So since I recently purchased my first SSD HD

[heartspains88]

The Mushkin Enhanced 60gb, I honestly couldn't be happier, I love this thing.

That being said, I've heard/read that you never need to format SSD HD's, which makes complete sense due to the fact there are no moving parts and the data shouldn't get fragmented.

That being said, I just wanted to confirm and make sure that was true. For my own piece of mind if anything.

 

[Daza]

From what Ive hear formatting is fine, but defragging the drive is a big no no unless that was a myth I heard a few years ago when SSD first apeared.

 

[tinytomlogan]

All you need to do is instal windows on it and leave it. DONT defrag as trim does all the cleaning for you

 

[hmmblah]

Defrag works for mechanical drives because it puts the data on the fastest part of the drive. The outside rim of a platter has the fastest read speeds while the inner ring has the slowest.

An SSD doesn't need defrag because it has the same read/write speeds throughout the whole disk.

 

[alienware]

You don't format an SSD any way you run a secure erase on it. Completely different thing.

 

[heartspains88]

I was specifically curious about the defraggin aspect. That was the impression I was under also, was that You shouldnt/there was no need to.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[hmmblah]

Defrag will actually hurt the drive in the long run. It will unnecessarily shorten the lifespan of the drive by doing wasted read/write cycles.

 

[heartspains88]

Defrag will actually hurt the drive in the long run. It will unnecessarily shorten the lifespan of the drive by doing wasted read/write cycles.

Makes complete sense to me.

All of that aside, kind of another topic. I was under the impression due to the fact SSD HD's have no moving parts, in "theory" their life span was near to, if not "infinite".. or at least long enough/beyond what you would keep them for anyways.

But I guess none of us have had one long enough to see that come to fruition. Only time will tell.

 

[hmmblah]

Makes complete sense to me.

All of that aside, kind of another topic. I was under the impression due to the fact SSD HD's have no moving parts, in "theory" their life span was near to, if not "infinite".. or at least long enough/beyond what you would keep them for anyways.

But I guess none of us have had one long enough to see that come to fruition. Only time will tell.

The flash in SSDs has a finite number of read/write cycles they can perform. I've seen tests where an SSD would use up all the cycles in 5 years time of constantly reading and writing. That's far from typical use though.

Some SSDs have "spare space" on the drive that will be turned on by the controller when a cell hits it's lifespan. This will help the drive to have a longer life.

I'd suspect the actual controller to fail or for today's SSDs to be "too old and slow to use" before the cells expire in a typical use scenario. I can't see myself using my 80GB SSD in 5 years time. I'm hoping by then I'm using something in the 500GB range and saturating SATA3 or perhaps SATA4. Also, much cheaper per GB would be welcome, I'd say on par with today's mechanical hard drives. /wakes up to reality

 

[alienware]

Aye defrag is only ness on plattered drives. Basically as it fills up the data goes into order. However, as you delete it and remove stuff it doesn't then put the data into those gaps. Basically over time your drive has data all across the surfaces of the platters meaning the heads need to work hard to get to it, causing speed degradation. Defrag picks up the data and packs it together reducing the spreadage (ooer).

As Hmm has so rightly said an SSD is basically made up of cells of NAND memory and they are all as fast as one another on account of there being nothing shooting over them to grab the data from them. With an SSD the problem is when you delete stuff. It isn't truly deleted and those cells are not ready for more data. What TRIM does is secure erase them back to 0s. If a drive does not support TRIM then you need to wait until it crawls (and believe me it will) and then do a proper secure erase using an app for it. I was using Diskpart. It's very very similar to the age old low level format. Instead of just writing over the sectors or cells with empty data (meaning you can get it back) it wipes the cells/sectors and then writes 0s over, meaning the disk is properly wiped.

 

[heartspains88]

Mushkin Enhanced Callisto 60GB

Is the one i used. Says TRIM supported.

 

[alienware]

Yeah they all have trim now bro. Most of the ones that didn't have gotten it in a firmware update