Atlas Deluxe mSATA 240GB life time

[u666sa]

How many times can the NAND be written onto on this drive http://poweredbymushkin.com/index.php/c ... luxe-msata ?

In other words how much will it live?

[Cigarguy]

Hard to say with any SSD. A lot will depend on usage, OS and the user. I for one uses hibernation all the time with the knowledge of what that will do to my SSD. With normal (whatever normal is) everyday usage I expect 3-4 years from my SSDs. I always have everything backed up and backed up again so when it fails, it's no big deal. By that time I'm ready for a fresh OS install anyways.

[u666sa]

My problem is that it is a total inconvenience when it fails. I use my notebook for work, and live in Russia. I'm going to have to order SSD from USA, that is more than 2 weeks, closer to a month. Is there a software tool that can tell me how much life my SSD have and warn me when it's about to fail?


How I use my SSD:

I have mSATA, that is drive C: 240GB
onto it I have installed Windows 7, majority of programs which run at startup, Office 2010, Adobe Master Collection. Plus the stuff I save and work with, I save and work with in my Desktop folder which is on drive C.

Then I have drive D: Program Files, all the programs which don't run at start up.

Then I also have drive E: DATA, all the data stuff. Local back ups, etc.

Both D and E are partitions on Western Digital caviar black drive.


If only I could have a program that will notify me about 1 month in advance that my drive is about to fail.

[ajkula66]

I'd pass on *any* SSD using a SandForce controller, period. So one huge "no" for the Mushkin in question.

Most of SSD failures are controller-related and not a result of tired/dying NAND.

[bit_twiddler]

Aside from the SandForce issue, you can put swap files (or whatever you call them in Windows) on a hard
drive so that you don't burn out your SSD. You give up some performance, but can get it back by putting
in as much RAM as possible. I just use SSDs to reduce spindle contention (i.e., hard drives slow way down
if they have to move their heads around.)

MyDigitalSSD BP4, Samsung 850 Pro (which are not, unfortunately, available in all form factors), Toshiba Q-Pro, and
Crucial mx-200 drives are all great SSDs, if you are careful how you use them. You just don't want
to be writing to them all the time.

I have 32GB in my W510 and my Dell workstations, and the OS (Linux) uses any extra RAM
as a disk i/o cache, so, for the most part, disk reads and writes are a background activity.
You want to put enough RAM in the machine so that it never has to swap an active program
out to disk.