On what to believe(SSD health\remaining life)

[vsub]

Couple of days ago I check one 6 years old OCZ Agility 4 SSD 120gb(it was used like normal hdd(saving to it like there is no write limit))with SSDLife and the status the program give me was "bad" and no info about remaining life

After I delete the partition and check the ssd again,SSDLife now says that the status of the ssd is "excellent" and there is almost 8.5 years remaining life(which is the exact same remaining life on brand new samsung 840 evo 120gb)

 

[whs]

I get the same on my 3 year old Crucial M4. And it was similar on my 6 year old Gen1 Intel. Go figure.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Hmm....I've got 179 years to go. I'm pretty sure you can't believe much of what SSDLife says.

 

[PSCO2007]

So you'll be what - only 200 years old!!:roflmao:

 

[HerrKaLeun]

i looked for that software, but it seems to be a paid-for version (at least they hide the freeware link). i had to google and download the free version from a german site.
But coincidentally I ran my Samsung Magician software this morning and all that tells me is "good health" and "5.44 TB written".

I don't think the SAMRT really was great for HDD, and probably isn't great for SSD. I'd say use the manufacturer tool and see what that says... after all the OEM knows their drive best.

Mine shows 100% health in SSDLife but also has it die in 2023, like your drives. I almost think this tool is useless. and when do you replace your SSD? When it says 1% life left? unless it just fails (which this tool may not detect) the SSD will be obsolete in 2023 anyway.

Since you have an OCZ drive, you probably heard enough stories about their failure rates. hope you are lucky.. but if you aren't i don't think this software will tell you.

edit: and the fact that just deleting a partition magically fixed the Health status of the SSD tells you how useless this tool is.

 

[vsub]

Well at least it tells me how much data is been written to it every day.
The OCZ ssd is not my ssd,my ssd is samsung 840 evo 120gb and since I got it two months ago(along with the whole pc),only 144gb has been written to it and most of it is because of the windows installation(pagefile,hibernation file(they took 32gb)and so on.

On my pc,everything is set to write as less as possible on the ssd.

 

[HerrKaLeun]

because of the windows installation(pagefile,hibernation file(they took 32gb)and so on.

On my pc,everything is set to write as less as possible on the ssd.

Actually disabling hibernation is one of the life-extending measures of the Samsung Magician tool. Unless you actually use hibernation you should disable it. it also saves space.

 

[indianacarnie]

because of the windows installation(pagefile,hibernation file(they took 32gb)and so on.

On my pc,everything is set to write as less as possible on the ssd.

Actually disabling hibernation is one of the life-extending measures of the Samsung Magician tool. Unless you actually use hibernation you should disable it. it also saves space.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Hmm....I've got 179 years to go. I'm pretty sure you can't believe much of what SSDLife says.

If you click on the "how do you calculate it?" entry in the top box, you will be taken to their website for a complete explanation on how life is calculated. A quick and dirty answer is this quote taken from the site:

1. We do not calculate the percentage of the drive health. The SSD itself calculates it and gives it to us. Or in other words, this data comes from the manufacturer of the drive.
2. The estimated lifetime is calculated depending on the amount of data written to the drive. If it is not calculated yet, it means that little data has been written to it. Simply wait a bit, it does not usually take more than a week (or two) after the first launch of the program.

Some manufacturers are going to be more conservative about life remaining estimates and others are going to be more "optimistic" (I hate to say they lie).

It also can take a while for usage patterns to emerge. My current notebook has a 500GB Samsung 840 EVO in it and it is showing only eight years or so life in it with only 640GB written to it. However, it has had intense usage over a short period of time. The normal pattern for it is to use it for up to a week, then put it away for a few weeks to a few months. Six months from now, that usage may triple or more.

My desktop's SSD is a 128GB Samsung 840 Pro and it is showing around 75 years life. One big difference between its usage and that of the notebook's SSD's usage is the desktop's SSD isn't getting any data written to it.

 

[HerrKaLeun]

your SSD probably lives longer when you don't waste space with installing this useless tool.

that was a 10 MB write I will never get back....

 

[ignatzatsonic]

A quick and dirty answer is this quote taken from the site:

1. We do not calculate the percentage of the drive health. The SSD itself calculates it and gives it to us. Or in other words, this data comes from the manufacturer of the drive.
2. The estimated lifetime is calculated depending on the amount of data written to the drive. If it is not calculated yet, it means that little data has been written to it. Simply wait a bit, it does not usually take more than a week (or two) after the first launch of the program.

This 179 years business has only been true in the last 2 years or so. For the first 18 months I owned this drive, the figure given was much more typical--between 8 and 10 years, varying slightly from time to time.

My usage pattern has not changed and is so mundane as to put you to sleep, averaging between 4 and 5 GB per day of writes, with little variation.

I'm up to over 180 years right now, for what it's worth. Not much.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

your SSD probably lives longer when you don't waste space with installing this useless tool.

that was a 10 MB write I will never get back....

10MB? Big, fat, hairy deal. Like that will reduce your SSD life enough to notice. People worry too much about wearing out an SSD. Even the lousier ones are unlikely to die early from too many writes; they are far more likely to die from controller failure. Unless one is constantly writing and deleting huge amounts of data or frequently defragging them, one is far more likely to replace a SSD because technology has left it in the dust than because it wore out due to excessive writes. Even leaving Hibernate enabled will not noticeably reduce SSD life unless one has a huge amount of data in RAM most of the time and frequently hibernates the machine everyday (it will save space, however).

Seriously, the tool is worth having. The free version tells you how much has been written to the SSD, if TRIM is enabled or not, the number of hours the SSD has been used, the number of starts it has (granted, there are other ways to get those SMART attributes but it is convenient to have these in one place), and the percentage of health based on SMART attributes. It's not a tool one will need to run daily. Even running it once a month is excessive, needwise.

The program itself is only 3.37MB in size, which nowhere even close to being a concern for size, so it does no harm to have on one's computer.

 

[vsub]

Actually disabling hibernation is one of the life-extending measures of the Samsung Magician tool. Unless you actually use hibernation you should disable it. it also saves space.

Yes,I disable it the same day I installed the windows and reduced the pagefile to 1gb(I use Process Hacker as task manager replacement and he have a feature to show me how much of the file is used and peak usage...I've never see it displaying anything other than 0).

your SSD probably lives longer when you don't waste space with installing this useless tool.
that was a 10 MB write I will never get back....

I only place things on the ssd which I need to be there...all else is first on the ram drive,then if I need it,I place it either on the ssd or the hdd(depending on if I need it to be on the ssd or the hdd))

 

[HerrKaLeun]

10MB? Big, fat, hairy deal. Like that will reduce your SSD life enough to notice. People worry too much about wearing out an SSD.

I think i need to mark sarcasm better... i know 10 MB is not much compared tot he 5.44 TB I already wrote. I think 99.99% of SSDs that have died so far died of controller failure, bugs (I'm looking at you OCZ!) aand other electronic failures. NAND wear is not a major SSD killer. (I'm curious if HDD have some limit on writes... i assume you only can magnetize a part so many times?)

Anyway, this tool still is useless. Besides the lack of need to fear NAND wear, it doesn't give you good data. SMART isn't really good at predicting life of HDD or SSD. The manufacturer tool does a better job. When I read above about 179 years predicted life.... i may as well spin a bottle to "calculate" the remaining life. and for my 2 year old it showed 100% health. great, so my SSD did't wear at all in 2 years?

And what else does the tool give us? the number of TB written so far.. the manufacturer tool does that too. It also tells me what is enabled, what should be enabled and actually makes those changes in OS (at least Samsung Magician does it)

To each his own, if you like the tool, fine. But I de-installed it after the first try after seeing how useless the numbers are.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Samsung Magician does NOT tell you if TRIM is enabled or not, which SSDLife does.

 

[4wd]

After reading this > Introducing the SSD Endurance Experiment - The Tech Report - Page 1 I stopped counting and worrying.

Some went into petabyte territory > The SSD Endurance Experiment: Two freaking petabytes - The Tech Report - Page 1

the SSDs in my main desktop have logged less than two terabytes of writes over the past couple years. At this rate, it'll take me a thousand years to reach that total.

lol

 

[HerrKaLeun]

Samsung Magician does NOT tell you if TRIM is enabled or not, which SSDLife does.

because W7 enables it by default. you can check

In XP times I installed every available tool to optimize or verify OS operation since XP didn't really have much built in (and I wasn't as knowledgeable). now I use W7 tools as much as possible to avoid having all these "free" tools installed.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Samsung Magician does NOT tell you if TRIM is enabled or not, which SSDLife does.

because W7 enables it by default. you can check

In XP times I installed every available tool to optimize or verify OS operation since XP didn't really have much built in (and I wasn't as knowledgeable). now I use W7 tools as much as possible to avoid having all these "free" tools installed.

Not everyone can remember commands, especially rarely used ones; I certainly can't. It's much easier for most people to have a utility to do it for them. Also, TRIM doesn't always get enabled, even though it is supposed to (and usually does), so it is a good idea to check a new installation and recheck every once in a blue moon.