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Is it wise to zero-fill a SSD before using it?

2K views 14 replies 4 participants last post by  crjdriver 
#1 · (Edited)
Just bought a SSD for the first time. I used to do a full extended test and then zero fill spinning drives before I started using it to filter out defective drives. Is it wise to do the same thing with SSD or would it shorten its lifespan greatly?

I know it's not recommended to zero fill a USB storage, I am not sure how different SSD technology is from USB sticks though.
 
#2 ·
USB and SSD drives are the same as they both use flash memory. So the principles for one typically apply for the other. If you "zero" fill any flash memory device, you just added wear. And in my opinion, this is totally unnecessary and you've shortened the life span of the drive accordingly. Now doing this once isn't in the grand scheme of things make that big of a difference to the life of the drive. But why do it?
 
#4 · (Edited)
You do not wipe or zero fill a ssd; you can however secure erase a ssd. Secure erase is NOT a format or a wipe; it is a command issued to the drive's controller.
Look, ALL drives fail; it is only a question of when your drive will fail. The best course of action is multiple backups on different media; ie backup on a NAS, another on an external, etc.

The best way to insure your drive lasts for a while is to purchase quality drives. For a ssd, either samsung or intel; both are bullet proof. For a spin drive, WD black series or raptor series. One WD black drive is running in my in-laws system. It is over 9yr old and still working everyday.
 
#6 · (Edited)
kingston 240 gig, I have heard it's not a quality device, but I am mainly using it to test/learn things so I don't mind it dying on me, but if it's bad out of the box, I want to know and I want to swap it out before the exchange period expires.

I have run a long test and it has passed. Now to decide if I want to do a write test as well.
 
#7 · (Edited)
OK, I think there is some misunderstanding regarding ssd drives. You DO NOT do write testing, repeated benchmarks or anything like that. I think kingston has some type of monitoring/drive health software [not completely sure since I do not use kingston drives]
If the drive software says it is ok, it is ok.
If you want the drive to fail, keep doing write tests, benchmarks, etc. This just wears the drive out faster. It is ok to do one benchmark after installing windows, etc however doing it repeatedly is just wearing out your drive.
Here is a screenshot of my nvme drive. As you can see, the benchmark was made almost a month ago after installing win10 enterprise. Do one benchmark to see if it is working correctly however do not do repeated benchmarks.
 

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#9 · (Edited)
Durability ratings are a little hard to find, But some of the newer SSDs have higher ratings.
Back in the W-XP days (without Trim), I got tired of a new SSD every year ..
They start showing their age by getting slow :D

A Kingston 120GB is specified as having 40TBW durability rating ....
(I assume this is the one you have)
I'm now using a Samsung and Western Digital SSDs …
Because of the 150TBW & 100TBW (TerraBytes Written) durability Ratings.

If Kingston has monitoring Software, you should be able to keep an eye on it before getting a new one.

An older 850 and newer 860 Samsung SSD shown ... the 860 has an 8x better TBW rating
 

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#11 ·
What you're suffering wasn't due to flash memory wear. It's referred to as the write cliff. Having TRIM support in your OS sets a certain interval for "garbage collection". Meaning cells marked for the data it has deletion are finally cleared. This process is slows the performance of the drive. That's why it's not done immediately after a deletion call is done or on frequent intervals. Since the OS is aware of I/O going to the drive, it's the best place to determine when the cleanup operation should execute. So if there are no available cells to write data to (due to not having the clean up process performed), I/O operations have to wait till free space is created by going through all the cells marked for deletion are cleared. This is why after a certain point SSD performance just drops off the cliff for write operations...write cliff.

Enterprise level SSDs have TRIM capabilities built in as part of why they will always perform better than consumer grade SSDs. Enterprise drives are also underprovisioned. Meaning there is more storage capacity in the drive than what is presented to the OS/user for storage. The reason this is done is to have additional space available to maintain performance during garbage collection processes along with the ability to do better wear leveling.
 
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