Two things for SSDs.
Never defrag them because they don't need it and doing a defrag doesn't
actually defrag files due to the wear leveling system that never allows files
to be written to sequential blocks. Defragging them just wears them out faster.
Same for multiple pass data erasing for security. Do not do that. A quick
reformat followed by forcing a TRIM operation should completely eliminate data
beyond recovery.
Don't put any swap or virtual memory file, or scratch space on an SSD. Install
a lot of RAM to minimize the need for swapping, and use a 500 GB Western
Digital Blue SATA 3.0 hard drive for swap if you're pinching pennies.
Of course for most laptops you're stuck with just one drive so you have to put
the swap file on the boot SSD. Some business laptops have two internal 2.5"
bays and can take another in a caddy in place of the optical drive. I saw a
video the other day on a laptop that had two internal 2.5" bays plus two NVMe
slots and IIRC could also take one 2.5" in place of the optical drive.
Or you could skip a SATA connected SSD and hard drive and go with a PCIe to
NVMe card (make sure it supports booting from it) and a big NVMe drive.The
memory used on those seems to be something more durable than what's used in
SATA SSDs.
Something to look for with any SSD is what it does when it wears out, which
*should* take a rather long time. Many consumer and "prosumer" models will
brick themselves when too many blocks show errors. The worst part is they shut
off writing AND reading.
Intel's enterprise level SSDs remain readable when their error counter reaches
its limit, but they slow writes to a crawl. That allows for backup of the data
without resorting to an expensive data recovery that may not be possible with a
self bricking SSD.
On Thursday, July 2, 2020, 11:49:23 PM MDT, linden <l...@island.net> wrote:
Hello All,
Any one here have real world experience with reliability of Solid
State Drives.
I have not had much luck with them my self and am wondering is this
normal or am I the exception to the rule as if you believe the
advertising they should last almost for ever.
First Experience around 2011 I bought 2 OCZ SSDs in Austria from 2
different retailers and ran them in 2 different laptops used for office
work travel, a little software development and running industrial
automation service software. Both of these failed with in 6 months with
no prior warning just one day not recognized on boot and that was it.
This was using Ubuntu 8.04 i think
Last year I tried again and bought an AFATA SU650 Ultimate in Canada.
This I got a little over a year ago and it failed yesterday I had some
warning it would boot work for about 5 minutes then turn read only and
my operating system would lock up. I got about 10 restarts like this
before it failed to the point where it is detected by the bios but it is
not mountable or read able. This was using Linux Mint 19 and 20.
For comparison an old western digital or Toshiba mechanical drive
usually last 4 plus years as long as not subjected to excessive shock
and for the most part make noise before failing completely giving you
some warning.
I am running a used Samsung SSD now as a replacement in my current
laptop. There are obvious performance advantages but with these
reliability issues I still don't want to put them in production linuxcnc
machines or anything critical.
Any one else have similar experience or recommendations for a reliable
solid state drive.
thanks Linden
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