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Ask HN: Do you monitor SSD disk writes regularly to prevent excessive SSD wear?

7 points by amichail 3y ago

It only takes a single software bug to kill your SSD with excessive writes.

talldayo 3y ago
I check my SMART readout every few months for weirdness but besides that, no.
codevark 3y ago
[dead]
navjack27 3y ago
No
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
eternityforest 3y ago
I check SMART regularly. SSDs aren't cheap! When I'm writing code, disk wear is pretty much always on my mind. I do RasPi work, and I'm always aware that every write could cause a failure if a power glitch happens at the same time, even if the total isn't excessive. I think OSes should be doing this by default though. Alarms for unusual conditions should be first class OS objects or built into some common standard out of the box tool. There's about a dozen issues you'd never noticed unless you manually check or set up a monitor service yourself.
FlyingAvatar 3y ago
The only SSDs I have personally experienced failing due to wear are ones that I was using in an array for a database. These drives lasted several (5+) years. While possible (and I am aware of an issue like this killing some SSDs on M1 Macs early on), it's not something I am overly worried about. You should be backing up anyway.
JojoFatsani 3y ago
Life’s too short for that. Chances are you’ll get a new machine before your SSD wears out unless you’re doing some really disk intensive work.
- giantg2 3y ago
  I had a 11 year old SSD fail recently. The rest of my machine is still working fine at over 12 years old. Not sure it was write related. Could have been related to age of the components (caps in the controller?). The only reason I'll need to get rid of this rig (or turn it into a Linux box) is because of the TPM 2.0 requirement for Win11 and the upcoming EoL for older Win versions.
coretx 3y ago
Do you know that many SSD's go into read-only mode prior to failure ? If you have a spare on hand; copy && go! Like it or not, but storage has become a consumable.
- toast0 3y ago
  I've seen many SSD failures in servers and all but one were just gone. No longer visible via the disk interface. The other one just had very slow response for quite some time (I think it was reallocating related to a large cluster of failing flash). I have heard rumors that SSDs can go into read-only mode, but never experienced it. Our write rate was relatively low though, and we did not include it in our monitoring.
  - coretx 3y ago
    In such a scenario, iostat is your friend. https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/sysstat/iostat.1.en.html https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/sysstat/iostat.1.en.htm...
giantg2 3y ago
I haven't been monitoring. I set up backups assuming there will be a failure. The few times I have seen symptoms of a failing drive, SMART didn't show any issues half the time.

7 points by amichail 3y ago

It only takes a single software bug to kill your SSD with excessive writes.

talldayo 3y ago

I check my SMART readout every few months for weirdness but besides that, no.

codevark 3y ago

[dead]

navjack27 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

eternityforest 3y ago

I check SMART regularly. SSDs aren't cheap! When I'm writing code, disk wear is pretty much always on my mind. I do RasPi work, and I'm always aware that every write could cause a failure if a power glitch happens at the same time, even if the total isn't excessive. I think OSes should be doing this by default though. Alarms for unusual conditions should be first class OS objects or built into some common standard out of the box tool. There's about a dozen issues you'd never noticed unless you manually check or set up a monitor service yourself.

FlyingAvatar 3y ago

The only SSDs I have personally experienced failing due to wear are ones that I was using in an array for a database. These drives lasted several (5+) years. While possible (and I am aware of an issue like this killing some SSDs on M1 Macs early on), it's not something I am overly worried about. You should be backing up anyway.

JojoFatsani 3y ago

Life’s too short for that. Chances are you’ll get a new machine before your SSD wears out unless you’re doing some really disk intensive work.

giantg2 3y ago
I had a 11 year old SSD fail recently. The rest of my machine is still working fine at over 12 years old. Not sure it was write related. Could have been related to age of the components (caps in the controller?). The only reason I'll need to get rid of this rig (or turn it into a Linux box) is because of the TPM 2.0 requirement for Win11 and the upcoming EoL for older Win versions.

coretx 3y ago

Do you know that many SSD's go into read-only mode prior to failure ? If you have a spare on hand; copy && go! Like it or not, but storage has become a consumable.

toast0 3y ago
I've seen many SSD failures in servers and all but one were just gone. No longer visible via the disk interface. The other one just had very slow response for quite some time (I think it was reallocating related to a large cluster of failing flash). I have heard rumors that SSDs can go into read-only mode, but never experienced it. Our write rate was relatively low though, and we did not include it in our monitoring.
- coretx 3y ago
  In such a scenario, iostat is your friend. https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/sysstat/iostat.1.en.html https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/sysstat/iostat.1.en.htm...

giantg2 3y ago

I haven't been monitoring. I set up backups assuming there will be a failure. The few times I have seen symptoms of a failing drive, SMART didn't show any issues half the time.