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Question on SSD Usage

1Wolf

1Wolf

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 10, 2007
Messages
439
I recently built new PC's for myself and my wife, both of which contain 256GB SSD's as an OS/Programs drive. These are the first SSD's I've used, I've been reading the available guides, and so I'm learning.

However, my wife likes to play a game that requires heavy use of a Cache. As her virtual self travels around the virtual world, it downloads lots of textures and stuff that she encounters and caches that. She said that the SSD is working wonders for her cached textures...but I'm concerned about longevity of the SSD.

So I did some googling, and as you might imagine, I've read people who swear that using an SSD that way is bad news...and others that say simply not to worry about it. At this point I'm confused as to what the truth is and would appreciate it if someone could fill me in.
 
All drives die, I have had drives die in 3 days and I also have SSD's which have 40TB+ written to them in home machines. I also have MLC drives in the office with more than 60 and SLC with more than 100. All drives die, but with a reduction in write amplification with wear leveling code in the firmware and spare die in most drives, you are unlikely to wear out your drive any time soon. A lot depends on your usage patterns, but in general use as an OS drive you will be fine.
 
Don't worry about it. You can easily write GBs of data to the drive every day for years without affecting the drive lifespan. There are guys at extremesystems who have been writing to SSDs continuously for months without any issues. Normal use is not going to cause problems for the SSD.
 
Thanks for the advice and info. I'll just leave my wife's game cache on her SSD and not worry about it.

Thanks!
 
Heavy usage can indeed kill a drive quickly, and often it will become very slow long before.

However, what is downloaded during online play should in fact be very little or the game wouldn't work well, I doubt it's more than a MB here and there, not several GB per hour of play (and even that should be fine). Most of the data will have been on the SSD since the install of the game and latest extension/patch, and where the SSD does wonder is in its ability to seamlessly read all that data. Another example is Flight Simulator X, especially with high definition maps, a SSD dramatically improves performance, and that's a "read only" situation, no download involved.
 
As I read on another forum when I searched for a similar question: Use it and abuse it.

If it's a modern drive then it can last for a few years worth of writing, and at that point you can buy a huge new SSD for cheap. Just backup anything of importance from the SSD to somewhere safe.
 
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