SSD Question (Still New to SSD's lol)

[bikeman25]

Hi All

 

Ok so far defrag disabled, I don't sleep system much at all, unless I have an overnight task to run on mechanical hard drive,  anyways it shows Recovery partition needs optimization in Windows 10 Optimize drives area, what should I do regarding that?

 

and yes Hibernate is off

 

SSD Health according to Western Digital SSD dashboard 98 percent, but did have some issues last month, so maybe why I lose health possibly

 

unless more I could do to prolong the health, next drive getting if can afford it, Samsung drive in lieu of Western Digital SSD

 

Am attempting to get used to Windows Defender Antivirus these days after using Avast Free for 10 years, just in case it's doing too many writes to the SSD itself, not sure lol, I try to minimize as many writes as I can 

 

[Kool Box]

Don't worry about the recovery partition as that always seems to say that. It seems most new drives may loose a percentage point or two and then hold 97-98 for some considerable time. I have a 4 year old 256GB OCZ Vertex 4 that is sitting at 96% health with some considerable 43.02 TBs of write data.

 

SSDs are probably at a fair state of reliability depending on the controller and NAND manufacturers behind them.

[Jim K Global Moderator]

As Kool Box stated ... ignore the "optimization" for the recovery partition.  It isn't needed...even if it were located on a HDD.

[DevTech]

17 minutes ago, bikeman25 said:

Hi All

 

Ok so far defrag disabled, I don't sleep system much at all, unless I have an overnight task to run on mechanical hard drive,  anyways it shows Recovery partition needs optimization in Windows 10 Optimize drives area, what should I do regarding that?

 

and yes Hibernate is off

 

SSD Health according to Western Digital SSD dashboard 98 percent, but did have some issues last month, so maybe why I lose health possibly

 

unless more I could do to prolong the health, next drive getting if can afford it, Samsung drive in lieu of Western Digital SSD

 

Am attempting to get used to Windows Defender Antivirus these days after using Avast Free for 10 years, just in case it's doing too many writes to the SSD itself, not sure lol, I try to minimize as many writes as I can 

 

1. Windows 10 will not defrag a SSD. No need to disable anything.

 

 

2. Unless you plan to recover your O/S 10 times every day instead of Never, the recovery partition can be a complet mess for all you care.

 

 

3. There are NO old first generation WD SSD drives. Therefore there is no need to minimize writes in any way unless you fit one of the following criteria:

 

3.A) You do extensive video editing every day.

 

3.B) You do extensive large poster sized image Photoshop editing every day

 

3.C) You do extensive programming compiles of 1,000,000 lines of code every day.

 

3.D) You do some other computing activity that just freakin HAMMERS the disk constantly.

 

For stuff like page files and virus scans and ANY normal consumer usage of computers, you can just go wild with any of that and not worry about the SSD.

 

 

4. If you are really worried about SSD longevity, just over-provision the SSD drive when installing Windows. Adding 5% unused storage to any drive will more or less double it's lifetime.

[bikeman25]

Yeah I don't do extensive video editing, sometimes a little bit, like 2-4 hours, don't have Photoshop,  don't do extensive programing, mostly just game, watch some videos off and on, don't hammer the disk constantly, moved my one games cache to secondary drive just in case it hammered it a lot lol.  

 

Do not plan to recover the OS ten times a year

 

Guess just too cautious myself lol

 

But getting more comfortable than I was, and after reading this feeling totally relaxed more so than before

 

Will not worry on the Recovery Parition optimzation

 

 

 

[DevTech]

1 minute ago, bikeman25 said:

Yeah I don't do extensive video editing, sometimes a little bit, like 2-4 hours, don't have Photoshop,  don't do extensive programing, mostly just game, watch some videos off and on, don't hammer the disk constantly, moved my one games cache to secondary drive just in case it hammered it a lot lol.  

 

Do not plan to recover the OS ten times a year

 

Guess just too cautious myself lol

 

But getting more comfortable than I was, and after reading this feeling totally relaxed more so than before

 

Will not worry on the Recovery Parition optimzation

 

 

 

Just take advantage of the speed of the SSD. You don't have anything that can be of concern so you can really go "super heavy" on all the things you were worrying about.

 

Move your game cache back to the SSD and anything else that will make your user experience better with faster performance.

 

[DevTech]

Also, all SSD's have a fixed lifetime and will die instantly the millisecond the last spare cell is used up so there is nothing wrong with being mindful of that.

 

Always use a combination of your hard drive and cloud to back up anything you couldn't afford to lose if the SSD died in the next second.

 

SSD's mostly give ZERO warning of impending doom, don't make weird noises or act erratically. They just die. In a millisecond.

 

For peace of mind, I personally over-provision all of my SSD's by about 5% - this can easily be done by partitioning the drive to leave no partition at the end of the drive of 5% of the drives space. This can only be done when you use the drive for the first time. To over-provision an existing drive, you need to locate the manufacturer's utility that zeros the drive's bits back to factory setting.

 

[bikeman25]

Oh ok  will keep that part in mind, and I backup weekly, data is stored on the mechanical 2tb hard drive, and then onto external weekly, or before a big update

 

And hopefully lasts a while and all is well these days, and can relax and enjoy gaming and such 

 

 

[DevTech]

2 minutes ago, bikeman25 said:

Oh ok  will keep that part in mind, and I backup weekly, data is stored on the mechanical 2tb hard drive, and then onto external weekly, or before a big update

 

And hopefully lasts a while and all is well these days, and can relax and enjoy gaming and such 

 

 

The precision with which things are designed these days, you should plan for a consumer SSD to die on the exact day that the warranty expires. I'm not joking, it will have been a design criteria plus/minus a margin of error to maximize profit while delivering maximum consumer value during the warranty period.

 

Another reason I double my SSD's lifetime with over provision since I tend to find a use for old hardware long past the point that most consumers would throw stuff out. For normal electronics you just take your chances that capacitors and resistors will keep going for a few extra years, but with Flash RAM it is more like a ticking time bomb....

[bikeman25]

Here is screenshot of Western Digital Dashboard status, Might have 0.55gb over provisioned already not sure what the Other 0.55gb part is lol, don't think that's recovery parition

 

 

 

[DevTech]

7 minutes ago, bikeman25 said:

Here is screenshot of Western Digital Dashboard status, Might have 0.55gb over provisioned already not sure what the Other 0.55gb part is lol, don't think that's recovery parition

 

 

 

 

Over provisioning is just a convention - it would show as Unallocated. It must never have been in a partition from day zero and then the drive firmware will add it to the available free cells that get remapped when a cell normally hits the write limit. Depending on the design, drives will start with a pool of free cells which is usually in that area of 5% which is just hidden in the "size" of the drive. So adding more can have quite a significant impact.

 

Of course any particular manufacturer or firmware revision could choose to ignore the "unallocated convention" - it's never documented.

[bikeman25]

Well understanding things more so now than I was when originally installed it back in February, so doing pretty well with it I guess lol,  First ever SSD in any of the systems here, so more I learn now, the more i'll know for next one I feel.

 

 

[DevTech]

2 minutes ago, bikeman25 said:

Well understanding things more so now than I was when originally installed it back in February, so doing pretty well with it I guess lol,  First ever SSD in any of the systems here, so more I learn now, the more i'll know for next one I feel.

 

 

In this area, Samsungs just rule.

 

Get a mobo with one or two M.2 NVMe sockets on your next upgrade or buy the ASUS Hyper expansion card that has a NVMe socket on it.

 

Then buy a Samsung 960 Pro or 960 EVO and watch things fly by at warpspeed.

 

[bikeman25]

Ohh Ohhh will definitely keep that in mind for next upgrade for sure.    Checks out how much Hyper Expansion card would be lol, and starts saving lol

 

[DevTech]

1 minute ago, bikeman25 said:

Ohh Ohhh will definitely keep that in mind for next upgrade for sure.    Checks out how much Hyper Expansion card would be lol, and starts saving lol

 

Yeah, the card is cheap, the drives not cheap.

[bikeman25]

yeah drive would be sticking point lol at this point

 

 

[DevTech]

Just now, bikeman25 said:

yeah drive would be sticking point lol at this point

 

 

I should have added, that "value" adds a different perspective.  I have two computers with those drives and I plan to upgrade the rest of mu computers with that drive as well. An improvement you just notice right away. 

[bikeman25]

yes, well I picked this Western Digital in February as was all I could afford then, but will start saving for the better drives, and will notice the improvement i'm sure immediately