this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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I generally wouldn't recommend this, especially if you're using a cheaper SSD without cache or with QLC memory.
As you already know, cells on an SSD have limited write cycles (as low as 700 for QLC memory) and things like TRIM and wear leveling make sure that your SSD wears uniformly, but on cheaper SSDs the endurance is so low that without cache you will run into wearing issues in a few years of regular use or a few months if you're using it a lot or with swap enabled. I have seen it first hand many times working in a repair shop.
Keep in mind that endurance is not just a number of terabytes written that will cause your drive to suddenly switch to read-only mode, before it fails it will usually slow down to the point of making your PC unusable, I've seen SSDs write as slow as 9MB/s (specifically a Yucun drive from 2018 with TLC memory and no cache), it's not defective it just has to do a lot of error correction during writes.
Also, another issue that plagues cheap SSDs is that their controllers usually die well before the memory does, keep that in mind when choosing an SSD because this usually happens without early signs of failure or SMART errors.
So in general, unless your PC has a lot of RAM and that swap area will rarely be used, don't use swap and use zram instead (or just buy more RAM?).
Well, TIL.
Is there any way you can estimate the health status of an SSD?
Check the SMART status. If you're using KDE you can install plasma-disks which nicely integrates into it and warns you of potential failures.
This won't predict controller failures of course, those are generally unpredictable, but sometimes SSD controllers that are about to fail will show massive lag spikes or straight up disconnect while you're using them, if that happens back up your stuff immediately.
Another sign of early failure is extremely slow write speeds. All SSDs slow down a bit after a while once the cache is full, but if you see speeds slower than a mechanical drive, the memory is dying.
Very rarely, you'll see uncorrectable errors like being unable to open a file, a corrupt file system or files with corrupted chunks (usually 4kb blocks of zeros). If that happens it's already too late.
Also, the health status of a drive only indicates how worn the memory is, don't expect the drive to last until it gets to 0%, it's rare to even get to 60%.
sweet thanks!
Ooh, so... Would a crucial P3 2280 500gb fall into this category?
P3 is QLC, yes
Oh, saad didn't knew that, so like, that means this ssd is super bad? And should i remove the swap here? (I have 8gb of ram and 4 of swap)
Oh and how to i set up Zram?
If you only have 8gb you're probably swapping a lot, depends on what you do with your PC.
Anyway, to set up zram the easiest way is to try this: https://github.com/systemd/zram-generator/tree/main Also, take a look at the zram page on the arch wiki, even if you're not using arch it's very well made: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Zram
I usually only see swapping when I'm like, playing on big Minecraft modpacks which i don't usually do much, but ok thanks!