So are Firefox and Chrome still killing SSDs?

By JustGeorge
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Grand Master

JustGeorge

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Just installed and SSD and in the process of migrating data/installing applications. I read that both Firefox and Google Chrome prematurely wear out SSDs because they're constantly writing to the drive. The articles were anywhere from a few months to a few years old. Is this still a concern?

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JustGeorge

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7 minutes ago, trag3dy said:

I've been using Chrome on one for more than a year now and it still has an 8+ year life expectancy.

Do you leave Chrome open for extended periods with multiple tabs running? One guy wrote that Chrome was writing 24GB of data per day due to crash recovery cache.

 

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spaceelf

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20 minutes ago, slamfire92 said:

Just installed and SSD and in the process of migrating data/installing applications. I read that both Firefox and Google Chrome prematurely wear out SSDs because they're constantly writing to the drive. The articles were anywhere from a few months to a few years old. Is this still a concern?

SSDs can do a massive amount of writes per day without ending up killing the drive.  Unless you're killing the drive INTENTIONALLY (or have a really crap drive) it's not likely to happen.

 

All browsers cache files on the HD, so that's really not a Chrome/Firefox thing.

 

http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead - conclusions on how long it took ridiculously thrashed drives to die

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Nashy

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11 minutes ago, LostCat said:

SSDs can do a massive amount of writes per day without ending up killing the drive.  Unless you're killing the drive INTENTIONALLY (or have a really crap drive) it's not likely to happen.

 

All browsers cache files on the HD, so that's really not a Chrome/Firefox thing.

 

http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead - conclusions on how long it took ridiculously thrashed drives to die

He's talking about an article that was recently out stating that the browsers were writing a lot.  Those articles mentioned life expectancy.  I believe Spotify were also lumped into it.

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trag3dy

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17 minutes ago, slamfire92 said:

Do you leave Chrome open for extended periods with multiple tabs running? One guy wrote that Chrome was writing 24GB of data per day due to crash recovery cache.

 

Yes to both. The pc is probably on an average of 8-10 hours a day usually with 10-20 Chrome tabs open depending on what I'm doing.

 

The ssd it's installed to is only a 128gb m.2 so I'd probably notice if Chrome was writing excessive amounts of data to it.

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JustGeorge

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11 minutes ago, Nashy said:

He's talking about an article that was recently out stating that the browsers were writing a lot.  Those articles mentioned life expectancy.  I believe Spotify were also lumped into it.

Spotify supposedly resolved their problem, but I've read nothing about Mozilla/Google addressing it. Admittedly, I only started researching it tonight....

 

 

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Neowinian

Ardwych

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I believe most answerers here are missing the point. The OP asked of Firefox's and Chrome's effect on SSDs - about their RE-writing a lot of data to the system disk - for recovery of tabs in case of the app's crash.

 

Having used SSDs for years or believing that the constant writing would be noticable don't quite hit the spot. It's fairly well established that SSDs have a long, but shorter, life than spinning rust HDDs, so the effect may have yet to exhibit itself.

And given that the browsers re-write tab information for recovery, the quantity of data doesn't build up: past recovery data is redundant and is erased for the new.

 

So I'd re-issue the OP's question: what's the state of Ff's and Ch's overuse of SSD (system) disks in May '17?

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adrynalyne

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1 hour ago, Ardwych said:

I believe most answerers here are missing the point. The OP asked of Firefox's and Chrome's effect on SSDs - about their RE-writing a lot of data to the system disk - for recovery of tabs in case of the app's crash.

 

Having used SSDs for years or believing that the constant writing would be noticable don't quite hit the spot. It's fairly well established that SSDs have a long, but shorter, life than spinning rust HDDs, so the effect may have yet to exhibit itself.

And given that the browsers re-write tab information for recovery, the quantity of data doesn't build up: past recovery data is redundant and is erased for the new.

 

So I'd re-issue the OP's question: what's the state of Ff's and Ch's overuse of SSD (system) disks in May '17?

None of your browsers are going to effect your SSD lifespan in any noticeable way. The Spotify issue was far more severe. 

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Mando

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On 1/18/2017 at 5:13 AM, slamfire92 said:

Just installed and SSD and in the process of migrating data/installing applications. I read that both Firefox and Google Chrome prematurely wear out SSDs because they're constantly writing to the drive. The articles were anywhere from a few months to a few years old. Is this still a concern?

in a word No, its an urban myth these days pretty much. SSDs have a longer MTBF compared to any platter drive. Retail to retail or enterprise to enterprise class, SSDS always have a longer lifespan.

 

Ive been running enterprise SSDs for years @work in an Array for SQL Dbs and they are actually outliving the lifespan of the replaced platters used for the purpose in a previous SAN.

 

 

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ThaCrip

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i use Pale Moon x64 (a Firefox variant basically) and this month i have had my Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD (a popular SSD drive) drive for 2 years now and according to the Samsung Magician program it says i have only written 6.2TB to the drive so far in those two years. which basically means i am averaging not much over 3TB a year so far on a drive that's rated for 75TB (which is a conservative figure given tests i have seen).

 

i also have Pale Moon x64 open pretty much all of the time with many tabs open. but i have noticed the 'Disk' in Windows 10's task manager does seem to show 0.1MB/s even when browser seems to be idle. but given my 2 years @ 6.2TB of data written it's not something i am going to worry about as at my current rate i would likely get a total of about 25+ years out of it which means it will never be a issue for me in terms of the drive failing due to writing data to it as even in 15 years or so the computer i am on will likely be quite outdated (probably vary outdated?) anyways. so basically as long as a person is not averaging more than 7.5TB of data written per year(which is more than twice what i am doing. basically you could write 20GB of data to your drive every single day and your going to get more than 10 years of life out of the SSD basically) your going to AT LEAST 10+ years of life out of a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD unless your going crazy with data writing every day and doing it day-after-day. also, i typically download large files to regular hard drives to save some write wear on the SSD. but i don't worry much and still do download some stuff here and there to the SSD. or even 40GB per day (which is A LOT for the vast majority of people) for an average you will get more than 5 years of life out of the SSD i got.

 

Bottom line... i won't be wearing out my SSD for the foreseeable future as my drive is rated for 75TB and from tests i have seen that's a conservative figure as it will likely go a good amount beyond that before actual drive failure occurs. like i mentioned above... writing 20GB per day will get you more than 10 years of life from the Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD drive and i am not even writing half of that figure over the 2 years i owned it so far which means my SSD will outlast my computer to sum it up.

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