Am I degrading my Intel SSD by deleting a lot of things?

My daily tendencies happens to delete a lot of stuff on a daily basis. And I mean a lot.
I do lots of random things on my computer that requires me to create and then trash several files in the end. And I mean a lot.

My question is... Am I degrading my SSD? If so, by how much?

* I download lots of movies (~700MB each) from releaselog and delete them right after watching them.
* I create large photoshop graphics (15MB) for work.
* Installing and uninstalling lots of softwares just for the sake of trying them out. (ie: A DVD ripper).
* I download lots of tiny files such as album arts from google images to update WMP.
* I download a ton of .rar files and delete the original .rars file after unzipping them. I tend to delete the unzipped file if they aren't that good.


All this is done on my SSD. I have no secondary hard drive.
So in the end, is all this writing/downloading and deleting file hurting my SSD?

 

When you delete stuff, only the pointers to the file location are erased in the file system. If you have TRIM things will be different.

Every time you write something to disk (basically everything you do) you are using the SSD's life but basically, the SSD will outlive your computer anyways.

 

So, looking at the things I do (list above) am i degrading my ssd faster than I should be.

BTW, are my daily tasks (listed in first post) typical of other SSD users?

 

i think its said that an intel x25-m, at 5GB/day*, will degrade in about 5 years(i think it was actually 10, but i'm playing conservative).

*5GB is what is WRITTEN to the disk, INCLUDING write amplification.

 

define exactly what you think 'degrade my ssd' means, please.

 

I think hes asking "By deleting so many files on my ssd am i shortening its life span"

 

Btw reading from the SSD wont do any wear, its only write that does it.

Use a portable external hard drive if your really worried.

 

no. you can't download stuff fast enough that the deletion would ever matter.

in my case, i download with 2MB/s max. that means, i can delete 4MB/s max (if its rars, and i unpack and then delete them, it gets near to double the deletions of what i downloaded. a bit less, and there fit your photos in).

i don't know which ssd you have. i have the 160gb intel ssd. that means, it takes 250s to fill a GB (1000MB/GB / 4MB/s) of deletions. to fill the ssd once with deletions, you need to download 160GB worth of deletions, or 40000 seconds. to KILL that ssd, you have to do that at least 10000 times, or 400000000seconds.

now, how many hours, days, years are that? 111111 hours, 4630 days, 12.68391679350583 years.

now if it's the 80gb ssd, obviously, it's half that time. but think about it, do you still really care about that ssd in 6 years from now? i don't think you do. because you know, by then, you can get it for cheap replaced, but want another one, much faster, by then anyways


and this would be with you downloading all the time, having to unrar everytime, having rars that haven't compressed much, etc.

i can at least guarantee you, if your ssd dies during the next some years, it's NOT because of that. it's something else.

 

Sorry guys, by "Degrading," I mean decrease its performance (Not rate of decay).
I have intel'd 1st generation 80GB x25M. I was a very early adopter.
It doesn't support TRIM. Everyone knows about intel's performance drop in their 1st gen SSD.
I noticed overtime, my write and reads got slower.
Now considering what I do with my computer, am I degrading my SSD in performance.

 

In think in this case, the two are synonymous. In any event, you should have asked how soon it will it occur since decay/decrease in performance, are inevitable either way.

 

Yes You are!!!!!!!! And that drive MTBF is 139 years so you will lose a year or two....or maybe 30 years... Do you care?


Oh and, with respect to degradation, don't rely on the rumours in their entirety. I am running a Samsung 64Gb ssd that I got in 2008 and it has been filled and written over a million times by now. Since I got it originally for testing, I did a review that showed the numbers. After all this time the drive still works like a charm and the numbers are still the same. The drive has been in 4-5 laptop and through about 9-10 OS changes since then

 

does it FEEL slower? because my 160gb g1 is sure degraded in performance by now. but it doesn't matter, as it's still fast performing.

if it FEELS slower, have you made a firmware update on it? the first firmware had a way to degrade way below what it should.

other than that, don't bother much. the only way to make the ssd go down in performance is by filling it too much. you still have a lot of space left on it?

 

Man, I just use my SSD like it was a regular HDD. Just use it dude. Let it perform under your typical, normal use.

With that said, not having a TRIM feature could be a problem later down the road though.

 

+1

one thing that's important is, it won't degrade down to 0 or something. it degrades till it got filled once (and that happened long ago in op's case i guess). from then on, it performs at a constant speed. not as fast as clean state, but not going down from there anymore (except with the very first firmware)

 

Intel provides a tool for the G1 that securely erases every block. After using that tool, you have performance identical to a brand-new G1. Of course, that means that you may want to use an imaging tool to get your data back on the drive.

You may want to skim through this article to understand G1 performance degradation.