SSD lifespan in MBP (early 2011)

[michiganitis]

I've been reading up on ssd's and learned that some people are concerned with the life expectancy of ssd's because of the limited writes to each nand register.

Is this a real fear? Or just paranoia?

I've never owned a computer for more than 4-5 years because I usually drop it and break it at some point. I don't know how many write cycle rates I would incur based on my usage. For the most part, all I do is surf the web and develop software. I occasionally do some audio, video, and phot editing. I spend a LOT of hours on my computer per day though.

SSD fine? Or should I switch it out to platter?

 

[alust2013]

SSD would be fine. There are limited write cycles, but it's a lot, so in general they should last longer than a standard HDD. Sometimes they die fast, but then again, so do HDDs.

 

[bb426]

It's pretty much the same explanation that makes sense.

By the time that SSD dies (which it will, and the amount of time to do so can accelerate if the amount of writes accelerates), it will be obsolete anyways. You can easily upgrade to a brand new one that works way better, and probably by that time, you will have bought (or will be on the midst of buying) a new computer.

If you're careful about what you do on your drive, just not install things all the time and continuously clear caches, then you should be fine. You can do a few things like disable safe sleep, which prevents writing to the drive every time you put your Mac to sleep (it helps greatly in fact). Also, you could go the Optibay route and move your home folder to a traditional drive so that you can keep the files that you write to often on a different drive, thus preserving the life of the SSD even further.

A lot of it is indeed paranoia, and it's just like any other electronic: if you take care of it, generally, it will reflect that. Minus possible manufacturing problems, of course (which should apply to anything really). Keep up to date with firmware updates, and just use your computer and don't keep testing it for speed. Enjoy it!

 

[michiganitis]

It's pretty much the same explanation that makes sense.

By the time that SSD dies (which it will, and the amount of time to do so can accelerate if the amount of writes accelerates), it will be obsolete anyways. You can easily upgrade to a brand new one that works way better, and probably by that time, you will have bought (or will be on the midst of buying) a new computer.

If you're careful about what you do on your drive, just not install things all the time and continuously clear caches, then you should be fine. You can do a few things like disable safe sleep, which prevents writing to the drive every time you put your Mac to sleep (it helps greatly in fact). Also, you could go the Optibay route and move your home folder to a traditional drive so that you can keep the files that you write to often on a different drive, thus preserving the life of the SSD even further.

A lot of it is indeed paranoia, and it's just like any other electronic: if you take care of it, generally, it will reflect that. Minus possible manufacturing problems, of course (which should apply to anything really). Keep up to date with firmware updates, and just use your computer and don't keep testing it for speed. Enjoy it!

In Windows, I kept a habit of cleaning my browser cache (or running the browser in 'private' mode)....and running disk cleanup anywhere from once a week to once a month. Would you recommend not doing that with my MBP with SSD?

Thanks!

 

[dusk007]

Anandtech wrote in one SSD review when all these 25nm nands (with less write cycles) came up something about what it actually means for the consumer type user.
With taking their own quite heavy workload of writing on average almost 7GB per day on 120GB drives they ended up lasting for a lot longer than they expect to stay on this earth.

Without server workload no SSD will die on you because the nand cannot stand infinite writes. It is much more likely that the controller will just die in 5 years or so for no apperant reason just because it is a chip and they have been known to fail. Or dies on you after a couple weeks for again no real reason.

SSD will outlast any HDD in theory with the workload you put it through.
Delete your caches if you think you have to. Really this whole deleting of temporary files and stuff doesn't speed up anything anymore it just frees up disk space and that is imo the only reason you really need to do it. Cache data saves loading time and unless you are so concerned about privacy there is no need to clear the cache. Modern browsers also sport porn modes so you don't have to delete the cache all the time.

 

[michiganitis]

Anandtech wrote in one SSD review when all these 25nm nands (with less write cycles) came up something about what it actually means for the consumer type user.
With taking their own quite heavy workload of writing on average almost 7GB per day on 120GB drives they ended up lasting for a lot longer than they expect to stay on this earth.

Without server workload no SSD will die on you because the nand cannot stand infinite writes. It is much more likely that the controller will just die in 5 years or so for no apperant reason just because it is a chip and they have been known to fail. Or dies on you after a couple weeks for again no real reason.

SSD will outlast any HDD in theory with the workload you put it through.
Delete your caches if you think you have to. Really this whole deleting of temporary files and stuff doesn't speed up anything anymore it just frees up disk space and that is imo the only reason you really need to do it. Cache data saves loading time and unless you are so concerned about privacy there is no need to clear the cache. Modern browsers also sport porn modes so you don't have to delete the cache all the time.

awesome! that is all very good to hear!

at least in winndows...if i just use the machine without doing any "cleanup" for a month, my perceive my browser and startup/shutdown time to increase. i haven't officially timed with a timing device or program...but it's slower. then i run disk cleanup, clear out out my browser cache, run defrag, and occasionally run registry degfrag...and its nice and speedy again. this is with windows 7 and a core i3 with 4gb ram and 7200rpm hdd. maybe mac is different. we will see!