How big is Host Writes on your SSD?

[alfaunits]

Probably Intel SSDs only, please share if other SSDs have it.

Well, I thought I didn't do much writing when I plugged the X25-M into my laptop. But it only "acquired" some 100-200GB of writes in the last 2-3 months in which I am sure I have copied VMs back and forth so much that just the copy surely incurred a TB of writes.
If you've even noticed the Host Writes on your SSD, what is its value and do you find it is true?

[lowfat]

This is a 30GB X25-E. Being used as a boot disk for about a year. Page file enabled.


This is an 40GB X25-V. A bit older than a year old. Used on a media server as a boot drive. Page file enabled.


I'd really like to see the host writes on my X25-M G1, it would be through the roof as it is has been in heavy use for a good 2 years now.

[Russ_64]

My G2 that was used in my first rig (sig below) for about a year as boot drive has been moved to the 2nd rig, wiped and new OS installed.

CDI shows Host Writes is 3.02TB. Health is still 100%.

BTW - OCZ Vertex does not store / show Host Writes.

[alfaunits]

My X25-Es do have quite high use count compared to my X25-Ms, which I am sure are used more now.
Now I'm even more suspicious this particular X25-M/160GB is not recording all the writes. Used about 10 months in a laptop with heavy VM use and only 2.25TB of writes. Wearout at 98 though so the values work out correctly.

Man, that X25-V really was used and abused More than 10GB a day.

[[XC] Synthetickiller]

CrystalDiskInfo can't read a Samsung SSD.

[lowfat]

Man, that X25-V really was used and abused More than 10GB a day.

The funny thing is I don't use the system. It all it does is run my PVR software and usenet programs. I have started using FancyCache recently to cache the writes, so hopefully it sees some decrease in writes or at least I know the writes will all be sequential instead of random.

[Ao1]

The E drive is at least a year older and used to be the C drive. E drive now is more or less static data only.

From the Intel® Solid-State Drive 320 Series Enterprise Server/Storage Application Product Specification Addendum
http://www.intel.com/design/flash/na...ldocuments.htm

Example Calculation of Drive Wear

The following is an example of how the drive wear attributes can be used to evaluate
the impact of a given workload. The Host Writes S.M.A.R.T. attribute (E1h) can also be
used to calculate the amount of data written by the host during the workload by
reading this attribute before and after running the workload. This example assumes
that the steps shown in Section 3.4 were followed to obtain the following attribute
values:

• Timed Workload Media Wear (E2h) has a raw value of 16. Therefore, the
percentage wear = 16/1024 = 0.016%.
• Timed Workload Host Read/Write Ratio (E3h) has a normalized value of 80,
indicating that 80% of operations were reads.
• Workload Timer (E4h) has a raw value of 500. Therefore the workload ran for 500
minutes.
• Host Writes Count (E1h) had a raw value of 100,000 prior to running the workload
and a value of 130,000 at the end of the workload. Therefore the number of sectors
written by the host during the workload was 30,000 * 65,535 = 1,966,050,000
sectors or 1,966,050,000 * 512/1,000,000,000 = 1,007 GB.

The following conclusions can be made for this example:

• The workload took 500 minutes to complete with 80% reads and 20% writes.
• A total of 1,007 GB of data was written to the device, which increased the media
wear in the drive by 0.016%.
• At this point in time, this workload is causing a wear rate of 0.016% for every
500 minutes, or 0.00192%/hour.

[Metroid]

Dedicated 24/7 to WCG.

[Ao1]

I played around with Hard Disk Sentinel today. A couple of interesting things.

On their web site they state "Current SSD technology also has another problem: solid state disks may "forget" data with time. To prevent this, periodic complete overwrites can refresh the storage device...."

Hmm, not heard that before, although it sounds feasible.

On my E drive I have static data only. In theory over time I should see write activity occurring. Not sure how that could be monitored as presumably it's an internal SSD command.

Next up its seems that using "sleep" puts loads of writes on the drive. I thought sleep, as opposed to hibernate, did not dump loads of data to the drive.

On the right hand side below is just before a sleep. On the left straight after the sleep. I noticed that the SATA light is full on before the PC shuts down, so its defiantly writing, but did it write ~1GB of data or 10MB? I'd guess 1GB by the SATA light activity, but hopefully not. Dang, I use sleep all the time.

By the way max xfer rate - ~60MB/s. Whoop.

[lowfat]

That program is that Ao1?

[Ao1]

Hi lowfat, Hard Disk Sentinel
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

[Anvil]

Looks like I'm winning on GB written per hour
Kingston_9863_hrs.PNG

It's the boot drive on a computer running a few Windows Servers on VMWare.
(on other drives obviously)

[Ao1]

Metroid/ lowfat I guess you know you are running on old f/w? The latest is 2CV102M3:

"This firmware revision fixes enumeration and slow-boot issues on SATA 6Gb/s controllers, adds improvements to S.M.A.R.T. attributes for more accurate reporting of drive health, improves NCQ capability, and fixes possible drive hangs when reading S.M.A.R.T. self-test log."

• Anvil = 0.06GB/h
• mezcal = 0.21GB/h
• ender17 = 0.21GB/h
• bot@xs Vertex = 0.56GB/h
• lowfat X25-V: = 0.79GB/h
• Ao1 C = 0.88GB/h
• lowfat X25-E: = 0.90BG/h
• Ao1 E = 0.92GB/h
• bot@xs X25-M = 1.20GB/h
• Metroid = 2.62GB/h

[mezcal]

My old G1.
Did duty in several boxes earlier in its life but has been serving as a boot drive in a dedicated wcg box for about a year now.
The BOINC data folder is on the other drive or I imagine the writes would look much like Metroids.
I set it up that way 'cause I was concerned that BOINC and the lack of TRIM would bring the G1 to it's knees in short order.
Whether that was a justifiable concern or just me being paranoid I really don't know.

[Metroid]

Metroid/ lowfat I guess you know you are running on old f/w? The latest is 2CV102M3

I was too lazy to update that. The Supercomputer week is over now. So I may find 5 minutes to do that. That may improve my host writes.

• Anvil = 0.06GB/h
• lowfat X25-V: = 0.79GB/h
• Ao1 C = 0.88GB/h
• lowfat X25-E: =0.90BG/h
• Ao1 E = 0.92GB/h
• Metroid = 2.62GB/h

Ops. It looks like my dedicated WCG drive is leading it. The Clean Energy Project - Phase 2 tortures it all.

[lowfat]

Dedicated 24/7 to WCG.

I am honestly surprised your drive hasn't died yet. AFAIK those are nearly on the brink of what Intel says their 40GB drives should do in terms of writes.

[alfaunits]

I think those figures are for random writes, while actual endurance is higher. 7.5/15/30TB for random writes for 40/80/160 IIRC? And something like 36/72/144 max. life span.

[Metroid]

I am honestly surprised your drive hasn't died yet. AFAIK those are nearly on the brink of what Intel says their 40GB drives should do in terms of writes.

Die in the sense of not writing any more to the drive and only reading then yes.

I think those figures are for random writes, while actual endurance is higher. 7.5/15/30TB for random writes for 40/80/160 IIRC? And something like 36/72/144 max. life span.

I really want to find this out, 16GB is for the Windows 7 64 bits. So 21GB is the wear space. So 21 x 1000 = 21000TB.

[bot@xs]

SSDlife_Intel_X25-M_160GB_20110215.jpg SSDlife_OCZ_Vertex_LE_100GB_20110215.jpg

should i be concerned

[alfaunits]

Either my drive is not recording the writes or you guys are bashing the drives with benchmarks I can't believe I only did 2.25TB in 9 months - I know I did over 300GB in a day a few times.

EDIT: Eh CDI says 17 days of total use - the laptop was not turned off for months since August (just rebooted for updated and that's it). Meh
C300s report good power on hours. Cool I can sell this X25-M as new now

[Computurd]

lol yeah right god only knows the writes on my devices, scared to look!

[Ao1]

I am honestly surprised your drive hasn't died yet. AFAIK those are nearly on the brink of what Intel says their 40GB drives should do in terms of writes.

The X25-V specs are 5 years(min) with up to 20GB of host writes per day. (Typical workload).

2.62GB/h * 24 = 62.88GB per day.
9341 hours = 390 days.

~ three years worth of writes in one year. Wear out only 15%. Not bad at all for a 40GB drive with only half the channels of a larger drive.

Either my drive is not recording the writes or you guys are bashing the drives with benchmarks I can't believe I only did 2.25TB in 9 months - I know I did over 300GB in a day a few times.

I don't bench that much, but I do use sleep all the time. 4 to 6 times a day typically. At 1GB a pop that is racking up the writes. It would be good if I could work out a way to deflect those writes onto a HDD. I don't care how long it would take as I've walked away from the PC by that stage. I imagine hibernation would be even worse for generating writes, especially if you have 8/ 12 GB's of RAM.

should i be concerned

Not at all. Interesting however that the Vertex appears to be wearing out much faster than the Intel drive.

[One_Hertz]

9.5TB on my iodrive but it doesn't show power on hours. Considering Fusionio claims it lasts through 44PB, I am only 0.02% through the writes on this thing

[RyderOCZ]

should i be concerned

Concerned, no. Update the firmware on the LE? Yes.

[Anvil]

9.5TB on my iodrive but it doesn't show power on hours. Considering Fusionio claims it lasts through 44PB, I am only 0.02% through the writes on this thing

The X25-E 32GB does 1PB of random writes, havent seen any figures for mixed I/O.

I've been planning on doing a durability test on one of my SSDs but a few months back I found one test that's been going on for over 1 year.

So far that X25-V has written close to 1PB, I'll post a link later today.