Understanding Data written usage on SSD's

Things change I've changed · 25 Apr 2018 at 18:13

I have installed an 850 evo (1TB) today as a secondary drive for games, all I've installed on it is steam, and the Witcher 3 @ 51GB, SSDLife claims I have written 98.6GB? Am I missing something?

Is this because downloading and installing uses double the data writes?

On Holiday · 25 Apr 2018 at 18:15

Steam downloads first, then installs/writes to the actual game folder.

Things change I've changed · 25 Apr 2018 at 18:27

ah, bugger, I guess I should have just copied the steam folder across from the old harddrive, silly me.

On Holiday · 25 Apr 2018 at 18:28

It's okay, 98.6GB out of 150,000 GB before your warranty is no good

andy_mk3 · 25 Apr 2018 at 19:02

Don't worry about writes to your SSD. It'll take hundreds of TB's before it does any damage.

BlackAle · 26 Apr 2018 at 00:57

Don't worry about it, on a 1TB 850 EVO, you'll probably get a 2PB+ endurance.

DarkBahamut · 29 Apr 2018 at 18:05

It won't be how steam downloads. It's because of SLC caching. The first X amount is written into an SLC buffer for faster performance, but this causes much high write amplication as that data then later needs to be rewritten out in TLC mode.

blueacid · 1 May 2018 at 18:00

I wouldn't worry; I've got an old 256GB Samsung 830 in my desktop, which has been there since 2013 or so. I've just used it like normal, with lots of steam games downloaded / updated / patched / reinstalled. Around 15TB written in total, and the health is still absolutely 'good' according to the Samsung magician software.

I'd say you'll be fine!

Things change I've changed · 3 May 2018 at 18:10

DarkBahamut said:
It won't be how steam downloads. It's because of SLC caching. The first X amount is written into an SLC buffer for faster performance, but this causes much high write amplication as that data then later needs to be rewritten out in TLC mode.

Interesting, is this unavoidable then? If I write data to the drive I will always write twice the amount of data due to write amplification? I've had a bit of a google but it's a little complicated.