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4 TB SSD 'shrinks' over time?

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(@wotsits)
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I recently bought a new 4 TB external hard drive. I'm planning to use it to store and convert vast amounts of media, hence the large size. It's one of those WD Passport SSD that's very popular and I'm sure most people are familiar with.

I had some salesman chatter with the people at the place I bought it and was asking about the 3 year warranty that comes with it. They explained to me that as you use it over time the maximum capacity of the drive will get smaller and this is not covered in the warranty.

I'm well aware of the concept of wear leveling on SSDs as I'm sure most people are. But my understanding of it was that you would need to overwrite all the sectors of the drive on the order of tens of thousands of times at a minimum before you in effect wear it out.

This concept of 'drive shrinkage' is a new one to me. Can anyone give me an idea of how much, if any, I should realistically expect after how much usage?

For example, if I'm using this drive to store CCTV footage on a rolling 30 day cycle and every 30 days generates 4 TB of footage at which time the old footage is overwritten with the new and so on.

After how many months would I expect to see the drive shrink and by how much would it shrink?

 
Posted : 01/10/2016 5:24 am
MDCR
 MDCR
(@mdcr)
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I've used SSDs extensively, from 60GB drives to 500 GB drives, also 2 Revodrives and SSDs in RAID - and none of them has been reduced in size.

The only way i could see them "shrink" is

1. The drive gets filled with user crap (Temp/Documents) and the drive appears to shrink.
2. The drive either gets very old over time/is using poor flash memory and memory space get mapped out quickly as bad.

My advice is that the sales guy should talk to a shrink.

 
Posted : 01/10/2016 11:32 am
jaclaz
(@jaclaz)
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I recently bought a new 4 TB external hard drive. I'm planning to use it to store and convert vast amounts of media, hence the large size. It's one of those WD Passport SSD that's very popular and I'm sure most people are familiar with.

I am not familiar with 4 Tb Western Digital SSD drives, can you post the exact model?
AFAIK they are conventional hard disks, or at the most SSHD (Hybrid Drives).

jaclaz

 
Posted : 01/10/2016 12:28 pm
(@athulin)
Posts: 1156
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\

For example, if I'm using this drive to store CCTV footage on a rolling 30 day cycle and every 30 days generates 4 TB of footage at which time the old footage is overwritten with the new and so on.

After how many months would I expect to see the drive shrink and by how much would it shrink?

The best answer I know is this

http//techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

They do document when they start to see reallocation errors (i.e. when bad blocks can't get remapped anymore). See the first diagram.

However, if yours is not one of the SSD drives tested, you may need to repeat the test yourself.

(Added Also see http//ssdendurancetest.com/ for related testing)

 
Posted : 01/10/2016 3:09 pm
(@wotsits)
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This is the one
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Passport-Ultra-Portable-External/dp/B01H4MZE2K/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1475347154&sr=8-3&keywords=wd%2Bpassport&th=1

Is that not an SSD jaclaz?

 
Posted : 01/10/2016 11:41 pm
(@mscotgrove)
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Salesmen are there to sell, not necessarily to tell the full truth, and nothing but the truth

 
Posted : 02/10/2016 12:39 am
MDCR
 MDCR
(@mdcr)
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At £165, it's nowhere near the price of an SSD with that capacity, unless you bought it in a dark alley, no questions asked.

Take the price x 10 for a budget one and x 20 for an enterprise drive with higher quality memory.

 
Posted : 02/10/2016 2:13 am
(@wotsits)
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If it's not an SSD then what is it?

And whatever it is, does it change any of the above answers to my original question?

 
Posted : 02/10/2016 6:25 am
(@yunus)
Posts: 178
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I have seen a 64 GB flash drive that was said to be shrinkin as it is used just like you said. The user brought it for data recovery and said it vas very cheap - so very bad electronics. He complained he saw the capacity of the drive shrank little by little until it became like 4 GB flash drive in a 1 year time

I think this might seem like the situation you mentioned. If very bad electronics, anthing can happen.

 
Posted : 02/10/2016 6:17 pm
MDCR
 MDCR
(@mdcr)
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If it's not an SSD then what is it?

And whatever it is, does it change any of the above answers to my original question?

Look, even if it was an SSD, the results in the test mentioned above is clear

Most of those drives are 240-250 GB, and showed "Clear evidence of flash wear appeared after 200TB of writes" according to the article. At that point you have a factor of 1000 which matches what i have heard of 1000 writecycles on the flashmemory.

Simple math The drive was going to be use up one writecycle every 30 days (4 TB of 4 TB), that would make it last 1000 months = 83 years (probably with the cheaper drive) under very optimistic conditions. Even if it would last "only" 8.3 years, it would still be a good deal.

Samsung (the lowest scoring in the test) themselves boasts 2000000 hours MTBF, that's 228 years (which is probably not correct but..) Assuming you'd get the Enterprise version of their 4TB drive(SM863), the drive can last a really long time.

http//www.samsung.com/us/system/consumer/product/mz/7l/m3/mz7lm3t8e/SSD-PM863SM863BRO-JAN16TFinal1-13-16.pdf

The article featured an extreme overwrite test that was designed to wear the drive out. Still, i'd replace the drive (regardless of being SSD or not) after 5-6 years to make sure i didn't run into any problems. Maby even use RAID too to make sure i can hotswap if uptime was a priority.

And oh yes, i wouldnt connect an SSD over USB3.0, that's just a waste of money. Use SATA3 to get the performance you're paying for - or buy a mechanical drive.

 
Posted : 02/10/2016 8:34 pm
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