I just installed an SSD and...

[STC]

Gentlemen, we ask that the intensity of this conversation go down a couple of notches.
You could respectfully disagree, use PM if so inclined or ultimately use the handy ignore feature.

[assassin]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... nm-Vs-34nm

SSD's last a fraction of time compared to spindle. Every single write counts against it's lifespan. That's why SSD's come with a monitor that shows it's wear level. This is not a myth and saying so is a completely ignorant statement. Some SSD's were killed within a matter of days during the endurance tests.

Assassin literally posted a link to the same thread that shows what he said was incorrect.

If you don't sleep your media center and don't stop live TV when you aren't watching (ie: you just get up and leave) then the live TV buffer is literally writing 24/7 to the disk. SSD will not last long at all under these conditions. YMMV depending on which drive/controller/size.

Again... Assassin cherry picked 2 results out of hundreds and based his suggestion on that out of spec information. MOST of those drives in the test died within 2-4 weeks.

Again, you must live on another planet.

Its not if the SSDs failed its when did they fail. This was a torture test. Are you really going to be writing 700+ TiB to your SSD?

The point --- for those reading other than itznfb --- is not to worry about this using a SSD in a HTPC as you will never reach these limitations. Don't be scared off by something this guy posts as says as he is a generous source of misinformation.

You know a great deal about HTPC setup I'll give you that. You know [removed] about hardware though and give horribly inaccurate advice. Yes it's a torture test. And 95% of the drives in the test died within days. Translate that to the 24/7 writes of a live buffer drive and the drive won't last a year. You telling people not to worry about a $150-$400 low capacity high speed investment by sacrificing it needlessly is incredibly irresponsible. Again, you always do this and I can't fathom why people respect your opinion. You use the absolute best results in the best given scenario and use that as your advice. It's ridiculous. 700+ tib was the best of the best in terms of results. Many drives died with data writes equivalent to less than a year of live buffer usage. All but 1 or 2 drives died within 18 months worth of usage.

That's an interesting opinion.

Looks like there are other well respected people that don't know [removed] about hardware either: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1413315/tell- ... rance-test

[neilll]

700+ tib was the best of the best in terms of results. Many drives died with data writes equivalent to less than a year of live buffer usage. All but 1 or 2 drives died within 18 months worth of usage.

Getting confused now....so are you suggesting an SSD is a bad idea for a Media Center or just that if you were running it 24/7 it would not last that long?

[acraigl]

700+ tib was the best of the best in terms of results. Many drives died with data writes equivalent to less than a year of live buffer usage. All but 1 or 2 drives died within 18 months worth of usage.

Getting confused now....so are you suggesting an SSD is a bad idea for a Media Center or just that if you were running it 24/7 it would not last that long?

I think this whole argument stems from the concern around using an SSD for the liveTV buffer, particularly if you leave live TV running all the time. I think most folks here would agree the preferred way to handle this is to have a traditional platter drive (in large capacity) be the default storage, live tv destination, and leave the SSD for OS and apps. In this case, the discussion is moot.

As the OP, I got the information I needed to improve my SSD performance -- so thanks to those that helped. This is a little OT, given my configuration, but interesting all the same.

[neilll]

I think this whole argument stems from the concern around using an SSD for the liveTV buffer, particularly if you leave live TV running all the time. I think most folks here would agree the preferred way to handle this is to have a traditional platter drive (in large capacity) be the default storage, live tv destination, and leave the SSD for OS and apps. In this case, the discussion is moot.

Thanks for clarification. I have a dedicated 1TB SATA drive that my TV Recording goes to, how would I know if it buffers to the same location and if it doesn't is there a way of forcing it?

Personally I probably only watch a few hours of TV a day and the box gets shut down after use, I also don't do that much TV recording either. My main MC use is playback of TV Caps and movies.

[richard1980]

The problem is itznfb is not actually stating the facts of the test. I don't know where he gets ideas like:

"assassin cherry picked 2 results out of hundreds" (There were actually 27 drives in the test, not hundreds; I'm also not counting the drive that was pulled from the test due to LTT.)

"most of the drives died within 2-4 weeks" (2 of the 26 drives died within 2-4 weeks.)

"many drives died with data writes equivalent to less than a year of live buffer usage" (One year of non-stop buffering of a single live TV stream would result in approximately 50 TB of writes (assuming the stream averages the real-world average of 12-15 Mbps). None of the 26 tested drives died with 50 TB of writes or less...and only 4 drives died with writes of less than 250 TB (5 years @ 50 TB per year). It should also be noted that the drives in the test are writing at a MUCH higher speed than a TV buffer would write.)

"95% of the drives in the test died within days" (While technically all the dead drives died within days, itznfb's statement implies they all died within a few days, when in fact most of them died after many days. Not that it matters anyway, because those drives were writing data at a much higher rate than what a live TV buffer would write....even the 2 drives that died within 2-4 weeks wrote 78 and 116 TB respectively.)

[mark1234]

I have a dedicated 1TB SATA drive that my TV Recording goes to, how would I know if it buffers to the same location and if it doesn't is there a way of forcing it?

Unless you've messed around in the registry, the default is that the Live TV buffer goes to the same drive as your Recorded TV folder. It's actually in a hidden subfolder called TempRec.

[neilll]

Unless you've messed around in the registry, the default is that the Live TV buffer goes to the same drive as your Recorded TV folder. It's actually in a hidden subfolder called TempRec.

Excellent news, thank you very much

SSD Project back on the list then

[tommo]

Unless you've messed around in the registry, the default is that the Live TV buffer goes to the same drive as your Recorded TV folder. It's actually in a hidden subfolder called TempRec.

Excellent news, thank you very much

SSD Project back on the list then

I thought that was the case, unless that folder isn't the buffer folder.

[assassin]

The problem is itznfb is not actually stating the facts of the test. I don't know where he gets ideas like:

"assassin cherry picked 2 results out of hundreds" (There were actually 27 drives in the test, not hundreds; I'm also not counting the drive that was pulled from the test due to LTT.)

"most of the drives died within 2-4 weeks" (2 of the 26 drives died within 2-4 weeks.)

"many drives died with data writes equivalent to less than a year of live buffer usage" (One year of non-stop buffering of a single live TV stream would result in approximately 50 TB of writes (assuming the stream averages the real-world average of 12-15 Mbps). None of the 26 tested drives died with 50 TB of writes or less...and only 4 drives died with writes of less than 250 TB (5 years @ 50 TB per year). It should also be noted that the drives in the test are writing at a MUCH higher speed than a TV buffer would write.)

"95% of the drives in the test died within days" (While technically all the dead drives died within days, itznfb's statement implies they all died within a few days, when in fact most of them died after many days. Not that it matters anyway, because those drives were writing data at a much higher rate than what a live TV buffer would write....even the 2 drives that died within 2-4 weeks wrote 78 and 116 TB respectively.)

Good points.

I think someone in another forum summed it up best...

Rough calculations of SSD lifespan with NAND having an estimated 3,000 write cycles (estimated for 25nm) at 100GB host writes per day (around 12 hours/day of recorded/buffered HD video). Formula's not the most accurate but it makes for a good enough guess.

256GB
Total Host Writes: 768,000 GB or 750 TB
768,000 GB / 100 GB/day / 365 days/yr = ~21 years

128GB
Total Host Writes: 384,000 GB or 375 TB
384,000 GB / 100 GB/day / 365 days/yr = ~10.5 years

64GB
Total Host Writes: 192,000 GB or 188 TB
192,000 GB / 100 GB/day / 365 days/yr = ~5.3 years

40GB (@25nm 3,000 PE)
Total Host Writes: 120,000 GB or 117 TB
120,000 GB / 100 GB/day / 365 days/yr = ~3.3 years

40GB (@34nm 5,000 PE)
Total Host Writes: 200,000 GB or 195 TB
200,000 GB / 100 GB/day / 365 days/yr = ~5.5 years

You'd likely see some random controller failure before you hit the limit of NAND endurance.

[STC]

This is good. We need DATA people!

Data rocks.

Insults, not so much...

[crawfish]

Someone needs to tell Intel to stop lowballing their reliability specs, which is 5 years at 20 GB/day, or < 40 TB, for my X25-M and even the more recent 520 series. Their document on over-provisioning X25-M has a chart for the 160 GB model, and its data points are: (0%, 29 TB), (10%, 68), (20%, 104), and (40%, 150), with the 0% pair being the figure for drives OOTB formatted to maximum capacity, which is what most people are going to do. I guess this was all incredibly over-conservative BS? I really would like to know, because I over-provisioned my 120 GB drive based on it. My understanding is that more recent drives actually decrease the maximum write cycles to eke out more performance. So basically I'm flabbergasted by these huge numbers being floated around.

[itznfb]

With several media centers running and calculations of data usage as a live TV buffer on Verizon FiOS approximately 70TB of data is written per year in buffer space alone. ~6-8gb/hour. Add in scheduled recordings, dual tuner, quad tuner as well as other activity and average usage brings you close to 100TB a year or more depending on usage. Most drives will die in that time and the data from the endurance test backs up that statement. Especially with unreliable SandForce based drives which are so popular.

Using a SSD as the boot/app drive and a regular HDD as a recording drive is the best solution. Having a SSD for a boot/app drive will give you a huge performance boost and won't incur that many writes.

It comes down to value. SSDs are expensive. What do get for that additional cost by using a SSD as a recording drive? Nothing. You can't record live TV faster unless you can time travel and 5400rpm drives are perfectly capable of handling the task.

[barnabas1969]

I agree. I'm not sure if "Most drives will die in that time and the data from the endurance test backs up that statement", is correct... but I agree anyway.

The horse is dead. Can we stop beating it please?