[Discuss] Reducing wear on SSD drives - worth the effort and, if so, how?

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

Daniel M Gessel wrote: 
> Hi all,
> 
> The discussion about filesystems got me thinking about whether or not it's
> worth trying to reduce SSD wear on my first system (laptop) to have one. It
> occurred to me that file cloning seems like it could save a few writes...
> 
> I've heard that some SSDs wear out pretty quickly, but I'm not sure if
> that's real or just rumor and innuendo.

It's real. The next question should be: how much should this
affect what you do?

Consider the published ratio of lifetime drive writes to drive
size: e.g. WD SN850X in a 1TB size promises a 600TB lifetime, so
600 drive writes. A Samsung 870QVO only promises 360 drive
writes, but a Samsung 870EVO is 600 and an 860PRO is 1200.

If you are running a server, or if you have a significant budget
restraint, or if backups are hard, paying the extra money for a
longer-design-lifetime drive might be a good idea.

If your laptop has an easily replaceable drive (M.2 or 2.5"
SATA-3) and will be regularly backed up, there's no point in
worrying about it at all.

If this is your primary system, you can't afford a
hundred-dollar replacement every few years, and backups are
infrequent... start by fixing your backup situation, and then
consider replacing the SSD with a better one.

-dsr-