How to maximize the life of an ssd?

[Yongtjunkit]

Hi I was wondering how do I maximize  the  life of an Samsung 850 evo

 

I've done the following 

 

1. Disabled hibernate 
2. Reduced page file size to 800mb to 2gb( 12gb ram installed)is 

Also what does rapid mode in the Samsung magician software do and what workload does it benefits? Another question is, is it a good idea to disable hibernation on a laptop pc. What would happen when the laptop battery reaches the time when it wants to go to hibernate (critically low  battery)?

 

Link to topic :

 

 

 

 

[Phentos]

If you have more than 8GB of RAM, disable the paging file entirely. Always disable prefetch and disk indexing too. Paging files and prefetch operations will write data to an SSD constantly. 

 

RAPID mode caches data in RAM, and since RAM is literally several orders of magnitude faster than even the fastest SATA SSD, it greatly increases the performance of the SSD, as long as your queue depth is small or you're mostly doing read operations (loading games, browsing files). 

[Yongtjunkit]

6 minutes ago, Phentos said:

If you have more than 8GB of RAM, disable the paging file entirely. Always disable prefetch and disk indexing too. Paging files and prefetch operations will write data to an SSD constantly. 

 

RAPID mode caches data in RAM, and since RAM is literally several orders of magnitude faster than even the fastest SATA SSD, it greatly increases the performance of the SSD, as long as your queue depth is small or you're mostly doing read operations (loading games, browsing files). 

But windows warns me when the pc crashes it may not be able to save the dmp file

[Phentos]

Just now, Yongtjunkit said:

But windows warns me when the pc crashes it may not be able to save the dmp file

Disable automatic restart when a crash occurs. Typically you can diagnose crashes by taking down what the BSOD code is, along with looking at Event Viewer and exercising basic troubleshooting methods. 

 

If you don't feel comfortable with disabling the page file, then move it to a hard drive if you have one. Your computer will slow to a crawl when you max out on RAM usage, but at least the paging file operations will not write to your SSD. 

[JoostinOnline]

12 minutes ago, Phentos said:

If you have more than 8GB of RAM, disable the paging file entirely. Always disable prefetch and disk indexing too. Paging files and prefetch operations will write data to an SSD constantly. 

 

RAPID mode caches data in RAM, and since RAM is literally several orders of magnitude faster than even the fastest SATA SSD, it greatly increases the performance of the SSD, as long as your queue depth is small or you're mostly doing read operations (loading games, browsing files). 

RAPID mode has almost zero effect on performance. All it does is fool benchmarks and waste RAM. 

 

As for extending the life of an SSD, it's not something to worry about. The risk of wearing out flash is something that has been exaggerated for decades. They're far more durable than most people think. It's just not something you need to be concerned about. It will probably outlast your hard drive. 

 

Don't disable your pagefile either. That's stupid. If you've got enough RAM, it just won't get used. 

[Phentos]

Just now, JoostinOnline said:

RAPID mode has almost zero effect on performance. All it does is fool benchmarks and waste RAM. 

 

As for extending the life of an SSD, it's not something to worry about. The risk of wearing out flash is something that has been exaggerated for decades. They're far more durable than most people think. It's just not something you need to be concerned about. It will probably outlast your hard drive. 

Eh I've seen a difference with RAPID mode myself. It's not very substantial but it's there.

 

I wanted to answer OP's question about wearing out an SSD with writes. If you're using an el-cheapo SSD, then wearing out the cells will happen sooner than you think. 

 

I still stand by my point about the fact that Prefetch should always be disabled. Extra write cycles and queues in return for literally no noticeable difference in Windows' performance.

[JoostinOnline]

Just now, Phentos said:

Eh I've seen a difference with RAPID mode myself. It's not very substantial but it's there.

 

I wanted to answer OP's question about wearing out an SSD with writes. If you're using an el-cheapo SSD, then wearing out the cells will happen sooner than you think. 

 

I still stand by my point about the fact that Prefetch should always be disabled. Extra write cycles and queues in return for literally no noticeable difference in Windows' performance.

Stop giving stupid advice. The pagefile won't even be used if he doesn't need the swap memory. Disabling it altogether will just risk crashes. 

 

And no, RAPID doesn't do anything. It's even been known to slow down systems because it's another operation between everything. Windows already caches files to the RAM when it's beneficial. 

 

Flash memory, even the cheapest stuff, lasts a really long time. It's true that it has a finite amount of write cycles, but that amount is so high that no consumer is ever going to reach it. The drive can still fail, but that's not going to be the cause. 

[Yongtjunkit]

14 minutes ago, Phentos said:

Disable automatic restart when a crash occurs. Typically you can diagnose crashes by taking down what the BSOD code is, along with looking at Event Viewer and exercising basic troubleshooting methods. 

 

If you don't feel comfortable with disabling the page file, then move it to a hard drive if you have one. Your computer will slow to a crawl when you max out on RAM usage, but at least the paging file operations will not write to your SSD. 

But there software like blue-green viewer that allows me to look at the root cause of the problem if event viewer could do the same /similar thing would be great, I have a laptop that have only 1 hard drive space.

[Yongtjunkit]

11 minutes ago, Phentos said:

Eh I've seen a difference with RAPID mode myself. It's not very substantial but it's there.

 

I wanted to answer OP's question about wearing out an SSD with writes. If you're using an el-cheapo SSD, then wearing out the cells will happen sooner than you think. 

 

I still stand by my point about the fact that Prefetch should always be disabled. Extra write cycles and queues in return for literally no noticeable difference in Windows' performance.

It's an Samsung 850 evo 

[Glenwing]

Honestly it's not worth worrying about. SSD write limitations are enormous, you're never going to come close to them unless you use them for server caching or something.

[Phentos]

Just now, JoostinOnline said:

Stop giving stupid advice. The pagefile won't even be used if he doesn't need the swap memory. Disabling it altogether will just risk crashes. 

 

And no, RAPID doesn't do anything. It's even been known to slow down systems because it's another operation between everything. Windows already caches files to the RAM when it's beneficial. 

 

Flash memory, even the cheapest stuff, lasts a really long time. It's true that it has a finite amount of write cycles, but that amount is so high that no consumer is ever going to reach it. The drive can still fail, but that's not going to be the cause. 

With a well optimized and maintained system, you should almost never crash anyway unless you trigger one yourself with a bad overclock. Don't install useless crap and always maintain your system and there should be no issue. If I had more RAM in my system then I would disable the page file.

 

Haven't had a system crash since 2013, and that was after trying a 4.8 Ghz OC on my CPU. 

 

  

[JoostinOnline]

1 minute ago, Phentos said:

With a well optimized and maintained system, you should almost never crash anyway unless you trigger one yourself with a bad overclock. Don't install useless crap and always maintain your system and there should be no issue. If I had more RAM in my system then I would disable the page file.

 

Haven't had a system crash since 2013, and that was after trying a 4.8 Ghz OC on my CPU. 

 

  

When you disable the pagefile, you introduce a new way for your system to crash. Without that swap memory, his system will crash if he ever fills up his RAM. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. Even if write limits weren't astronomical, an unused pagefile doesn't hurt anything anyway. 

[Yongtjunkit]

35 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

When you disable the pagefile, you introduce a new way for your system to crash. Without that swap memory, his system will crash if he ever fills up his RAM. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. Even if write limits weren't astronomical, an unused pagefile doesn't hurt anything anyway. 

So basically settings to windows recommend minimum size which is 800mb is a good idea but what is the best maximum, i've set it to 2gb max but no idea if it's safe for it to be lower.

 

40 minutes ago, Phentos said:

With a well optimized and maintained system, you should almost never crash anyway unless you trigger one yourself with a bad overclock. Don't install useless crap and always maintain your system and there should be no issue. If I had more RAM in my system then I would disable the page file.

 

Haven't had a system crash since 2013, and that was after trying a 4.8 Ghz OC on my CPU. 

 

  

I do hope it ends up that way for a long term but I keep reinstalling windows 10 on my hdd( this is when I before upgrade to an SSD, just recently upgraded to an SSD) due to system slow down, frustrating issues too

 

 

 

So far according to crystal disk info I've already written 90gb to the ssd while Samsung magician report 0.1tb. And that's about 1 day. I've left my laptop running overnight to copy files from my old hdd in an enclosure to my nas appears to use do some writing last night before I went to bed crystal disk info reports 87gb written but this morning I checked crystal disk info and it says 90gb written( advices about reducing the amount written would be great for system idle/file transfer from a usb storage/nas to nas / another usb storage)

[JoostinOnline]

6 hours ago, Yongtjunkit said:

So basically settings to windows recommend minimum size which is 800mb is a good idea but what is the best maximum, i've set it to 2gb max but no idea if it's safe for it to be lower.

 

I do hope it ends up that way for a long term but I keep reinstalling windows 10 on my hdd( this is when I before upgrade to an SSD, just recently upgraded to an SSD) due to system slow down, frustrating issues too

 

 

 

So far according to crystal disk info I've already written 90gb to the ssd while Samsung magician report 0.1tb. And that's about 1 day. I've left my laptop running overnight to copy files from my old hdd in an enclosure to my nas appears to use do some writing last night before I went to bed crystal disk info reports 87gb written but this morning I checked crystal disk info and it says 90gb written( advices about reducing the amount written would be great for system idle/file transfer from a usb storage/nas to nas / another usb storage)

Either leave it at 2GB or switch it to System managed. It's unlikely that it will ever use it, but having it means you won't crash if you run out of RAM. 

 

Again, don't worry about how much data was written. I put a SSD in my laptop 3 years ago and I think it's around 11% used. At the current rate (which is using it exclusively) it will take 30 years to wear out. By then 500GB won't be enough to hold much lol. 

[Yongtjunkit]

6 hours ago, JoostinOnline said:

Either leave it at 2GB or switch it to System managed. It's unlikely that it will ever use it, but having it means you won't crash if you run out of RAM. 

 

Again, don't worry about how much data was written. I put a SSD in my laptop 3 years ago and I think it's around 11% used. At the current rate (which is using it exclusively) it will take 30 years to wear out. By then 500GB won't be enough to hold much lol. 

Should I disable hibernation, superfetch, indexing?

[JoostinOnline]

24 minutes ago, Yongtjunkit said:

Should I disable hibernation, superfetch, indexing?

I wouldn't. And I don't. This isn't 1995.

[Gronnie]

Don't worry about this for even a second. The SSD will be well past it's useful life well before the NAND ever wears out.

 

Samsung 850 Evo is rated for 2000 program/erase cycles.

 

That basically means if you continued to write 90GB to it every day, it would be wearing out 30ish years from now.

 

The only thing I do for consumer SSDs is make sure to not defrag them and I usually manually overprovision them about 20%.

[mealto]

What has many users worried is the actual manufacturer's specs of SSDs. Although reliability from Samsung says 2 million hours, Total Bytes Written or TBW for the 128 GB / 256 GB is 150 TBW.  That's one reason why users are worrying about writes to the drive. 

[Yongtjunkit]

8 hours ago, mealto said:

What has many users worried is the actual manufacturer's specs of SSDs. Although reliability from Samsung says 2 million hours, Total Bytes Written or TBW for the 128 GB / 256 GB is 150 TBW.  That's one reason why users are worrying about writes to the drive. 

 

12 hours ago, Gronnie said:

Don't worry about this for even a second. The SSD will be well past it's useful life well before the NAND ever wears out.

 

Samsung 850 Evo is rated for 2000 program/erase cycles.

 

That basically means if you continued to write 90GB to it every day, it would be wearing out 30ish years from now.

 

The only thing I do for consumer SSDs is make sure to not defrag them and I usually manually overprovision them about 20%.

So basically if I use is/ give it hdd work load would be OK? My hdd work could potentially be higher than currently with an ssd. If I were to work outside of my home which would be better, storing data on an external hdd or its ok to store in the ssd? The files vary from video files( video files could be from 4k to 720p), video editing on Davinci resolve to word document 

[Gronnie]

Go ahead and use it, you will be fine.

 

If you are worried, install the Samsung Magician software and that will tell you how much total you have written to the drive. If you start getting close to 2000x the capacity of your drive, then consider replacing it (although even then you will likely be ok).

[mealto]

6 hours ago, Yongtjunkit said:

 

So basically if I use is/ give it hdd work load would be OK? My hdd work could potentially be higher than currently with an ssd. If I were to work outside of my home which would be better, storing data on an external hdd or its ok to store in the ssd? The files vary from video files( video files could be from 4k to 720p), video editing on Davinci resolve to word document 

Yes, keep using your SSD and HDD as you need it. As @Gronnie suggets, install Samsung Magician and monitor the health of your SSD. In fact, a good practice is to have Windows load CrystalDiskInfo every time it boots up. CrystalDisk right away shows problems with SMART info and will give you a heads up if it detects any problem. It's a free program.

 

BUT, the most important thing to do is to keep a good backup of your files. SSD or HDD, drives will die, either after the manufacturer's suggested life span or even way before. Keep a good backup system and you won't even need to worry about losing a harddrive.

[JoostinOnline]

20 hours ago, Yongtjunkit said:

 

So basically if I use is/ give it hdd work load would be OK? My hdd work could potentially be higher than currently with an ssd. If I were to work outside of my home which would be better, storing data on an external hdd or its ok to store in the ssd? The files vary from video files( video files could be from 4k to 720p), video editing on Davinci resolve to word document 

You can store everything on your SSD. Honestly, I don't know how many more times we can tell you that degradation isn't a risk.

[Yongtjunkit]

53 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

You can store everything on your SSD. Honestly, I don't know how many more times we can tell you that degradation isn't a risk.

Thanks for your information, I was just worried and try to have the ssd to last long as possible as the laptop is about 4 years old and If I were to upgrade to a newer one laptop  I would carry over this ssd to a new one 

[JoostinOnline]

1 minute ago, Yongtjunkit said:

Thanks for your information, I was just worried and try to have the ssd to last long as possible as the laptop is about 4 years old and If I were to upgrade to a newer one laptop  I would carry over this ssd to a new one 

You should still back things up at given increments. As others have stated, SSD's and hard drives fail eventually. Just not from degradation. There's nothing you can do to prevent that. 

[Yongtjunkit]

2 hours ago, JoostinOnline said:

You should still back things up at given increments. As others have stated, SSD's and hard drives fail eventually. Just not from degradation. There's nothing you can do to prevent that. 

Hmm I'm using wd smartware pro to backup my laptop but I've no idea which type of backup should I choose. Should I choose continuous backup or should I choose scheduled backup? And should I trust my nas in holding data since when I tried to run a full test, it gives me an error which is smart test bad request(400157).