Study of the reliability of Intel SSD drives empirically
Here I will tell you how I derived some approximate figures of the reliability of Intel SSDs belonging to the mainstream series and using MLC technology. Why is Intel? It's simple, I have two of them. Yes, and at the moment it is the most adequate SSD on the market for all ratios that can be applied to SSD drives, namely: Speed / Reliability / Price. In addition to this, they are quite popular (if not the most popular) and finding other users of SSD data is not at all difficult. And finally, Intel has a great Intel SSD Toolbox , which helped me determine the possible level of reliability of these drives. I conducted a study on other people's testimony of this program. By the way, any program that can read SMART values from a disk controller would be suitable, but it is easier to search for data by the name of a known program.
As some people claim that:
"Thus, it will be possible to write 100gb of data per day for MLC SSDs every day.”
"Intel guarantees that you can write 100gb of data on their MLC SSDs every day for five years and your data will be intact."
')
I would like to check them out.
And so we will need screenshots from the Intel SSD Toolbox program. Go to the search, type Intel SSD Toolbox in the search for pictures. We eliminate the unnecessary and look at the screenshots like this:
You can also search for screenshots with CrystalDiskInfo, but they have many different versions and not all show the values we need.
We collect and analyze data. Two values are interesting for us (from the Intel SSD Toolbox documentation):
E1 Code - Host Writes
This is the number of sectors written by the host system. The raw value is increased by 1 for every 65,536 sectors written by the host. Use the Raw value for this attribute.
"This attribute indicates how much data is written to disk"
Code E9 - Media Wearout Indicator
This has been experienced.
The normalized value declines linearly from 100 to 1 as the average erase cycle.
Once the normalized value reaches 1, it can be put on the device. Use the Normalized value for this attribute.
"This attribute indicates how much health is left in the disk"
And so it turns out that with the minimum value of Media Wearout Indicator, we will find close to the maximum value of Host Writes on the disc. In the search, there are several screenshots with a health of 50 (49), that is, half, and approximately 22tb (terabyte) of recordings to disk. It turns out that the health of the Intel X-25M 80gb disk will end after + 50tb records. Plus, the disk has extra space specifically to replace failed blocks. According to some information on the Intel SSD is 8% of the volume. So this calculated parameter is probably with a large margin. There is very little data on 160gb disks, but there is no difference with the 80gb model except for the volume and number of access channels (160gb version is a bit faster).
So we get when writing 100gb per day, the estimated disk health is enough for 1.4 years. The difference with the data from Anandtech three times as it does not please. But that's not all. The theoretical rewriting limit for NAND cells given by Intel is 10,000 cycles. With this in mind, it can be calculated that, under ideal conditions, the same disc will survive 21 years at the most when recording 100 gb per day. Quite different numbers are obtained;) Of course, some data is still on the SSD disk, while others are copied very often, but Intel states that the disk firmware uses algorithms for aligning the number of records between the blocks. So do not worry about this.
Of course, optimizing the system for a smaller number of entries will not be superfluous, there are already a huge number of instructions and manuals on the network (I also write my own). The main thing is if you are using a non-Windows 7 system. You need to align the partition (partition) of the disk by a multiple of 128kb (or better by 1mb as Windows 7 does). Because by default, the partition is aligned to the cylinders and read from 63 sectors, and this is 512 * 63 = 32256b, which is not a multiple of the minimum size of a write block in the SSD disk which is for Intel SSD 4096b and the minimum block that can be erased - 128kb. The next generation of Intel drives will double these values and therefore, by setting the alignment to 1mb, there will definitely be no problems in the future. How are things with the creation of partitions in * nix? I am not quite aware, but judging by Gparted, with which I transferred the partition to 1mb, the default alignment on the cylinders is still present. And the problem with alignment is this: when writing one block to an unaligned partition, we will actually get a record in two blocks on the SSD, most of it in one and the remainder in the other. In the worst case (on small files), the disc will lose health twice as fast and at the same time the recording speed drops. This even writes Micrsoft in the presentation of Windows 7, advertising the optimization of Windows 7 for SSD drives.
And what is the result? At the moment, it is clear that the disk will survive at least 50tb records. Determine the lifetime of the disk with you, you can simply calculate how many records you generate per day, and divide 50tb / records per day (in tb) = number of days. From this data, you can build on the purchase of SSD specifically for your tasks. How to determine the number of records without SSD, I find it difficult to say. Approximately you can understand what is happening on the disk, if you look behind the disk using the Process Monitor utility from Sysinternals (previously it was FileMonitor).
According to my statistics, I can say the following: I have a system disk SSD and there is no activity besides the system and most programs. The second SSD in the netbook and has so far been little used to draw conclusions. I am developing, the main work in Visual Studio, all working files on the HDD. Windows XP x86 + 8GB RAM, with rendered: temporary folders, files of various caches and pagefiles on the RAM disk, about 500mb are written on the SSD per day. The main source of entries in my Windows XP is ntuser.dat.LOG and ntuser.dat. That is, user registry keys. After transferring the Documents and Settings folder (there are ntuser files) on the HDD, the number of entries decreased 2-3 times to 100mb-300mb. There is no point in optimizing further, and even the transfer of Documents and Settings is probably superfluous. Because at 500mb, well, let 1gb, the disk is enough for ~ 140 years. With 10gb records for 14 years, etc. So with my SSD usage rate, the stock turns out really big.
This is the simple way to get to know the approximate reliability of Intel SSD drives. I hope this post will at least help you decide whether to take an SSD or not. I decided for myself that it was definitely to take. It's worth it.
June 19, 2010:
Today, 150GB of disk recordings are 80 of them - this is when I aligned and the “smart utility” copied the entire SSD to me. It's time to transfer the data back, otherwise the disk will outlive me ...
July 1, 2011:
For today records on a disk 277gb.
As some people claim that:
"Thus, it will be possible to write 100gb of data per day for MLC SSDs every day.”
"Intel guarantees that you can write 100gb of data on their MLC SSDs every day for five years and your data will be intact."
')
I would like to check them out.
And so we will need screenshots from the Intel SSD Toolbox program. Go to the search, type Intel SSD Toolbox in the search for pictures. We eliminate the unnecessary and look at the screenshots like this:
You can also search for screenshots with CrystalDiskInfo, but they have many different versions and not all show the values we need.
We collect and analyze data. Two values are interesting for us (from the Intel SSD Toolbox documentation):
E1 Code - Host Writes
This is the number of sectors written by the host system. The raw value is increased by 1 for every 65,536 sectors written by the host. Use the Raw value for this attribute.
"This attribute indicates how much data is written to disk"
Code E9 - Media Wearout Indicator
This has been experienced.
The normalized value declines linearly from 100 to 1 as the average erase cycle.
Once the normalized value reaches 1, it can be put on the device. Use the Normalized value for this attribute.
"This attribute indicates how much health is left in the disk"
And so it turns out that with the minimum value of Media Wearout Indicator, we will find close to the maximum value of Host Writes on the disc. In the search, there are several screenshots with a health of 50 (49), that is, half, and approximately 22tb (terabyte) of recordings to disk. It turns out that the health of the Intel X-25M 80gb disk will end after + 50tb records. Plus, the disk has extra space specifically to replace failed blocks. According to some information on the Intel SSD is 8% of the volume. So this calculated parameter is probably with a large margin. There is very little data on 160gb disks, but there is no difference with the 80gb model except for the volume and number of access channels (160gb version is a bit faster).
So we get when writing 100gb per day, the estimated disk health is enough for 1.4 years. The difference with the data from Anandtech three times as it does not please. But that's not all. The theoretical rewriting limit for NAND cells given by Intel is 10,000 cycles. With this in mind, it can be calculated that, under ideal conditions, the same disc will survive 21 years at the most when recording 100 gb per day. Quite different numbers are obtained;) Of course, some data is still on the SSD disk, while others are copied very often, but Intel states that the disk firmware uses algorithms for aligning the number of records between the blocks. So do not worry about this.
Of course, optimizing the system for a smaller number of entries will not be superfluous, there are already a huge number of instructions and manuals on the network (I also write my own). The main thing is if you are using a non-Windows 7 system. You need to align the partition (partition) of the disk by a multiple of 128kb (or better by 1mb as Windows 7 does). Because by default, the partition is aligned to the cylinders and read from 63 sectors, and this is 512 * 63 = 32256b, which is not a multiple of the minimum size of a write block in the SSD disk which is for Intel SSD 4096b and the minimum block that can be erased - 128kb. The next generation of Intel drives will double these values and therefore, by setting the alignment to 1mb, there will definitely be no problems in the future. How are things with the creation of partitions in * nix? I am not quite aware, but judging by Gparted, with which I transferred the partition to 1mb, the default alignment on the cylinders is still present. And the problem with alignment is this: when writing one block to an unaligned partition, we will actually get a record in two blocks on the SSD, most of it in one and the remainder in the other. In the worst case (on small files), the disc will lose health twice as fast and at the same time the recording speed drops. This even writes Micrsoft in the presentation of Windows 7, advertising the optimization of Windows 7 for SSD drives.
And what is the result? At the moment, it is clear that the disk will survive at least 50tb records. Determine the lifetime of the disk with you, you can simply calculate how many records you generate per day, and divide 50tb / records per day (in tb) = number of days. From this data, you can build on the purchase of SSD specifically for your tasks. How to determine the number of records without SSD, I find it difficult to say. Approximately you can understand what is happening on the disk, if you look behind the disk using the Process Monitor utility from Sysinternals (previously it was FileMonitor).
According to my statistics, I can say the following: I have a system disk SSD and there is no activity besides the system and most programs. The second SSD in the netbook and has so far been little used to draw conclusions. I am developing, the main work in Visual Studio, all working files on the HDD. Windows XP x86 + 8GB RAM, with rendered: temporary folders, files of various caches and pagefiles on the RAM disk, about 500mb are written on the SSD per day. The main source of entries in my Windows XP is ntuser.dat.LOG and ntuser.dat. That is, user registry keys. After transferring the Documents and Settings folder (there are ntuser files) on the HDD, the number of entries decreased 2-3 times to 100mb-300mb. There is no point in optimizing further, and even the transfer of Documents and Settings is probably superfluous. Because at 500mb, well, let 1gb, the disk is enough for ~ 140 years. With 10gb records for 14 years, etc. So with my SSD usage rate, the stock turns out really big.
This is the simple way to get to know the approximate reliability of Intel SSD drives. I hope this post will at least help you decide whether to take an SSD or not. I decided for myself that it was definitely to take. It's worth it.
June 19, 2010:
Today, 150GB of disk recordings are 80 of them - this is when I aligned and the “smart utility” copied the entire SSD to me. It's time to transfer the data back, otherwise the disk will outlive me ...
July 1, 2011:
For today records on a disk 277gb.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/83053/
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