The only thing I'm aware of so far is that you shouldn't defrag a solid state drive or that ruins the life expectancy of it. Is there anything else? What about 3rd party programs like ccleaner. I have ccleaner set to clean every time I turn my computer on. Is that bad for a ssd?
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It's bad for the operating system)– STTRJul 12, 2014 at 15:54
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What's bad for the operating system? Running ccleaner?– AlexJul 12, 2014 at 15:56
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The short answer - yes. Well, or try to talk in detail, making Ccleaner.– STTRJul 12, 2014 at 15:59
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How so? All it does is clear temp files– AlexJul 12, 2014 at 16:03
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Not worth all the temporary files to delete, especially during OS. With the registry situation is more complicated, few can do something useful there. On the basis of their experience in different companies, I can say that at this point leads to errors CCleaner.– STTRJul 12, 2014 at 16:14
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3 Answers
There has been a lot of disambiguation about running things like CCleaner and Defrag on an SSD. Running constant sequential writes can in theory shorten the life expectancy of an SSD. However you're only loosing days off of an life expectancy of years. The drive will outlast your use of it for sure. The thing about Defrag is it won't speed up your drive in the slightest since SSD's can read so quickly that fragmented files are no longer the issue they used to be. CCleaner will not hurt your drive in the slightest. Here's a great link for a thread from Tom's that talks about defraging an SSD.
In short I went to an SSD raid 0 in my rig two years ago and would never go back
Ben
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Install Windows fresh, as it uses different settings, to adapt to C: being SSD drive. The fears are overdone, having win page file on SSD is great. If you have small SSD moving things like Browser cache/Temp files and Downloads could be worth doing, to reduce writes but for a larger one it's not worth the effort as you'll get nowhere near using it's Write life expectancy, before it's totally obsolete. Looking at TR's SSD Endurance Test I wouldn't worry techreport.com/…– Rob11311Jul 12, 2014 at 16:27
One precaution you should take is to backup as normal Alex.
That is not to say SSDs are unreliable. Far from it. I've personally deployed and supported lots of PCs and laptops for many years and I have to say that SSDs are a joy to work with in comparison to the traditional spinning hard disks. I've yet to see an SSD fail.
Speaking to several laptop engineers however, when SSDs fail they can fail suddenly without any warning. This is unlike with the traditional hard disks where you can hear them start to make that whining scratching noise when they start to degrade, thus you have time to make a backup. So back up as normal Alex.
Hope that helps.
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Making System Image of SSD regularly is good precaution. I have had SSD problems in past (was an early adopter) but firmware got sorted out so not seen for long time.– Rob11311Jul 12, 2014 at 16:22
If you care about your SSD life time then you need to be aware that due to limited write/erase cycles number per sector the device may start dying after a few years of serious usage. From this perspective it is recommended to put the most rewritable data on the HDD. OS will run much faster being placed on SSD, of course, but OS itself has files that are rewritten often.
In Unix-like OS you can afford you to keep your home directory at any different partition. Myself have it with SSD + HDD couple. In Windows, I don't know how separate OS itself and Users or Documents and settings folders from each other.
As I said if someone cares about lifespan. Of course to get all speed purchased most writing should be on SSD.
At the time I am writing this I was also told, that
The data that's being rewritten most often is precisely what you want on the SSD, as it's where you're going to get the most speed improvement from the system. Buying and SSD and then only using it for infrequently used files makes no sense to me. Yes this means it will wear out faster, but it also means you get more speedup per dollar spent. Thanks for this to James Polley.
Modern SSDs have write lifetimes of 17.5 GB to 70 GB per day, every day to give it a 3 year lifespan. If you are using a modern drive the IO activity of your OS reading and writing to stuff like the page file will barely scratch it. What you said about the OS wearing it out was true for the first generation of SSDs but is no longer true with modern ones. Thanks for this to Scott Chamberlain.
answered Jul 13, 2014 at 7:37
