Longevity of SSD such as Intel · Samsung proved by long-term durability test

It has several reading and writing speeds compared with the hard disk and you can expect speed up at the level you can experienceSolid state drive(SSD) quickly jumped to the leading role of PC storage with the fall in capacity unit price. However, because SSD has an upper limit on the number of writes, it is said that it has big drawbacks in terms of "life span", and many people tend to hesitate to introduce it. About the lifespan of SSD that everyone is interested in, the results of long-term write endurance test using SSD such as Intel and Samsung are announced.

The SSD Endurance Experiment: Casualties on the way to a petabyte - The Tech Report
http://techreport.com/review/26523/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-casualties-on-the-way-to-a-petabyte

NAND type memoryThe SSD that uses data has a limit on the number of rewritable "cells" that record data, so it is different from the hard disk in that there is the concept of "rewriting life" which is the limit at which data can be normally recorded and retained I will. For this reason, "how long can you use it?" Is a big concern for users until you can not hold the data.

The Tech ReportIs "Anvil's Storage Utilities"SSD's benchmark software was used to test the limit where SSD can read and write data properly by repeatedly writing and erasing large amounts of data that are unlikely in normal use. Even if you use a high-speed data rewrite program, it will take several months for the durability test.

From the upper left, Corsair was chosen for the durability test "Neutron GTX 240 GB", Samsung"840 250 GB"Kingston"HyperX 3K 240 GB", Intel"335 240 GB", Samsung"840 Pro 256 GB"Both are popular SSDs.


◆Intel 335
In the durability test, firstly a warning alert indicating the risk of data corruptionSMARTIt was Intel 335 that I recorded above. Intel 335MLC NANDIt is difficult to have durability because it usesTLC NANDIt was surprising to The Tech Report that a warning was issued earlier than Samsung's SSD which adopted it.

The amount of data that Intel 335 was able to rewrite was about 700 TB (700 thousand GB). The graph that descends to the right is an indicator of the lifetime of the SSD called Media wearout indicator (MWI), and it can be confirmed that the lifetime is approaching at a constant pace as the rewrite capacity increases.


Intel 335 has almost no data corruption until data rewriting of 700 TB is executed. If it exceeds 700 TB, it is regarded as "logical disable" as a state of lack of reliability that may be a risk of data corruption, and Intel does not recommend subsequent use. In the logical disable state, it became impossible to acquire the SMART information, and it was detected as "SATA storage of capacity 0 GB" after rebooting the PC. According to The Tech Report, this behavior is common in SSD at the "end of life".

◆Kingston HyperX 3K
Kingston HyperX 3K has reached the end of its life shortly after Intel 335. The writing capacity until the end of the life is about 728 TB. When 725 TB was exceeded, a warning message "Disk of hard disk detected" was displayed on Windows, and then a write error was reported when 3 TB was written. In addition, Kingston recommends that users warn evacuation of data by displaying a warning on SMART when MWI is below 10.


This is a graph showing the number of error occurrences for data writing and erasing. As HyperX 3K exceeds 600 TB, you can see that the error rate has increased sharply.


HyperX 3K has participated in the durability experiment on another machine whose data compression function was turned on, and said that it survives even if it surpassed 1 PB.

◆Samsung 840
Contrary to the expectations of The Tech Report, "It will be broken first" Samsung 840, who used the TLC NAND, made a good fight. As you can see from the graph, after 300 TB of writing capacity, you can see that it shows staggering stickiness.


However, beyond 100 TB, the number of bad sectors requiring relocation of data starts to increase, and when it exceeds 200 TB, an uncorrectable error is constantly occurring. Considering these things, The Tech Report thinks that it is reasonable to see that 300 TB which MWI bottomed out as a lifetime. Even though Samsung 840 is over 300 TB and MWI is close to 0 as close as possible, Samsung's proprietary software SSD Magician evaluates it as "healthy", although data could actually be rewritten, sudden death beyond 900 TB He said that he did.


◆Samsung 840 Pro
Samsung 840 Pro broke through the wall of 1 PB (1000 TB). Although the expected result that "840 Pro adopts MLC NAND, it will be more durable than 840", the MWI characteristic is a type that shows stickiness from near 0 as with 840.


However, since it can be confirmed that the number of bad sectors suddenly increases from around 600 TB, it is not prohibited.


◆Corsair Neutron GTX
Neutron GTX of Corsair survived to the end. The figure below shows the life of Corsair's proprietary software Tool Box utility. Even if it exceeds 1PB, it is said that the lifetime of about 80% still remains, and if this pace continues, the rewriting life will exceed 4PB, but what kind of change will occur after this is unknown at this stage.


◆Performance comparison
It is also tested whether there is a change in the data reading speed with respect to these SSDs. It used 4 MB dataSequential read(Sequential reading) Comparison of speed. It can be seen that there is no speed reduction for all SSDs until their lifespan.


This is a comparison of sequential write (sequential write) speed. Similarly, speed reduction is hardly seen.


Random readIt is like this. Although there are some variations, there is no catastrophic drop in speed.


Random write also does not reduce speed. For this reason, it seems unnecessary to worry about the service life of the SSD until the end of its life.


It is possible to rewrite 700 TB even for Intel 335, which has rewritten the most quickly, which means that even if 10 GB of data are rewritten every day, it will be calculated to have about 70 thousand days or about 190 years, so worrying about the rewriting lifetime of SSD There seems to be almost no need to do.

· Continued
Which models overwrote the 1.5 million GB wall written in SSD durability experiments? - GIGAZINE