HDD vs. SSD

I have a 10 year old Dell that came with an approx 960 GB HDD. 3 years ago I added an approx 240 GB SSD to serve as C: and D: , and elevated the HDD as F: for large items, photos, music, etc. Both the HDD and SSD have always performed flawlessly, but was wondering how long I can expect this to continue. Thoughts ? ...

wrote:
I have a 10 year old Dell that came with an approx 960 GB HDD.
3 years ago I added an approx 240 GB SSD to serve as C: and D: ,
and elevated the HDD as F: for large items, photos, music, etc.
Both the HDD and SSD have always performed flawlessly, but was
wondering how long I can expect this to continue. Thoughts ? ...

SSD has Toolbox software, and will tell you "Percent Life".
This is 3000 writes times 240GB. Once you've done that
much writing, the Life is "0%". The Toolbox is responsible
for predicting remaining life, and it can do this by
checking the stats once a day and "projecting" end of life.

On the HDD, you read out the SMART and check

Power On Hours - I have one at 55000 hours

Reallocated Sectors, Data Column 0 - indicates threshold hasn't been
reached yet for reallocations. Mine
might span 0..5500 as value range.
Approaching 5500 is "zero life remaining"

You divide the 55000 hours by 8 hours per day, then
figure out how many years that is, as an estimate. I've
had drives spinning (no power save modes) for seven years
continuous, but they were getting pretty cranky at that point,
and that drive didn't even use FDB (fluid dynamic bearings).
That was a ball bearing motor.

The FDB motors in hard drives could last forever,
as the motor is "zero friction". But real motors,
the lubricant leaves then, and the motor then seizes.

Modern drives probably die of head crashes, as the
flying height is very very low. They have excellent
shock ratings, but some of the statistics for hard
drives, suggest a "wear pattern", as if somehow
the head is contacting the surface or something.
There aren't a lot of post-mortem carried out on
hard drives, to know the exact failure mechanism.

It's possible a Helium filled drive could last
longer, but the Helium is only guaranteed to be there
for about five years, and the seals are not perfect.
After five years, it's anyones guess when they'll
have a Helium failure.

Your drive is not Helium filled and has a breather
hole. A 14TB drive might have Helium in it. The
Helium drive lid is held on with an adhesive.
That holds the gas.

HTH,
Paul

SSD has Toolbox software, and will tell you "Percent Life".


I have no idea how to access this if it's there. Certainly not anything obvious.

wrote:
SSD has Toolbox software, and will tell you "Percent Life".


I have no idea how to access this if it's there. Certainly not anything obvious.

Exact make and model number, please.

If Kingston made it, you'd Google on

site:kingston.com ABCD1234

and see if the Toolbox software is offered as
a download from the site.

If your drive is OCZtechnology, they went out of
business and the materials were acquired by Toshiba
(a maker of flash memory).

It would not be normal for them to make the toolbox
easy to find. Like put a CD in the box or a miniCD.
It's more fun to "bob for apples" on the Internet,
apparently.

When I bought the Corsair Neutron (only to return it to
the store), the Toolbox for that "worked excellent" :-)
Other brands have been less than exemplary (usually
Secure Erase doesn't work, because nobody seems to
test this stuff properly).

But we won't know this, until you track down the
maker and the model number, and see what software
is offered.

Some companies are weird - they might sell ten
different drive models, eight of them are covered
by the Toolbox, and two are not! Imagine being a
customer who bought one of the losers. That's not
a happy customer.

These things happen when a company adds an
ODM product to their portfolio or something.

For example, Plextor probably does not solder
Flash chips on a PCB themselves, and they buy drives
from somewhere else and paint "Plextor" on the lid.
There is an opportunity in such situations then,
to not do the extra work, and code up a Toolbox entry.
Plextor is an OEM, just like Dell is an OEM.
The company providing raw materials to the
companies is called an ODM. When a company makes its
own materials (Toshiba), it gets neither of those
names and is undistinguished. Toshiba is the
"third hard disk maker", besides WDC and Seagate,
so they are in a sense, a competitor. Even if they're
not particularly visible at KMart.

Paul

On Sat, 24 Apr 2021 13:20:30 -0400, wrote:
SSD has Toolbox software, and will tell you "Percent Life".
I have no idea how to access this if it's there. Certainly not anything obvious.

What os are you using? On linux the command smartctl shows the values.
For example on my oldest ssd drive, an OCZ-AGILITY4 I bought in 2013, the values
extracted from "smartctl -a /dev/sdb" ...
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x0000 005 000 000 Old_age Offline - 5
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0000 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0000 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0000 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 1
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0000 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 70573
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0000 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 457
232 Lifetime_Writes 0x0000 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 80038320628
233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0000 094 000 000 Old_age Offline - 94

According to https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki..._of_Intel_SSDs
the Media_Wearout_Indicator starts at 100 and decreases, so after 80 billion
writes over 8 years, it still has some life left in it. :-)

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change to for
email replies.

On 4/24/2021 2:00 PM, Paul wrote:
wrote:
SSD has Toolbox software, and will tell you "Percent Life".


I have no idea how to access this if it's there. Certainly not anything
obvious.

Exact make and model number, please.
snip...

I've used both Samsung and Intel SSDs and both brands have easily-findable
Support/Toolbox software. I also have some super-cheap Pioneer 480gB SSDs
but all of those are in external USB3 enclosures and I haven't done the
search for software for those. I don't even know if the software, if it
exists, would work for SATA drives that aren't directly connected. Guess I
should find out some day.

--
Bodger's Dictum: Artifical intelligence
can never overcome natural stupidity.

I=20think=20it=20was=20Kingston=20but=20not=20sure .

It's=20buried=20so=20deep=20within=20my=20hardware ,=20as=20to=20ma=
ke=20examination=20not=20worth=20the=20trouble.

I=20appreciate=20responses=20...

wrote:
I think it was Kingston but not sure.

It's buried so deep within my hardware, as to make examination not worth the trouble.

I appreciate responses ...

http://hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

Looks like this. Disk model number is at the top.

https://i.postimg.cc/BQbgK9Pj/HDTune.gif

The only problem with the utility (free) is that
it is 13 years old and does not have SSD knowledge
inside. It's more of an HDD utility. The $$ version
of the program is up-to-date (but then it's $$).

The free version will give you a name, and you can work on
finding a Toolkit for it then.

Paul

" writes:

I think it was Kingston but not sure.

It's buried so deep within my hardware, as to make examination not worth the trouble.

I appreciate responses ...

In Windows there's Device Manager where you should find your SSD and HD
under Disk drives. Also in Windows there's msinfo which gives a little
more information about your system.

Exact make and model number, please.


From device manager :

KINGSTON SA400S37240G