SSD Write Endurance 25nm Vs 34nm

[johnw]

One thing I don't understand about Sandforce's throttling is how it determine how many years into the warranty the drive is. Does the SSD actually have a clock on board? If not, I guess it can only judge the passing of time by how many power-on hours it has had. In that case, the throttling could make a huge mistake for someone who only turned his drive on for 24 hours once a month, but ran Anvil's program for the entire 24 hours each month. After a few months, the drive would think it is only a few days old, but it has written so much that it would throttle the speed to try to extend its lifetime, even though what it has written is acceptable for several months of life.

[Anvil]

One thing I don't understand about Sandforce's throttling is how it determine how many years into the warranty the drive is. Does the SSD actually have a clock on board? If not, I guess it can only judge the passing of time by how many power-on hours it has had.
...

That is one of the major things I'd like to know.

If there isn't such a internal clock, well, it would be a disaster imho and the drive would last "forever".

[Ao1]

I will start running Anvil's app again until it gets full throttled. I will then unplug it, leave it for 5 days and then run a couple of AS SSD benchmarks. That should give some indiction if it is power on time.

[johnw]

If there isn't such a internal clock, well, it would be a disaster imho and the drive would last "forever".

Thinking about this some more, if it had a clock it would need a power source, either a small lithium button battery, or possibly a capacitor. I'm pretty sure there is no battery on the board (based on many pictures I have seen), so it would have to be a capacitor. But even the best capacitors would have enough leakage that I doubt they could hold a charge for months. So my guess is that there is no clock on board the Sandforce SSDs.

If I'm right, then it must either be using power-on hours, or perhaps it makes an assumption, like 8 hours power-on = 1 day of life. Either way, it could get the throttling way wrong for non-standard usage, like the guy I mentioned who only powers his SSD on one day a month.

[bulanula]

Thinking about this some more, if it had a clock it would need a power source, either a small lithium button battery, or possibly a capacitor. I'm pretty sure there is no battery on the board (based on many pictures I have seen), so it would have to be a capacitor. But even the best capacitors would have enough leakage that I doubt they could hold a charge for months. So my guess is that there is no clock on board the Sandforce SSDs.

If I'm right, then it must either be using power-on hours, or perhaps it makes an assumption, like 8 hours power-on = 1 day of life. Either way, it could get the throttling way wrong for non-standard usage, like the guy I mentioned who only powers his SSD on one day a month.

There surely is no clock all right !

[One_Hertz]

60TB. 70%. The reallocated sector count went up to 4 from 2 overnight.

[RyderOCZ]

It is powered on time and if you secure erased it you erased any throttling due to lifetime.

[sergiu]

It would be interesting to see as a comparation a similar test but with HDDs. Let's say taking a few models with 640GB or higher plates, make a 40GB partition at the beginning then do the same job and watch how many bad sectors popup in time. We could compare the reliability of old vs new technology when it comes to real usage.

[Ao1]

It is powered on time and if you secure erased it you erased any throttling due to lifetime.

Hi Ryder,

I ran a secure erase from the OCZ toolbox 3 or 4 times and it did not clear the throttling.

In post #252 write speeds came back after a couple of hours idling, but within an hour the write speeds went back to a crawl.

Prior to that happening the drive chugged along nicely writing continuously for 7 days.

I have now been running Anvil's app for 5 hours and write speeds have remained stable and within the parameters of the 1st 7 days of running the app. I will continue to run the app to see what happens next.

Does the OCZ Toolbox secure erase do the same job as hdderase?

If you can erase the Duraclass lifetime throttling (by inducing even more wear with a secure erase) what purpose does it serve?

[johnw]

It is powered on time and if you secure erased it you erased any throttling due to lifetime.

Since the throttling is based on power-on time rather than calendar time, and secure-erase does NOT eliminate throttling (as Ao1 found), it seems this Sandforce "feature" is worse than useless. No power user would want that monkey on his back...errr...SSD.

Has OCZ looked at the possibility of selling a model of Sandforce SSD with throttling disabled?