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

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

markw at mohawksoft.com wrote: 
> This is a space where "price" or "quality" make a difference.
> 
> A "good" SSD has a lot of extra sectors to map in when it detects a write
> error. All done internally to the drive. Better drives do a lot of things
> to reduce wear. Some do dedup. Some don't store blocks that are all zero
> or blocks that are all ones.
> 
> Its kind of hard to adjust your usage, suffice to say, it is all based on
> the amount of change. Individual SSD cells can handle from 3,000 to
> 100,000 writes depending on the technology. It is possible to pay twice as
> much for a drive that will have 30 times more usable write longevity.
> 
> If your data is largely unchanging, it doesn't matter. If you have a
> highly dynamic write environment, go for single level cell NAND flash,
> that will last the longest. Find a good enterprise drive that has extra
> capacity to remap as cells fail.


* In practical usage, commercially available SSD cells range
from 300 write lifetimes to 20,000 (3D Xpoint/Optane, no longer
being produced but stock exists) with far too many being at 600
or 1200.

* SLC drives are very expensive and small. ($2/GB for 500GB, no
performance warranted, no brand name. $5/GB for stated
performance...)

-dsr-