SSD's life expectancy

[srvaldez]

perhaps you may have concerns about the life expectancy of your SSD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XZNr7mS0iw
I still make regular backup to a mechanical HD, don't trust these SSD's

[Imortis]

I bought an SSD and mechanical drive at the same time for my PC build. Both were quality products. The Mechanical drive failed about 6 months ago. The SSD failed about 3 months ago. I had both drives for somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 years. Both failures seem abysmal to me.

[jj2007]

My USB sticks all look OK, in 20 or so years I had one failure. Rumour has it, though, that flash memory is no good for longtime archival.

Two days ago my external hard drive (Verbatim 1TB) failed, and I hope nobody steals my notebook until I've found a replacement.

[dafhi]

most of the stuff I care about is < 20K in source code.

Media I have on an external USB. Recently bought 4 flash drives on the cheap - mostly for trying different OS's. Probably going to grab another.

[marcov]

Keep in mind is that it is not just a matter of having multiple copies, but also that they are not in the same house when it burns down, gets water damage etc etc.

It happens, really. (actually happened to the parent of the friend's wife. They were very "lucky", as in that the wall with the shelf with photoalbums fell outward, so at least some of them were saved)

For very high value, low volume stuff like sourcecode, consider continuous syncing over network (e.g. put a RPI at your parents).

[jj2007]

Keep in mind is that it is not just a matter of having multiple copies, but also that they are not in the same house when it burns down, gets water damage etc etc.

Yep. I keep a stick in the house, one in my wallet, and one in the car.

And I rotate the backups, i.e. week 1 to the wallet, week 2 to the house, week 3 to the car, week 4 to the wallet etc, because it may happen that you saved a bad version of something, and then you'll be glad to have a second best version.

That may seem paranoid but I have seen a secretary staring at a blank document and crying "but I saved it". Well, she did save something - the empty doc... in MS Word you press Ctrl A to select all, then hit Space and Ctrl S to say bye bye to your PhD thesis ;-)

Since that event, I had a VBA macro for saving, and that one checked if the current text was shorter than the initial one. The warning occasionally saved me from making big mistakes. My own editor does this check by default; when pressing Ctrl S and you deleted more than a few lines, a dialog appears:

Code: Select all

Save SomeSource.bas?
You made 11 changes
(file is now 20 lines, 1% shorter!!)

However, keeping backups of source code is barely a problem. My 200 most important sources take a mere 1.6MB in FreeArc's *.arc format (uncompressed 16MB).

[deltarho[1859]]

I use CrystalDiskInfo.

My system.

Health Status: All blue
Internal SSD: Good 99%, temperature 30°C
Internal HDD: Good, temperature 40°C
External SSD: Good 100%, temperature 35°C

My external SSD is much younger than my internal SSD. The internal HDD is slightly warmer than I'd like so maybe my fans need a clean.

My CPU temperature is 45°C and that is warmer than it used to be, so I will be looking at the fans.

With HDD if the colour goes yellow then I should get a replacement. With SSD if the colour goes yellow then the 'Remaining Life <= 10%' and I should get a replacement.

Is this foolproof? No, of course not but it is better than not knowing anything.

A few years ago my power supply unit failed creating a power surge and that 'fried' my internal HDD. Fortunately, the HDD absorbed the surge and it did not get to my internal SSD. The greatest stress to the power supply unit is powering up, so I never shutdown any more and put my PC to sleep now. It gets woken up at 04:00 to do a full system backup and goes to sleep again.

[jj2007]

I use CrystalDiskInfo
....
My CPU temperature is 45°C and that is warmer than it used to be, so I will be looking at the fans.

I just installed CrystalDisk but I see only the disk temperature, not the CPU temperature. Am I missing something?

[deltarho[1859]]

Sorry, Jochen, I use Core Temp for that.

I also use Rainmeter and rewrote an available script linking it to Core Temp. This is displayed on my desktop from StartUp.


The RAM Usage may seem high but that happens with a large UP TIME as the file cache increases. The bigger the file cache the more applications will load from there speeding things up; a benefit of sleeping as opposed to shutting down. There is no danger of the filecache getting too large - Windows will start kicking stuff out if needs be.

The colouring of COMMIT PEAK and PAGEFILE PEAK is my idea. Green is OK, yellow is pushing my luck and red is danger time. I use a threshold of 67% - < 67% is green, 67% is yellow and > 67% is red. So, if the pagefile peak goes yellow or red I need to consider increasing it. I have always seen green using a 8GB pagefile, greater than the recommended 1913MB. I have the pagefile on its own partition on my internal HHD, not my internal SSD where C: is.

I must admit to being a bit of a fanatic but I do like to know exactly what is happening with my PC at a glance without a lot of effort using several applications.

If anyone fancies getting Rainmeter I will publish my 'SYSTEM EXTRA' script for them. I was a Rainmeter 'newbie' when I wrote my version of the script and got help from the Rainmeter forum. It was not easy and the script is nearly 400 lines long. Getting a copy from me will save you a few hours work, if not more.

[srvaldez]

hello deltarho[1859]
I for one am interested in your Rainmeter script

[deltarho[1859]]

@srvaldez

It only takes one!

Download: SystemExtra.zip

On unzipping you'll get a folder, SystemExtra.

Navigate to your version of "C:\Users\deltarho\Documents\Rainmeter\Skins\illustro"

There you should find a bunch of other folders, Clock, Disk, Google and so on. Drop the folder SystemExtra with them.

Rainmeter should be in your system tray, whatever they call it now. Click on that and you will get a 'Manage Rainmeter' window. Click the chevron next to illustro, click the chevron next to SystemExtra and then double click on SystemExtra.ini. SYSTEM EXTRA should now be on your desktop. Hold your mouse pointer on SYSTEM EXTRA and move the display to where you want it to be.

In the illustro folder you will find PerfMon.ini. That refers to 'Physical Total', 'Swap Total' and 'Page Total'. Nowadays we should not use the term Swap but use the term Commit. In Windows 10 Task Manager, under Performance, I have Committed as 4.1/15.9 which gives 0.258. In SYSTEM EXTRA the COMMIT Usage is 26%. The 15.9 is 8GB of RAM plus 8GB of pagefile ie virtual memory. The System.ini also uses the term swap. I don't find the commit charge a useful metric. Since the commit charge is a function of ram and pagefile the pagefile peak is the one to watch. I have a friend who installed Rainmeter and SYSTEM EXTRA and his PAGEFILE Peak was showing red. He was still OK because I use a 67% threshold and want plenty of 'wiggle room'. Anyway, he increased his virtual memory and now he only ever sees green.

If you do not install Core Temp the CPU TEMP will show zero. Core Temp is worthwhile as on its own it gives the temp for all cores and the maximum temps reached for the current Windows session. You can also configure Core Temp to scream at you if your CPU exceeds a given temp. With Core Temp installed SYSYEM EXTRA displays the maximum temp of the cores. It is good to know how hot our CPU is getting, especially in the middle of the summer although in my case there is not much danger in my CPU getting too hot because I have a high performance liquid cooler on board. Make sure Core Temp runs at StartUp - Options>Settings.

It is quite a while since I did anything with Rainmeter - any issues, then get back to me.

[deltarho[1859]]

I should add that I have SYSTEM EXTRA polling once a second. Task Manager has a CPU usage at 0%. Process Explorer shows 0.03%/0.05%. It uses 13.4MB of RAM. Its impact is then negligible.

[jj2007]

Sorry, Jochen, I use Core Temp for that.

Thanks, I'll have a look. What I don't see in your display is "bytes written to disk", a very interesting variable especially for SSD owners. I've discovered some time ago (see the professional bugs thread) that certain applications, such as SlimJet and WhatsApp, start randomly misbehaving and writing huge amounts of data to the harddisk.

With "huge" I mean several GigaBytes. When surfing to some crowded page, it may happen that you need to load one-hundred images with 100kB each, but that's 10MB, not 2GB, right? That's even more true for WhatsApp, which basically loads text unless they are bombarding you with videos.

Now what happens (sometimes, not so often actually) is that you start WhatsApp, and after an hour or so it reaches 200-300 MB of bytes written. OK, that happens, we are in the 21st Century, bloat is sexy. You go for a coffee, and when you come back it's at ... taraaa ... 30 GB! (->WhatsApp is a Bug). Guess what your SSD says about such behaviour...

[deltarho[1859]]

@jj2007

WhatsApp? Never heard of it.

I gave up on SlimJet some time ago and now use Firefox Quantum.

Besides not having my pagefile on C: I have Firefox's cache on a Ram Disk - partly for speed but mainly to stop the files going to my internal SSD where C: is.

My C: used space does not change much except when I get a Windows 10 bi-annual update which always grabs more space and I always clean up system files a day or two later.

With the Rainmeter package there is a '1 Disk' skin ( C: ) and a '2 Disks' skin ( C:, D: ). I have quite a few more than two. Anyway, I looked at the '1 Disk' skin and it is updated every second, so I assume that the disk usage is shown in real time. At the moment I have 62% of C: as free which I like because, unlike a HDD, that free space isn't sat there free for months on end; but you probably know that.

I won't be adding disk usage to SYSTEM EXTRA but have put the DISK skin just above SYSTEM EXTRA and will keep an eye on it.

[srvaldez]

@deltarho[1859]
thank you, got working :-)
CPU temp 21 C