NVME myths and recommendations

[Mitzy]

I’ve read that NVME drives can wear out with excessive writes.

My PC is used as a seedbox / media server. I probably move about 200TB a year. My use case is that I use the NVME as a temp folder for Usenet and Torrents then off load to HDDs for long term storage.

My 1TB NVME isn’t really big enough for the job as I can have a lot queued and quickly run out of space.

Is there a sweet spot for NVME longevity and on the other end of that, what drives or technologies are the best to lookout for with my use case?

 

[kona786]

Yes get a drive like a 2TB Samsung 970 980 or 990 pro.

They have like 1500TBW+.

Post your CrystalDisk SSD health score

42% I suspected mine was running a little slow so ran a test. Almost 300TB!!! in NAND writes so I can see why :D

forums.overclockers.co.uk

 

[Mitzy]

Yikes. I just used CrystalMark and I have 167TB written. I got that drive around Sept22, 70% health!

 

[Murphy]

Personally i wouldn't use an NVME for anything that involves lots of writes like a temp drive (unless you know you need it for video editing or something like that), i could be mistaken but i doubt a seedbox, media server, Usenet or Torrents need the throughput/IOPS of an NVME. Unless your network/internet connection is faster than the transfer speed of your HDD.

 

[Semple]

Personally i wouldn't use an NVME for anything that involves lots of writes like a temp drive (unless you know you need it for video editing or something like that), i could be mistaken but i doubt a seedbox, media server, Usenet or Torrents need the throughput/IOPS of an NVME. Unless your network/internet connection is faster than the transfer speed of your HDD.

Exactly my thoughts. Even if your network/internet is faster, what do you gain by downloading something to seed sooner? A few minutes of not waiting. I think I'd rather preserve the life of my expensive NVMe's.

 

[Mitzy]

It’s recommended for both torrents and Usenet, especially if you’re racing. Which I’m not lol.

The biggest benefit I noticed was with Usenet, unpacking 70GB Remux is significantly faster using NVME. I do take your point though, probably best to move away from using the NVME for this purpose. I’ll need to replace that drive, I guess looks like I’ll be lucky if I get 2 years out of it.

If I download to HDD and unpack to HDD I bottleneck because the unpack and download compete with each other and everything slows down significantly. If the initial download is to NVME then it unpacks to HDD it speeds everything up significantly.

What happens when the drive health gets to 0, does that mean it won’t work at all or will it just be slow?

 

[Rroff]

The only thing I've ever seen putting massive wear on an NVME (and potentially killing one prematurely), they don't seem to like the nature of writing at all for some reason, is looped real time video capture at high resolution i.e. game captures which constantly store the last couple of minutes so you can manually save if something interesting happens, etc. so far I've had SSDs and NVMEs under heavy use for years and years in some cases over a decade without issues before the point you'd be thinking of replacing them anyhow.

 

[Rroff]

What happens when the drive health gets to 0, does that mean it won’t work at all or will it just be slow?

Varies a bit - sometimes a drive will go read only, sometimes die completely other times be slow as the cell charge has degraded causing significant use of error correction, etc. etc.

 

[Mujja]

The 970 Evo 1TB can now be bought for £55, I wouldn't worry about it too much and just replace when it dies.

I've been running VMs on a 970 Evo 1TB in a laptop for over 3 years now, maybe I should run some diagnostics.

My home server has been running VMs on SSDs for around 10 years 24/7, including usenet downloads and extractions, never noticed any issues.

 

[Semple]

What happens when the drive health gets to 0, does that mean it won’t work at all or will it just be slow?

You probably won't make it down to zero, it's not an absolute scale. I imagine you'll start to see read/write errors closer to its EOL, maybe even some data loss/corruption. Either way, it's certainly not something you'll want to be using when it nears EOL.

 

[Mitzy]

I really appreciate all the input.

I think what I’ll do is grab a decent 2/4TB NVME and add that into my system. I’ll have a look at those Samsung and I’ve also seen the FireCuda ones recommended for writes, so I’ll see what I can get the cheapest.

I’ll keep my existing NVME as boot and then off load the heavy stuff to the 2nd NVME.

As an example, today I’ve downloaded about 5TB of movies, all Usenet. The downloads finished hours ago but because of the volume of stuff the unpacks couldn’t make any movement, god knows when these will be ready.

 

[Semple]

I really appreciate all the input.

I think what I’ll do is grab a decent 2/4TB NVME and add that into my system. I’ll have a look at those Samsung and I’ve also seen the FireCuda ones recommended for writes, so I’ll see what I can get the cheapest.

I’ll keep my existing NVME as boot and then off load the heavy stuff to the 2nd NVME.

As an example, today I’ve downloaded about 5TB of movies, all Usenet. The downloads finished hours ago but because of the volume of stuff the unpacks couldn’t make any movement, god knows when these will be ready.

Realistically though you don't need 5tb of downloads accessible in the next few hours though? Is there a reason they can't be extracted overnight when the system is likely idling and then it's ready for you by tomorrow morning. Doesn't matter too much then whether it took 3 hours or 10 hours.

 

[Mitzy]

I know you’re right and that’s why I post here, you guys take my expectations down lol can you not just let me buy another drive

 

[kona786]

It’s recommended for both torrents and Usenet, especially if you’re racing. Which I’m not lol.

The biggest benefit I noticed was with Usenet, unpacking 70GB Remux is significantly faster using NVME. I do take your point though, probably best to move away from using the NVME for this purpose. I’ll need to replace that drive, I guess looks like I’ll be lucky if I get 2 years out of it.

If I download to HDD and unpack to HDD I bottleneck because the unpack and download compete with each other and everything slows down significantly. If the initial download is to NVME then it unpacks to HDD it speeds everything up significantly.

Yup it's the reason I got the 2TB 980 PRO.

Its so great unpacking a massive REMUX, and 70GB takes 25s vs over 2mins comapred to my old drive.

And as said the TBW limit isbefore the drive degrades. Still be working after that.

 

[BananaDunka]

Personally i wouldn't use an NVME for anything that involves lots of writes like a temp drive (unless you know you need it for video editing or something like that), i could be mistaken but i doubt a seedbox, media server, Usenet or Torrents need the throughput/IOPS of an NVME. Unless your network/internet connection is faster than the transfer speed of your HDD.

It doesn't mattert though, my SSDs have always been used as download drives and cache storage for browser/Ligtroom/downloads etc where lots of data is written throughout the months. My old 1TB 970 Evo Plus has 41TBW and is still 99% health. Modern SSDs have long been far more capable than SSDs of old where the whole paranoia surrounding writes and health came about and somehow still remain to this day.

In reality the vast majority of people will never within reasonable daily usage meet the TBW maximum of their SSD, and by which point the drive will be long overdue an upgrade anyway likely due to space expansion or generational gains etc for newer tech.

 

[Golf1.6]

The same stuff was said about SSDs when they first came out.

this is a crucial m4 ssd which was bought maybe a decade ago (or more).

It was the Primary OS driver on my desktop, then the primary drive on my laptop and finally it became a data storage drive as the capacity was just not up to it.
It is 16% dead now - but still works fine.

I remember all the debates back then, very passionate tech "experts" says SSD is useless and will fail and take all your data with you in no time. I doubt any HDD survived so long as primary OS drive on 2 systems.

Would be groaning away by now.

 

[BananaDunka]

235 years

 

[Murphy]

The same stuff was said about SSDs when they first came out.

this is a crucial m4 ssd which was bought maybe a decade ago (or more).

It was the Primary OS driver on my desktop, then the primary drive on my laptop and finally it became a data storage drive as the capacity was just not up to it.
It is 16% dead now - but still works fine.

I remember all the debates back then, very passionate tech "experts" says SSD is useless and will fail and take all your data with you in no time. I doubt any HDD survived so long as primary OS drive on 2 systems.

Would be groaning away by now.

It's very dependant on how you use the drive, writing lots of small files will wear quicker than writing a few large files and reading doesn't wear on it at all so using it as an OS drive or just storing stuff isn't going to cause issues.

E.g i used a 970 Pro to mount/dismount Windows images for 3-4 months and that used a good 15% of the drives life, mounting the install.wim 10-15 times each day would be similar to installing Windows 10-15 times so my TBW hit +80 TBW in a couple of months. What you really want to avoid is write amplification and while modern drives are way better at handling things like that if there's no *advantage to using an SSD it maybe a bit of a waste.

*That's really down to what sort of tasks you're doing, for example me mounting a Windows install.wim on a HDD cost me time but i wasn't in a rush so thought it better to not burn through my SSDs life.

 

[KompuKare]

The same stuff was said about SSDs when they first came out.

this is a crucial m4 ssd which was bought maybe a decade ago (or more).

But MLC NAND has far greater endurance than TLC or QLC.
An enterprise SLC-only drive would be quite hard to wear out.
A QLC drive? There is a good reason why, for example, Crucial have the 2TB of their QLC drive (P3 Plus) rated at 440TB and the TLC P5 Plus rated at 1,200TB.

 

[Rroff]

I'm hoping SSDLife is buggy for my 840 Evo LOL - it is showing the health as excellent: "Your drive health is in good condition and according to current use estimated lifetime is till September 12, 2022" - -1 years, 3 months and 28 days.