When would you consder replacing an older SSD with a newer one?

[mrk]

More of a curiosity post really to see what others do and what SSDs they have as their OS drive with games/software installed.

I have had an Intel Skulltrail 730 series (480GB) since close to launch and having had many many SSDs since at both home and work, it has been the single most reliable SSD I have ever experienced. Fast and stable through everything.

Every few months I look at the SMART readings in both HDTune and Intel SSD Toolbox. As of today the values are reported as:

HD Tune Pro: INTEL SSDSC2BP480G4 Health

ID                                  Current  Worst    ThresholdData       Status    Clarification
(09) Power On Hours Count           100      100      0        38578      ok        1607 days / 4.4 years 
(0C) Power Cycle Count              100      100      0        62         ok     
(AE) Unexpected Power Loss Count    100      100      0        29         ok               
(C2) Temperature                    100      100      0        28         ok     
(C5) Current Pending Sector         100      100      0        0          ok     
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count      100      100      0        0          ok     
(E1) Host Writes                    100      100      0        33002.22   ok        33.00222 TB         
(E2) Host Reads                     100      100      0        33906.72   ok        33.906 TB

HD Tune Pro: INTEL SSDSC2BP480G4 Benchmark

Test capacity: full

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 270.3 MB/s
Transfer Rate Maximum : 449.4 MB/s
Transfer Rate Average : 418.3 MB/s
Access Time           : 0.055 ms
Burst Rate            : 174.0 MB/s
CPU Usage             : 2.5%

Windows Powershell reports the drive wear at 3% worn after those 4.4 years:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-PhysicalDisk | Get-StorageReliabilityCounter | Select Wear

Wear
----
   3

Considering the total writes to the drive I'm quite surprised by this wear indicator although unsurprisingly I bet money that this is exclusively down to the long power on hours count and low power cycle count.

Intel's spec page states 2 million hours before failure and it has a 5 year warranty along with an endurance rating of 70GB writes per day which is 114.576 TB over 4.4 years so I'm still well within the threshold at 33 TB. Considering the warranty period expires in a few months, I can see the drive lasting double its warranty period without issue.

My question is would others see the warranty expiration as a means to upgrade to something newer /just in-case/?

It will be interesting to see the info on SSDs at work when I'm back on Friday. I have a Surfacebook 2 which is about 2 years old and gets shutdown daily.

 

[digitaldreams]

I've upgraded for various reasons. The main one being lack of space on my old Samsung 512gb. I'm very glad I did as I also unexpectedly gained an almost 2x speed gain even currently though on an older Intel x99 Gen3 chipset (new Corsair Force MP600 ssd is Gen4). Having good empty space on your ssd also improves function and reliability. My new ssd will certainly migrate to my next system and yet again show improvement (gen4 or higher socket).

 

[mrk]

Hmm that's a point, is it recognised that the more full up an SSD is the worse off it is?

My drive is 50% full at the moment. I do have dual Gen3 x4 M.2 I could make use of going forwards but I guess the ideal solution would be to upgrade mobo and CPU to something with a few more threads first.

 

[digitaldreams]

Hmm that's a point, is it recognised that the more full up an SSD is the worse off it is?

My drive is 50% full at the moment. I do have dual Gen3 x4 M.2 I could make use of going forwards but I guess the ideal solution would be to upgrade mobo and CPU to something with a few more threads first.

Yes but 50% is fine.

It seems you are at a crossroads and may need a full pc upgrade but consider do you need it ?, a favourite game struggling ?. Some systems benefit from more system ram, others a faster drive/bigger cache or higher up video card.

 

[mrk]

Yes but 50% is fine.

It seems you are at a crossroads and may need a full pc upgrade but consider do you need it ?, a favourite game struggling ?. Some systems benefit from more system ram, others a faster drive/bigger cache or higher up video card.

I don't need it but more cores would benefit my Lightroom processing, so a nice to have I suppose. My spec at the moment is

Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 5
i7 6700K 4.4GHz
16GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance 3000MHz
MSI GTX 980 4GB
Superflower 850W

 

[digitaldreams]

Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 5
i7 6700K 4.4GHz
16GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance 3000MHz
MSI GTX 980 4GB
Superflower 850W

If you're having speed issues in Lightroom maybe try their forums for hardware advice ?. Your system is not bad but 4 cores may be a bottleneck for big Lightroom processing jobs (have a look what windows task manager says about core and ram usage during a heavy task - graphs under the performance tab ). Your motherboard is also dual channel, I assume you're using two 8gb sticks in the correct sockets to properly utilise the dual channel.

 

[james.miller]

Ill replace them when they break. Not had one go yet. My oldest is a Samsung 830 pro that's about 7 & 1/2 years old now

 

[mrk]

I will just leave as is then until the time comes I'm looking at a full overhaul! I guess it doesn't yield any benefit in changing now even if for a small performance benefit.

If you're having speed issues in Lightroom maybe try their forums for hardware advice ?. Your system is not bad but 4 cores may be a bottleneck for big Lightroom processing jobs (have a look what windows task manager says about core and ram usage during a heavy task - graphs under the performance tab ). Your motherboard is also dual channel, I assume you're using two 8gb sticks in the correct sockets to properly utilise the dual channel.

There is no performance issue at the moment, like I said it would simply be a nice to have, it's always nice to have a performance boost at any task of course. but that applies to everything be it games/apps etc. RAM is in dual channel mode that's right and with the correct XMP profile active.

Lightroom is quite efficient at utlising all logical cores when needed during RAW exports, and it uses the GPU during editing/processing:

Hence the nice to have a bit more power through a few more threads being available like on newer CPUs. Maybe in the Spring I'll treat myself,