SSD Size & Longevity/Resilience/Speed

[Dana86]

My program is reading, writing & processing gbs of data everyday.

1. Will this eventually damage & reduce SSD write/read speed over time?

2. Would running programs off of multiple dedicated smaller SSDs help increase/retain performance?

If anyone knows that would be much appreciated!

I've been planning on investing in some SSDs!

[JLogan3o13]

That is a very broad question, as there is no one blanket rule for all SSDs - you have different quality drives that are purpose-built for different activities. If you Google "SSD longevity vs HDD" you will find a number of articles from different companies that have performed testing, on a wide array of hardware from normal 'home-user' grade to multi-thousand $$ enterprise drives using NAND and ECC.

Edit: Fixed spelling, up way too early this morning

Edited March 12, 2021 by JLogan3o13

[wolflake]

The down side of SSD's is they have a limited number of writes but the limit is pretty big:

Samsung states that their Samsung SSD 850 PRO SATA, with a capacity of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 or 1 TB,  is “built to handle 150 terabytes written (TBW), which equates to a 40 GB daily read/write workload over a ten-year period.”  Samsung even promises that the product is “withstanding up to 600 terabytes written (TBW).” A normal office user writes approximately between 10 and 35 GB on a normal day. Even if one raises this amount up to 40 GB, it means that they could write (and only write) more than almost 5 years until they reach the 70 TBW limit.

[argumentum]

10 hours ago, Dana86 said:

My program is reading, writing & processing gbs of data everyday.

See if you can use a RAM disk for faster read/write. Also, I rather use NVMe over SSD.
If for long time storage, use something to attend to bit-rot.

[TheDcoder]

2 hours ago, argumentum said:

See if you can use a RAM disk for faster read/write.

Excellent suggestion, I use the RAM for all I/O heavy operations, it is the most durable AND the most fastest medium to process data

The only downside is that it is volatile, so no long-term storage. But it works great as long as your machine is powered

There are quite a few programs to do this in Windows, but I personally use ImDisk (which also supports mounting of disk images), I also think it offers an option for persistent RAM storage by automatically backing everything up in an image before shutting down.

2 hours ago, argumentum said:

Also, I rather use NVMe over SSD.

Strictly speaking, NVMe is a connection interface, the underlying storage system is always and SSD. I assume you are referring to SATA SSDs by "SSD"

--

I personally use the SSD for my OS partition as well as my home partition as it makes things fast, but for everything else, I use my other "SSD", i.e slow spinning disk

[Earthshine]

6 hours ago, wolflake said:

The down side of SSD's is they have a limited number of writes but the limit is pretty big:

Samsung states that their Samsung SSD 850 PRO SATA, with a capacity of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 or 1 TB,  is “built to handle 150 terabytes written (TBW), which equates to a 40 GB daily read/write workload over a ten-year period.”  Samsung even promises that the product is “withstanding up to 600 terabytes written (TBW).” A normal office user writes approximately between 10 and 35 GB on a normal day. Even if one raises this amount up to 40 GB, it means that they could write (and only write) more than almost 5 years until they reach the 70 TBW limit.

You should post the link to where you get your information 

[Earthshine]

5 hours ago, argumentum said:

See if you can use a RAM disk for faster read/write. Also, I rather use NVMe over SSD.
If for long time storage, use something to attend to bit-rot.

NVME is still an SSD just a different type and faster than SATA 3 ssd

 

nvme can be sata as well but the preferred type is the PCIE type of drive For the greatest speed And performance

Edited March 13, 2021 by Earthshine

[RTFC]

4 hours ago, TheDcoder said:

The only downside is that it is volatile

The second downside is that RAM is small; even with 64 GB, many of my datasets wouldn't fit in there.

4 hours ago, TheDcoder said:

ImDisk

I second the motion;ImDisk is the best, free, open-source RAM disk manager I've ever used.

Edited March 13, 2021 by RTFC

[TheDcoder]

6 minutes ago, RTFC said:

even with 64 GB, many of my datasets wouldn't fit in there.

It depends on the volume of data you could process at once, most people would be pretty happy with 64 GB I think.

[jchd]

You can consider a RAID (-5 or -6) system of SSDs. Use a good dedicated RAID controler, like ARECA or similar. You'll minimize SSD wear yet benefit from RAID robustness and speed.

[Earthshine]

Or just use Raided enterprise class HDDs made for the task

get. QNAP box for the raided drives

Edited March 13, 2021 by Earthshine

[jchd]

Yeah, I've long used 8 HP SAS drives (15k rpm) but these server-class HDDs are much more expensive than today's SSDs having a similar capacity. I still have my Areca ARC1882I RAID controller but I don't have any use of it now.

[Nine]

SSDs are great, but they have 1 major inconvenience (it is well documented).  If there is an unexpected electricity shutdown, there is a small chance of corrupting the drive.  

It happened to me once, and I had to repair and reinstall OS.  But mine is quite old ~7 years.  I believe recent SSD drives are less vulnerable nowadays. 

[Dana86]

Thanks guys that answered all of my questions!

[wolflake]

@Earthshine  Sorry to be so late in getting back but the link is http://SSD Lifespan: How Long do SSDs Really Last? (ontrack.com) 
 

Edited March 24, 2021 by wolflake

[pseakins]

On 3/25/2021 at 5:28 AM, wolflake said:

orry to be so late in getting back but the link

This links back to this very thread, so were I an AI, I would now be in a fatal embrace. What a terrible place to spend eternity. ☹️