be able to get 35-40 years or more out of that 850EVO of yours)

 

Is this bug causing unwanted writes?  Sure

Is it going to "kill your SSD"?  You're going to be replacing it long before the NAND even gets halfway to wearing out, so it's not an issue really. 

I totally agree but those are 8 TB writes more than I would like on my SSD.