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SSD Health

A

a3n1ma

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 21, 2006
Messages
143
Hello,

After being resilient to SSDs for a long time, I decided to bite the bullet, as my performance in games could have always been better. I purchased the Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB (Newegg Linky).

My main concern was always health of the drive, which is why I moved my user to the 2nd drive, as well as the temp directories, and some of the games which I don't really play much. Do you guys recommend anything else to do to this drive to make sure it stays in tip top shape? Is there any recommended apps to use to keep an eye on it?
 
As long as you did a proper installation With Win7, it would have turned on or off the proper items (Trim, Defrag etc) and you should be fine. If you ever get to the point where you feel (by benchmarks, etc) that it has slowed down you can do a backup, secure erase and a restore.
 
Cool stuff. Thanks for the heads up.

I did do a brand new install on this, and made trim/defrag were disabled. I just didn't know if using an app to tell me the health of the frag was the norm around here.
 
You can do a SMART check with crystaldiskinfo and see if anything is wrong, and do a benchmark with AS-SSD and it will let you know that your alignment is OK.
 
Also, make sure you have the latest firmware installed. Most of the firmware updates are fine, but read the info screen carefully because there are some that will do a secure erase by default. As with any update, make sure you have a complete backup before you proceed.
 
I left users and all temp directories on my SSD, why not, it increases performance. After 6 months of heavy use the health figures/drive life has barely moved (still over 10 years). Defrag off and TRIM on are all you really need to worry about, unless you have some application that does a massive amount of writing (database for example).
 
The lifespan/drive health issue for SSDs was greatly overblown. Install it and use it just like you would a normal drive. By the time you need to worry about drive wear (10 years from now) you won't care anyway. The only thing you might do is to disable hibernation (if it is a desktop) to eliminate the hiberfil.sys file and free up that space. Don't overthink it.
 
Don't sweat your SSD health. What you should be sweating is your backup strategy. You have one, right? ;)
 
grambo said:
I left users and all temp directories on my SSD, why not, it increases performance. After 6 months of heavy use the health figures/drive life has barely moved (still over 10 years). Defrag off and TRIM on are all you really need to worry about, unless you have some application that does a massive amount of writing (database for example).
Click to expand...

Agreed.

Many games store a significant amount of data in "\Users\Username\My Games\" or elsewhere in your home dir, so you are sacrificing a good portion of speed in some titles if you do that.

In all seriousness, I wouldn't be too concerned about drive longevity unless you are slamming it with tons of data all the time.

- You will want TRIM enabled (but this is just for write performance, not for longevity)
- You will want auto scheduled defrag disabled, and never run defrags. (they needlessly use write cycles, and have no impact on performance on an SSD)
- If you have enough RAM to do so, there may even be a benefit to turning off the SWAP file as it causes a lot of writes
- Also, if you don't use the feature, consider disabling Hibernate, otherwise the system keeps writing Hiberfil.sys and it can accumulate writes over time.
- Make sure your SSD firmware is up to date. Some older firmwares don't use writes as efficiently as newer ones, leading to premature wear out.

Modern drives are surprisingly good though, and those that die, typically die from other things than running out of write cycles, unless in a extremely heavy use environment. Chances are you'll want to buy another drive LONG before this one is worn out.
 
+ 1 to what everyone else said.

regarding Win7 disk defrag, unless the SSD is the only disk in your PC, there is no need to disable the auto defrag schedule. window 7 disables the possibility of defragging a SSD by default. i've had a few SSDs with Win7 and never once has it touched it with defrag. i think most people with SSDs in this forum also have a magnetic disk for storage. having defrag scheduled keeps the old spinners in good shape.
 
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