SSDs: Saving small files or changing directory?

I save small files at times or I'm downloading PDFs at times via Firefox. The default directory is the Win7 downloads folder. These files either then get deleted at some point, or some of them get transferred to my HDD.

Should I change the default download directory to my HDD instead so I don't wear out my SSD?? I'm new to SSDs and I just unsure how how much reading/writing I should be doing on it.

Thanks

Unless you are writing thousands of gigabytes of data constantly, don't worry about it.

Reading doesn't wear a SSD.

thideras said:

Unless you are writing thousands of gigabytes of data constantly, don't worry about it.

Reading doesn't wear a SSD.

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HAH..no, I'm not. I just wasn't sure how "delicate" these things are. The files are typically small from 1meg to maybe 20megs.

Unless you live in South Korea or Sweden or something I doubt your internet connection is fast enough do download enough data to wear out your SSD before you die of old age.

Downloading 20 meg files you are several orders of magnitude below what you need to be at to start worrying about wearing out your SSD. If you were writing a terabyte per day, then you'd really ought to start thinking about moving some things to a hard drive.

The amount of writes you do from file download probably only constitute a small percentage of the overall writes your system is doing to the SSD.

Mr Alpha said:

Unless you live in South Korea or Sweden or something I doubt your internet connection is fast enough do download enough data to wear out your SSD before you die of old age.

Downloading 20 meg files you are several orders of magnitude below what you need to be at to start worrying about wearing out your SSD. If you were writing a terabyte per day, then you'd really ought to start thinking about moving some things to a hard drive.

The amount of writes you do from file download probably only constitute a small percentage of the overall writes your system is doing to the SSD.

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Thanks I wasn't really sure. I downloaded a 150meg program file to the desktop, installed the software, and then deleted the file. I don't do that every day though. Maybe a few times a week.

On larger drives at 50gb per day it you take about 5yrs to kill a drive from writing data to it

Evilsizer said:

On larger drives at 50gb per day it you take about 5yrs to kill a drive from writing data to it

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WOW, they are more robust than I had thought..Thanks

Viper69 said:

Thanks I wasn't really sure. I downloaded a 150meg program file to the desktop, installed the software, and then deleted the file. I don't do that every day though. Maybe a few times a week.

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That is nothing. Unless it adds up to at least 1GB per day it is not even worth counting.

Evilsizer said:

On larger drives at 50gb per day it you take about 5yrs to kill a drive from writing data to it

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50GB per day for 5 years only adds up to around 100TB. Unless if suffers from horrible WA even a 32GB should be able to handle more than that. A 120GB Intel drive like he has can easily handle five times that. Even ten times that is reasonable.

Yea super talent has/had a little chart showing size to data written. The did 50gb per day and the ones at 250+gb in sizer were 10+ yrs life based on data written. With newer tricks I'm sure that it is higher but consider those numbers were being posted by st around the Time of the first gen agility and vertex drives from ocz.

Evilsizer said:

Yea super talent has/had a little chart showing size to data written. The did 50gb per day and the ones at 250+gb in sizer were 10+ yrs life based on data written. With newer tricks I'm sure that it is higher but consider those numbers were being posted by st around the Time of the first gen agility and vertex drives from ocz.

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The early Vertex and Agility drives did have pretty bad WA.

There is also the question of what is considered worn out. Is the drive worn out when it hits it rated lifespan or when it actually starts throwing errors? The rated lifespan is a minimum rating. Getting 2x the rated lifespan is quite common.

This chart, from extremesystems.org, where they've been writing to SSDs until they fail is revealing:

The Intel 520 60GB reached it rated lifespace after 419TiB and failed after ~850TiB. The OP has the 120GB version which should last more than twice as long.

Of course, this is only one data point, so one should be careful in generalising.