ssd's and hibernate

[mr_tim]

Hi
Ive been reading around other forums and saying our sp2's use an SSD as the drive they say using hibernate is bad for the SSD's is this still true?

regards
mr_tim

 

[GoodBytes]

This is false.
They is a LOT of miss information about modern SSD's.
SSD's have come a VERY, but I mean VERY, long way since it's early days. They are significantly more reliable to a point it's not even funny compared to before. And they supports a huge amount of writes.
They are different types of SSD's, and the one in the Surface Pro 2 is a high end one, if I am not mistaken, which handles a huge amount of writes, you can trash it of writes daily and it will pass 7 years easy.
If that SSD was sold in the consumer market, it would have a 5 year warranty like the other similar type of SSD of that range, and not the 'mainstream models' which have a 3 year warranty (also slower). Even the lower end ones. assuming you transfer them in writes daily, they will gladly pass the warranty duration of 3 years. Most likely reach 5 years, by which I highly doubt you'll be using the Surface Pro 2 at this point, assuming it's not a high end range SSD. All assumes no manufacture error, of course, and everything is estimates, of course.

The only information on what you read, that is correct, is that SSD's don't benefit a single moment of defragmentation, as the data inside the memory chips in the SSD are on purpose fragmented, to evenly use all the chips which is one of the technique used (beside better quality chips), boost the life span of the SSD. While I don't recommend it, beside the fact that it's 100% useless, like we are not even taking about 0 millisecond improvement, this is really NO improvements, you can defrag your SSD. It won't die on you or anything like that as suggested on what you read. I am not saying it's OK to do it, it's useless, just wear out the SSD for nothing, and shorten its life. But my point is that SSD are significantly more durable, and they were test done by various web sites which confirms this. It's been many number of years that SSD are out, and when they hit consumer market, huge amount of investment in R&D was done to make them cheaper, faster, and more durable. Sadly, the information you read still echo's on the internet.

 

[drolem]

In most cases, that's BS, pure and simple. The only time it can cause problems if the SSD is full, or nearly full. For proper operation, SSDs should have some free area -- that helps a lot with garbage collection and wear leveling. Read this for more info: Write amplification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I can't give you hard numbers because some of these things are tricky to measure, but as long as you have a reasonable amount (say, 10% - 20%) free space on the SSD, there shouldn't be any adverse effect from hibernating. If you have an SSD that is completely filled up, it's being trashed anyhow, regardless of hibernation. Since the Surface SSDs have several partitions, it's not possible to fill them up completely unless someone also fills up the other partitions (a bit tricky), or create a single partition on the SSD.

Under most circumstances (read, no SSD write/endurance/etc. testing) the SSD should last significantly longer than the battery.

 

[mr_tim]

ahh cool.
thanks for the replies.

 

[GoodBytes]

drolem is correct, well explained too.

To add, already SSDs have a reserved space area that can't be accessed nor visible by the system. It's extra space used, in the case you full the SSD to the max, to prolong the SSD life span.
So it's all smartly done. Like I said, they are many tricks used beside better quality chips to make them last very long, a point that you'll, for sure, change the device or upgrade the SSD (assuming its in a computer that has upgradable SSD), before it even starts to become and issue. And if you think in giving it to someone else as a second life, that person probably only does web surfing and office work, which the last they are, is intensive, or use the SSD filled at it's max capacity, so it's life will be extended even longer under such condition.