SSD Longevity

Hello everyone. I’m about to install an SSD boot disc onto my RPi400 and while I had a read about SSD experiences being very positive on the forums I was wondering if anyone can give an update on the drive’s longevity after a few years of use (posts go back to about 2019). It is my understanding that the SSD algorithms are not aware of filecore partitions and, therefore, do not spread read/writes across the disk thus reducing the drive’s life. Thanks in advance.

SR

I’ve been using a 120GB SanDisk Plus with a USB to SATA adaptor with my RISC OS Pi 4B for the past 3 years, it had been used for 4 years in a Windows laptop before that. Last time I checked the amount of data written to it, the usage by RISC OS was just a rounding error. None of other the mainly Samsung SSDs I’ve been using in Windows and Linux systems for almost 10 years have failed, so it’s pretty likely that the RISC OS one will do quite a few more years yet.

However, always make sure you have a regular and preferably automated multi layer backup system in place, as any type of storage can fail at any time. SSDs should go read only if they detect problems, but there is a chance they could fail and be completely unreadable.

Mine’s probably around eight years old at this point and I haven’t had any issues.

Thank you, David.
I’m waiting on a 250GB to arrive, the maximum size for filecore, I believe (at least that is what my system is telling me). I’m currently booting from the SD Card and using multiple filecore formatted USB flash drives and Fat32 drives for transfers and backup to my PC all connected to a powered USB hub. Although I can do that via my network it is not always convenient. At the moment I’m actually writing this on a ZFS formatted SSD running FreeBSD, I have two other such drives formatted to EXT4, but all are less than a year old, so I’m new to these devices. On a side note, I tried booting from USB and while it worked I did come into the expected CMOS issues. In this case I’m going to format a 4GB microSD card to FAT16 and load from that while configuring SCSI HD4 as the !Boot drive, but I have read that RISCOS reads the disks by number, not name and will get confused if I keep my “backup” drives connected at startup. When you say automated backup are you referring to a NAS or RAID? Would an external USB RAID drive even work with filecore and SSD?**

Thanks Chris. Good to know!

**E.g. StarTech Dual M.2 SATA Enclosure – RAID – USB 3.1 Gen 2 USB C / USB A

It is my understanding that the SSD algorithms are not aware of filecore partitions and, therefore, do not spread read/writes across the disk thus reducing the drive’s life.

No risk here, since it does not work this way. But the lack of TRIM IS a real problem. On my system, benchmarks are now half (still 160MB/s) of what they were when I bought the system (ealier this year).

Of course, don’t expect much more speed with an USB SSD.
Mine is SATA.

Thanks David (F). Truth be told I’d be happy with my current speeds. Any speed the SSD contributes will be a bonus. I’m more concerned about losing data. Are you using a titanium?

Nope: a FAST from RISCOSbits.
An excellent computer.

Nota: format your SSD with 256GB-1MB size (for example with PartMgr), else Free will not work.

It is my understanding that the SSD algorithms are not aware of filecore partitions

I think that may have been my fault (when composing the wiki pages I thought there were other issues besides TRIM). I’ve altered the Wiki pages to correctly mention TRIM. My apologies for the poor wording previously on those pages.

If you’re worried about drive longevity, type and size of drive have a much bigger impact than lack of TRIM support.

e.g. for Samsung SATA SSD.

Samsung drives have a dedicated SDRAM cache. Cheaper brands may have no cache or use a dedicated NAND cache. Write performance can drop drastically after writing a certain amount of data.

The warranty is based on the TBW or a number of years. Whichever comes first.

Typically the bigger the drive and the lower the number of MLC bits the higher the TBW (Terrabytes written).

The largest filecore partition size is 256GB. So just get a bigger drive and format it as 256GB and/or spend more to get a 2-bit MLC drive.

870 QVO SATA 2.5" SSD (3 Year Warranty)

Samsung V-NAND 4bit MLC

1TB		360TBW		Samsung 1 GB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM
2TB		720TBW		Samsung 2GB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM
4TB		1440TBW		Samsung 4 GB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM
8TB		2880TBW		Samsung 8 GB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM


870 EVO SATA 2.5” SSD (5 Year Warranty)

Samsung V-NAND 3bit MLC

256GB	150TBW		Samsung 512 MB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM
512GB	300TBW		Samsung 512 MB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM
1TB     600TBW		Samsung 1 GB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM
2TB     1200TBW		Samsung 2 GB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM
4TB     2400TBW		Samsung 4 GB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM

860 PRO SATA 2.5" SSD (5 Year warranty)

Samsung V-NAND 2bit MLC

256GB	300TBW      Samsung 512 MB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM
512GB	600TBW      Samsung 512 MB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM
1TB	1200TBW     Samsung 1 GB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM
2TB     2400TBW     Samsung 2 GB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM
4TB     4800TBW     Samsung 4 GB Low Power DDR4 SDRAM

Not all SD cards are alike. Some may simply not work, at all.
Might be worth linking to https://elinux.org/RPi_SD_cards

Not all SD cards are alike.

Always worth mentioning that, but in a thread about SSDs?

David Feugey:
Nope: a FAST from RISCOSbits.
An excellent computer.

David, Nice! My next purchase, perhaps.
Also, noted!

Stuart Painting:
I think that may have been my fault (when composing the wiki pages I thought there were other issues besides TRIM).
I’ve altered the Wiki pages to correctly mention TRIM. My apologies for the poor wording previously on those pages.

So, Stuart, you’re to blame for my SSD anxiety! Anyway, totally understandable when dealing with complexities such as these, so no need to apologise. Besides, your work and the wiki is an admirable effort!

Chris Gransden:
If you’re worried about drive longevity, type and size of drive have a much bigger impact than lack of TRIM support.
e.g. for Samsung SATA SSD.

Good to know Chris. I really have to brush up on this technology.

Rick Murry and Steffen Huber:
Not all SD cards are alike. Some may simply not work, at all.

It is always worth mentioning. So far, I haven’t had any trouble with my Verbatim and SanDisk micro SD cards. Not that I checked, they just worked, but I will keep an eye on that list. Thank you.

but in a thread about SSDs?

The “Wiki pages” text above in Stuart’s post is actually two separate links.

Click the “pages” and you’ll see why I mentioned this here.

Click the “pages” and you’ll see why I mentioned this here.

I see your point, thanks.

Thanks to all of you, actually!

My experience may not be typical, but on my ARMX6 the Samsung 256GB SSD started misbehaving after about 4 years use. Problems showed up as failures (at random) to boot, or occasional lockups. When I replaced it with spinning rust, the problems went away. I’ve since replaced it with another Samsung 256GBSSD, and so far no problems. The ARMX6 uses a SATA connection from the motherboard.

I’ve not used SSDs under RO, but it’s worth mentioning one experience I have had.

I’ve always used Samsung SSDs (horrible company, but they do make the best SSDs), I’ve only ever had one issue, with an 850PRO SATA drive, it developed read errors after a few years. (I think this was database related).

I’d bought it from Amazon, and unbeknown to me it was a grey import, so I had an issue where Samsung would acknowledge it was one of their drives, and was covered by a 10 year warranty, but because it had been destined for the US market not the EU one they refused to honour it. Apparently I should be party to the distribution lines of everyone I buy from or something??

Generally the larger the SSD the more ‘levels’ used in the flash, an increase in levels translates to a decrease in write speed, multi level flash actually have write speeds that are fairly similar to standard HDs. Most SSDs get round this by having a few gig of fast flash, and then internally shuffle the data around, so if you write a lot of data at once then your write speed will tank. I’d be impressed if you could hit this data volume on RO though.