video streaming SSD reliability

Since SSD lifetime is reduced by excessive writing, how does Sony VAIO SE, when configured from the factory with a Blu-ray drive, 2 SSD drives and no writable rotating drive, play video without dramatically reducing the reliablity of the SSD? Video caching must take place through the SSD, resulting in excessive writing to the SSD. Is Sony using the Intel 710 series of SSD, with their increased reliability and enterprise (as opposed to consumer) prices?

If other laptop manufacturers are allowing notebooks to be configured with SSD and no rotating writable disk drive, have they found a way to increase the lifetime of the SSD when most users watch video on their notebook?

 

The SSD will outlast the expected lifetime of the laptop. Hence, even with extensive SSD use on a day to day basis, your SSD can easily last 3 to 5 years.

 

"The SSD will outlast the expected lifetime of the laptop. Hence, even with extensive SSD use on a day to day basis, your SSD can easily last 3 to 5 years."

That's true for most applications running on SSDs (like Intel's 320 SSD). However a 3 year lifetime for the only drive in a computer would be disappointing, and video caching, especially HD video streaming, can consume traditional SSDs in months.

AnandTech - The Intel SSD 710 (200GB) Review

Anand Lal Shimpi's video clip is particularly informative (click on comments at the end of his article).

Do the Sony VAIO SE (e.g. VPCSE190X CTO) and other notebooks configured without a rotating hard drive, with only SSD, use Samsung's 830 SSD? Isn't Samsung's 830 SSD reliability comparable to Intel's 510 series, rather than Intel's more reliable and very expensive 710 series?

 

Manufacturers are actually worried about this too, which is why they grossly understate the lifespan of SSDs. You are more likely to have an SSD fail due to factors OTHER than the NAND wearing out, such as firmware issues, controller dying, killed from a crappy/failing PSU...

 

What video caching from where? From a streaming video? Also, the larger the drive the longer (more movies / data) it will take before it cycles through a whole drive of writes.

"Intel estimates that even if you wrote 20GB of data to your drive per day, its X25-M would be able to last you at least 5 years." *

 

jcausius,

Yeah and Intel actually said that it was 100GB per day (guaranteed for only 20GB though, as you state) and that was on the 80GB X25-M G1 (50nm nand rated at 10K cycles).

So, although not all the drives available today are up to Intel spec's (not even Intel's own drives), we can safely assume that for normal usage (even heavy, Blu-Ray usage) that we will want to upgrade to a new SSD before the nand is exhausted on the one we have.

 

Tiller,

The 20GB quote is from Anand. See the "*" link in my post. If you have a 100GB statement from intel, please post your source. Also, dunno how using Blu-ray discs come into play here. And I am unclear regarding this sentence, "Video caching must take place through the SSD, resulting in excessive writing to the SSD." This won't happen by just playing a Blu-ray disc, so what video caching is Quiet referring to?

In regards to streaming, I've found some quotes HD movies are about 1 to 2GB / hr. If that is the case, then it will take watching a lot more than one movie at a time to cycle a 200GB disk 10,000 times in 3 years.

Did you happen to know how many times you "write-cycled" the drive while you were on SSD? If so, could you have estimated when you would have gone through 10,000x filling the drive?

 

My source is straight from Intel, but now old - an online video of an Intel presentation for their new X25-M - sorry, I won't be searching for that.

I'm not sure about how Blu-Ray's come into play here - but on my VAIO, whenever I played a Blu-Ray the HDD never stopped until I ejected the movie - could this be Sony's Blu-Ray player or is this 'normal' with all BR players?

No idea about the write-cycles - don't really care - when it slows down/gives errors, I will simply buy another.

 

NP about the link, but I'll stay at the conservative 20GB until someone finds something to the contrary.

Unfortunately, I don't have a BR player on my laptop, but I believe my BR stand-alone unit doesn't use an internal HDD, and the DVD player on my laptop doesn't write to the SSD. So, as the Blu-Ray technology is similar to CD/DVD just a different laser (so the bits are packed tighter), I wouldn't think it would need to use any other caching either.

How do you know the SSD was in use during movie play? Did you use resource monitor? For instance, when playing a DVD on my x7200, the drive activity light is blinking, but resource manager shows 0 writes to either my SSD or RAID volumes from the DVD player process. It only has activity for reads.