iMac 2012 SSD life

[epic-retouching]

Has anyone experienced a failed SSD in their 2012 iMac yet? I am running the Fusion (128GB + 1TB) and my DriveDx app says my SSD health is at 91% (probably take that with a grain of salt) after 14 months usage.

Is the version of SSD in the 2012 mac worth babying if I am doing 20-25GB of writes a day? I plan to keep this machine 5-7 years.

 

[macthefork]

Well, if that 91% is accurate and you've used it for 14 months, that means that with current usage, it should last close to 11 years. Your 4 to 7 year expected use falls easily into this timeframe.

Quit worrying about it...

 

[hologram]

...with current usage, it should last close to 11 years….

Quit worrying about it...

By "it should last", are you suggesting it will still be efficient when it's at 50% health? How about when it's at 20%? He/she might be able to use it for their timeframe, but it won't last 11 years.

 

[Mac32]

That's weird, my Corsair P128 SSD which is an early model without TRIM or Garbage Collection, and although it has gotten quite a bit slower because of this , the health of this SSD was still at 98-99% after several years of use (haven't checked the health level for the last year or so, but at 4.6 years I've had 0 issues).
Seriously, if you want longviety ditch the fusion drive, and go all SSD for internal storage.

 

[macthefork]

By "it should last", are you suggesting it will still be efficient when it's at 50% health? How about when it's at 20%? He/she might be able to use it for their timeframe, but it won't last 11 years.

You do realize that DriveDX's lifetime indicator shows an estimated endurance of the SSD, but may not indicate a SSD failure. (from the DriveDX website)

The DriveDX SSD Lifetime Left Indicator shows the estimated percentage of the remaining life of your solid state drive. Just because a drive has used 50% of it's read/writes on a specific block or blocks doesn't mean there is any reduction in the SSD's speed or efficiency. What will slow it down is when the writes are completely used up in many blocks, making them unusable. It's this what DriveDX is attempting to help you determine, allowing time to replace the drive before a complete failure in writes occurs.

At the current rate of usage shown by the OP, his drive could most certainly last close to 11 years before needing replacement.

 

[philipma1957]

Not to mention that 14 months and 4 years equals 5 years and 2 months.

My guess is your hdd may fail in that amount of time anyway.

which is why I no longer own iMacs.

a sealed hdd and or ssd was a big bleep you on apples part.

 

[Chippy99]

Not to mention that 14 months and 4 years equals 5 years and 2 months.

My guess is your hdd may fail in that amount of time anyway.

which is why I no longer own iMacs.

a sealed hdd and or ssd was a big bleep you on apples part.

I agree and I have never understood why on earth we couldn't have had a removable panel on the back. Would one solitary screw (to release a removable panel) really have ruined the lines so much? On the back???

I suspect it has more to do with Apple wanting to encourage people to throw their broken iMacs away and buy a new one, rather than any aesthetic considerations, to be honest.

But anyway, if the drive fails whilst under Applecare - Apple will fix it for you. If it fails after 3 years, then rip the iMac apart yourself, it's not hard.

It is really not enough reason to "no longer own iMacs" imho.

 

[philipma1957]

I agree and I have never understood why on earth we couldn't have had a removable panel on the back. Would one solitary screw (to release a removable panel) really have ruined the lines so much? On the back???

I suspect it has more to do with Apple wanting to encourage people to throw their broken iMacs away and buy a new one, rather than any aesthetic considerations, to be honest.

But anyway, if the drive fails whilst under Applecare - Apple will fix it for you. If it fails after 3 years, then rip the iMac apart yourself, it's not hard.

It is really not enough reason to "no longer own iMacs" imho.

Yeah I have opened a lot of mac minis, macbooks, macbook pros did a nice mac pro cpu upgrade, but my iMac was a 27 inch 2009 with those lousy seagates that had a recall after the time ran out. I had paid for a new hdd before the recall and fought with apple to get a credit once the recall came out.

Since I had no warranty I did change out the drive myself and it worked fine but I spent about 150 to get the drive. I had the paperwork and when the recall came I told apple I wanted a credit towards my next pc from them. I was buying 50-75 mac minis a year from them at the time I thought this would be easy for them to do.

They refused at first and I spent 2 or 3 weeks before the would give me the credit. So me and iMacs have a back history. The only good thing about the iMac was I sold it at a high price due to the better hdd and the top of the line gpu I had ordered it with.

It could run snow leopard and mountain and there was a very short 4-6 month window where that kind of mac sold at very high resale.