SSD - How Much Life Is Left?

[Sit]

Does someone know if a tool exists for the surface pro that will indicate how much of the SSD's life is left?

Thanks.

 

[CrippsCorner]

Anything like that would be extremely subjective? It should last longer than you wish to own your Surface anyway! I'm interested as to why you want to know this though?

 

[chipgallo]

In video editing, they suggest not using SSD drives for rendering due to heavy disk I/O (or plan on replacement). There should also be a life expectancy spec from the manufacturer for regular use cases. I am guessing at least 3-4 years.

 

[kundas1]

Anything like that would be extremely subjective? It should last longer than you wish to own your Surface anyway! I'm interested as to why you want to know this though?

I was thinking the exact same thing as you, I find people need/want to know weirdest things that would/should have no impact on their lives lol

 

[Sit]

Anything like that would be extremely subjective? It should last longer than you wish to own your Surface anyway! I'm interested as to why you want to know this though?

Hey Kayzee,
I have one of the original surface pro's with the 128gig SSD. Since purchasing the pro, I put together (literally) a new desktop machine using a mitx form factor motherboard (9.25" square) and I choose SSD's for storage. The computer is fast and although the cooling fans run a bit faster for tasking applications, the heat dissipation is minimal compared to my older machine. The new machine is also using an Intel I7 4th Gen CPU (Haswell).

SSD knowledge is minimal for me so I have been like a sponge when it comes to them.... they are a moving target too. Since this forum is targeted at the pro, I was hopeful of a techie that has some in depth knowledge on the pro's ssd. Since the pro has limited SSD storage, logic indicates cell failure would be higher than if you have a "large" SSD assuming data written is the same on the smaller SSD vrs the larger one. On the desktop machine I built, the SSD's I purchased came with a utility that shows usage, bytes written and cell failure.

On the pro I have run out of "disk space" more than once. Which brings me back to my question of the "pro techies" out there.... do you know of a tool that reports your ssd activity, cell failures, etc.?

For those who want to learn more about ssd's, here is an article that describes a SSD Endurance Experiment. At the end of the article are a few "Updates". Some very very good info is in the article for SSD neanderthals, like myself.

Introducing the SSD Endurance Experiment - The Tech Report - Page 1

 

[CrippsCorner]

Well I never knew there was so much to it

thanks for the link!

 

[drolem]

On the pro I have run out of "disk space" more than once. Which brings me back to my question of the "pro techies" out there.... do you know of a tool that reports your ssd activity, cell failures, etc.?

First and foremost, for long SSD life, you really want to avoid completely filling up your SSD -- you want to leave at least 20% - 25% empty. (Personally, I try to keep utilization under 50%, but that's not always feasible)

As for SSD activity and failures -- there are the SMART attributes, and they will provide quite a bit of high level info. For low level info you'd need device (SSD) specific tools, and I'm not aware of any. I'm sure the manufacturers (Samsung, Micron, LiteON, etc.) have something for internal testing, but those are not available for end users.
But even the tools that are available (i.e. Samsung Magician) doesn't recognize a Samsung mSATA SSD in a Surface Pro as a Samsung product. :shocked: Go figure....

 

[leeshor]

There is a program that will give you a little information, (which can be dangerous), here SSD life - tool for solid state drives health and endurance monitoring

I have been using Samsung 840 Pro drives in a bunch of systems lately and it comes with a utility that has 3 options, enhance performance and enhance reliability are top and bottom, optimize space is in the middle.

Asking how long the drive will last is no different than asking how long the processor fan will last or a standard hard disk will last. Everything is based on a mean time between failures. That means, (no matter what the MTBF is) it could fail in the next 2 minutes or 10 years from now. As has been pointed out, all you can do is not perform functions that would stress the drive unnecessarily. No defrag, no scratch files, minimal rendering all will extend the life.

Generally speaking it should last the life of your Surface but it's a crap shoot.

 

[Sit]

Well I never knew there was so much to it

thanks for the link!

You're welcome.

 

[Goldaa55]

Nice, just to let you know the post isnt showing up properly on my iphone - I think there is a plugin you can grab that takes care of that now.
This information is very constructive for correct planning. I like your work for providing information to the other.

 

[prourke]

The individual cells in current SSDs can perform somewhere between 1000 and 5000 writes before they freeze. When that happens the drive marks the cell locked and stores the incoming data in another cell (as long as all cells are not frozen). No limit on the number of reads. So, if you have a 100 GB SSD, you should be ok for several 100 TB of writes, which is a LOT of writes. If you are writing 50 GB of video to a 100 GB drive 20 times a day, then, yes, your SSD drive might freeze after a year. Hopefully you are not using your Surface for anything like that.

Some SSD manufacturers provide software for providing SSD health info. Yes, it would be nice if this was available for the Surface.