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ssd defrag



 
 
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  #1  
Old December 4th 18, 05:42 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.windows7.general
Bill in Co[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 303
Default ssd defrag

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Grease Monkey
writes:
I have an old dell xpsl702x laptop with two 256GB ssd drives which are
full and dell won't sell me any larger ssd drives.

Defrag has been running for almost day now.

Is it worth defragging to get space back or is defragging ssd not going
to gain much space when it finally finishes.


With modern OSs and drive sizes, defragging doesn't recover that much
space. But the main thing is, defragging on SSD drives might
significantly reduce their life, as they have significantly fewer write
cycles than HDs. If you really want to defrag them, _move_ their
contents to another drive (preferably an HD one), then move them back:
this will only involve one write (for most of their sectors; two to
their directory sectors). [Obviously if one of them is the OS drive, you
can't move all the files in this way, but it may still be worth doing.]


Has it gotten to the point now that SSDs are considered to be just as
reliable, long term, as the standard hard drives, even with all the
consequent writes and rewrites (also potentially limiting the SSDs
"longevity")? (I mean when used as your main drive)? But maybe SSDs still
haven't been out quite long enough to yet assess their long term reliability
and longevity.


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  #2  
Old December 4th 18, 04:20 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.windows7.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default ssd defrag

Bill in Co wrote:


Has it gotten to the point now that SSDs are considered to be just as
reliable, long term, as the standard hard drives, even with all the
consequent writes and rewrites (also potentially limiting the SSDs
"longevity")? (I mean when used as your main drive)? But maybe SSDs still
haven't been out quite long enough to yet assess their long term reliability
and longevity.


It's gotten to the point you can use them.

They don't insta-brick like they once did.
The user "John Doe" had one insta-brick on him.

They're still potentially susceptible to power events.
Check the SMART table, to see if "the drive thinks
you've been abusing it". There's a field for that
(abrupt power loss). For example, even if I safely
remove an SSD connected to a USB to SATA 2.5" adapter,
the SSD counts my unplugging the cable after
Safely Remove as an abrupt power loss. It should not
do that, if the command was making it through the
protocol layers properly. (The drive should have been
placed in a "spun down" state.)

You still need to back them up.

Don't leave your data files on one. Leave
your OS on the SSD, move your data files to the
HDD. The "end of life" of an HDD today, is much
more gentle than the "brick state" an Intel SSD
drive enters at the end of its wear life counter.
Intel will allow neither read nor write, when the
computed amount of write cycles is exceeded.
Samsung will likely allow the drive to continue,
so you could, say, do a last backup. Intel SSDs
don't allow even that. Dig a hole in the back
yard, and throw your Intel SSD in the hole, when
that happens. "No data recovery for you."

Always research the "end-of-life" behavior of any
SSD you buy, so your backup strategy has you covered.

Paul
  #3  
Old December 4th 18, 04:32 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.windows7.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,679
Default ssd defrag

In message , Paul
writes:
Bill in Co wrote:

Has it gotten to the point now that SSDs are considered to be just
as reliable, long term, as the standard hard drives, even with all
the consequent writes and rewrites (also potentially limiting the
SSDs "longevity")? (I mean when used as your main drive)? But maybe
SSDs still haven't been out quite long enough to yet assess their
long term reliability and longevity.


An excellent question that is not often enough asked, and certainly even
more rarely answered!

It's gotten to the point you can use them.


Hmmm ...

They don't insta-brick like they once did.


What you say below tends to counter that - or, perhaps, you meant they
don't _unpredictably_ do so.

The user "John Doe" had one insta-brick on him.

They're still potentially susceptible to power events.
Check the SMART table, to see if "the drive thinks
you've been abusing it". There's a field for that
(abrupt power loss). For example, even if I safely
remove an SSD connected to a USB to SATA 2.5" adapter,
the SSD counts my unplugging the cable after
Safely Remove as an abrupt power loss. It should not
do that, if the command was making it through the
protocol layers properly. (The drive should have been
placed in a "spun down" state.)


Not good (-:! [I take it this "abrupt power loss" counter "punishes"
"abuse".]

You still need to back them up.


As with anything.

Don't leave your data files on one. Leave
your OS on the SSD, move your data files to the
HDD. The "end of life" of an HDD today, is much
more gentle than the "brick state" an Intel SSD
drive enters at the end of its wear life counter.


That's what's kept me on HDD (that plus the fact that most laptops only
have one drive bay anyway). [I do _partition_ it into C: (OS and
software) and D: (data).]

Intel will allow neither read nor write, when the
computed amount of write cycles is exceeded.


Has anyone asked them (and got an answer) _why_ they do that? Blocking
writes OK, but why block reads?

Samsung will likely allow the drive to continue,
so you could, say, do a last backup. Intel SSDs
don't allow even that. Dig a hole in the back
yard, and throw your Intel SSD in the hole, when
that happens. "No data recovery for you."

Always research the "end-of-life" behavior of any
SSD you buy, so your backup strategy has you covered.

Paul

JPG


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harness it to do something. - Judi Dench, RT 2015/2/28-3/6
  #4  
Old December 4th 18, 09:31 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.windows7.general
Bill in Co[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 303
Default ssd defrag

Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote:


Has it gotten to the point now that SSDs are considered to be just as
reliable, long term, as the standard hard drives, even with all the
consequent writes and rewrites (also potentially limiting the SSDs
"longevity")? (I mean when used as your main drive)? But maybe SSDs
still haven't been out quite long enough to yet assess their long term
reliability and longevity.


It's gotten to the point you can use them.

They don't insta-brick like they once did.
The user "John Doe" had one insta-brick on him.

They're still potentially susceptible to power events.
Check the SMART table, to see if "the drive thinks
you've been abusing it". There's a field for that
(abrupt power loss). For example, even if I safely
remove an SSD connected to a USB to SATA 2.5" adapter,
the SSD counts my unplugging the cable after
Safely Remove as an abrupt power loss. It should not
do that, if the command was making it through the
protocol layers properly. (The drive should have been
placed in a "spun down" state.)

You still need to back them up.

Don't leave your data files on one. Leave
your OS on the SSD, move your data files to the
HDD. The "end of life" of an HDD today, is much
more gentle than the "brick state" an Intel SSD
drive enters at the end of its wear life counter.
Intel will allow neither read nor write, when the
computed amount of write cycles is exceeded.
Samsung will likely allow the drive to continue,
so you could, say, do a last backup. Intel SSDs
don't allow even that. Dig a hole in the back
yard, and throw your Intel SSD in the hole, when
that happens. "No data recovery for you."

Always research the "end-of-life" behavior of any
SSD you buy, so your backup strategy has you covered.

Paul


Sounds like the most conservative approach still is to use a regular HDD.
(And when you said just leave the OS on the SSD, I'm not sure if you were
including the Program Files too, but I'm guessing you were). But the way
SSDs fail (as a brick) sure is concerning, at least to me. And I've had
that happen on a flash drive.


  #5  
Old December 5th 18, 12:22 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.windows7.general
joe[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 20
Default ssd defrag

On 12/4/2018 2:31 PM, Bill in Co wrote:
But the way
SSDs fail (as a brick) sure is concerning, at least to me.


How old is this anecdotal information? Is it representative of current
drive designs? Also, under real world, typical use, how long before a
drive exceeds its write cycle limit?

Given that SSDs are appearing in more and more systems, including some
where it cannot be user replaced, are these fears real or imagined?

And I've had
that happen on a flash drive.


How long ago? Today's products may be different than those from a few
years ago. Also, SSDs and flash drives are not designed the same.




  #6  
Old December 5th 18, 12:49 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.windows7.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default ssd defrag

joe wrote:
On 12/4/2018 2:31 PM, Bill in Co wrote:
But the way
SSDs fail (as a brick) sure is concerning, at least to me.


How old is this anecdotal information? Is it representative of current
drive designs? Also, under real world, typical use, how long before a
drive exceeds its write cycle limit?

Given that SSDs are appearing in more and more systems, including some
where it cannot be user replaced, are these fears real or imagined?

And I've had
that happen on a flash drive.


How long ago? Today's products may be different than those from a few
years ago. Also, SSDs and flash drives are not designed the same.


It's not that hard to find stories.

https://forums.windowssecrets.com/sh...ling-questions

2011 Oct.12

SSDs fail by design, at the end of wear life. If the flash chips
have 3000 write cycles (TLC), then the manufacturer does the math,
and with wear leveling, most all cells will have been written
3000 times, when the SSD "closes up shop and stops responding".
Intel drives brick on both read and write, so you
"cannot make a last backup or clone them" at end of life.
Some other brands may stop writing, but allow reading.
Some brands continue to allow you to do whatever you want,
and a famous experiment on the Internet showed that
extremely long lives are possible if that feature
is not present at all.

SSDs fail by accident, due to firmware issues.

Some SSDs have triple core CPUs inside, with various
maintenance and operation threads running. There can be
race conditions in the code. All the code has to be
written in such a way as to be "power fail safe". In some
cases, the next time the drive starts up, it would have
to consult a table of "what we were doing at abrupt power
fail" and clean up.

A few models of the larger HDDs (maybe 8TB and up, with
256MB DRAM cache) now resort to using Flash when the power
fails. The cache is written to Flash, the Flash is transferred
to disk on the next power-up. You don't typically have this
feature on consumer hard drives. That's to show an example of
"delayed cleanup" where extra electronic components were
added to make it possible.

*******

USB flash drives are different. They were good in SLC and MLC
days. Not so good in todays TLC generation.

I've lost two TLC drives (32GB) with only light usage
over a period of one year.

My conclusion is, that they don't use the same wear leveling
method as SSDs.

Wear leveling is patented, and a license likely costs money.

*******

The eMMC drives in tablets, are 32GB in size. Guess what
kind of flash they're using. eMMC drives are not the
same as SSDs, and generally have a much lower IOP rate.

NVMe drives have slightly better IOP than a SATA SSD,
but have much higher sustained bandwidth. But they can be
made with TLC too. And have decent wear leveling (not
like the USB flash drive).

The wear leveling isn't necessarily documented in a
way that a consumer can benefit from the knowledge.

*******

Todays products may be different, but they're not "bullet proof".
There are some enterprise SSDs with a single Supercap inside
for emergency power. Those handle abrupt power loss a little
better than all the consumer SSDs we buy, where the Supercap
copper pads on the PCB, have no component soldered in.

Of course those consumer drives do the right thing, most
of the time. But how many million times can you drop the
power, without an issue.

*******

The good news, is firmware based brickage (something seen
in the past on *both* HDD and SSDs), is on the wane.

But the other aspects of device design haven't changed.
I still recommend an accelerated backup schedule for
SSDs, if "you keep your bank statement on it". If my SSDs
here tip over, there nothing of value on them (Win10) :-)

Paul
 




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