SSD health

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Cbshahji

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 3, 2010
Messages
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Does keeping SSD on surface of the case (either bottom or on side) affect the life of the SSD? now i've SSD that is about 6 month old and after reading here i downloaded the SSD life pro which indicates that it's health is at 60% was it suppose to be like that is there a way i can make it better/prevent more rapid damage in future?
 
The only thing that's going to affect the life of your SSD is the amount of writes done to it. If you want to increase it's lifespan do everything reasonable to limit the amount of writes done to it.

My personal procedure is:

1. Redirect Windows Libraries (My Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc) to a platter based drive or a network share.
2. Redirect your browser's 'Downloads' folder to a platter based storage or network share.
3. Tell programs that use their own paging system or 'temporary files' setup to use a platter based drive. This is especially important for programs like Photoshop, Premiere, Sony Vegas, etc. I even do this for my usenet binaries grabber because it uses a TON of little temporary files and cache files.

I wouldn't underestimate the importance of #3 especially, you would be surprised at how intensive a program like Photoshop is when it comes to 'scratch file' usage.

Those three steps will save you a TON of life on your SSD without you losing the speed benefits of having an SSD in the first place.
 
1. i usually do pictures video and documents on USB stick/laptop about 100mb on SSD for those so far
2. i've set up at platter based storage so no problem there
3, how do i set that up sorry but never understood the importance of it so never tried to set it up probably of 40% health i lost 39.5% be for that reason.
 
Well every program is different, in Adobe Photoshop CS5 for instance you can change the 'scratch disk' if you go to Preferences -> Performance:

photoshop-scratch-ssd.png


You'll notice that I have unchecked C: (My SSD RAID0 Array) and checked D: which is my 640GB HDD. This tells Photoshop to use my D: drive (hard drive) as 'scratch' for temporary files and such.
 
There is also the windows "tmp" or "temp" enviormental setting. Which is the general tmp folder that apps can request to use. In Windows XP you right click on My Computer, then select properties, then Advanced tab. Then select Enviornmental Variables at the bottom. I believe Windows 7 is the same.

But this is also alot of the stuff we were doing 2-3 years ago when SSD's first came out and didn't have any garbage collection or TRIM. Most of us don't worry about this now with modern SSD's.
 
I have some further questions. Should i disable the page file now using an SSD and 9Gb of RAM? Will this extend the life of my OCZ Vertex 2e? Also, do you guys use system restore?
 
Rossi~ said:
I have some further questions. Should i disable the page file now using an SSD and 9Gb of RAM? Will this extend the life of my OCZ Vertex 2e? Also, do you guys use system restore?
Click to expand...
MS says leave the page file alone.

I never use system restore but I'm pretty religious about my backups.
 
Old Hippie said:
MS says leave the page file alone.

I never use system restore but I'm pretty religious about my backups.
Click to expand...

You can set the page file to a smaller size if you want, to save some SSD space - but as Old Hippie says, don't disable it. I have system restore turned on with my SSD and haven't noticed any problems (excessive writes or anything).
 
OCZ forum does say to lower the size of page files there list is very long on how to keep it working and unless you've good computer knowledge you will have to read and follow the instruction (as many of the stuff comes common to others doesn't come to everyone like me)
 
Set the pagefile manually and make it small. Give it one specific size (x-x MB, where x is the same number) to help prevent fragmentation in it.
 
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