Can OS ruin your ssd drive?

Hello. I have the 8Gb 512ram version originally with Linpus
I installed ubuntu netbook remix but the wireless didn't work. I have seen some fixes but they involve a lot of terminal commands.
Then I heard about ubuntu Easy Peasy (originally designed for Eee machines) -and great stuff, it works.

I have since heard there may be an issue with some operating systems writing all the time to the disk and wearing it out. I spoke to someone at Acer and he didn't know about EasyP but he did say that that was a problem with people that put XP on their SSD machines -and gave a lifetime for the disk of between 3-6 months. :shock:
Is there any substance to this and if so can it be avoided(?) I have a vague idea that I saw something about changing the filesystem on the partition(?)
I'm happy to try another OS but I don't like linpus and I'm used to ubuntu.

 

I found this http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

How long have you got before the disk is trashed?

For this illustrative calculation I'm going to pick the following parameters:-
Configuration:- a single flash SSD. (Using more disks in an array could increase the operating life.)
Write endurance rating:- 2 million cycles. (The typical range today for flash SSDs is from 1 to 5 million. The technology trend has been for this to get better.

When this article was published, in March 2007, many readers pointed out the apparent discrepancy between the endurance ratings quoted by most flash chipmakers and those quoted by high-reliability SSD makers - using the same chips.

In many emails I explained that such endurance ratings could be sample tested and batches selected or rejected from devices which were nominally guaranteed for only 100,000 cycles.

In such filtered batches typically 3% of blocks in a flash SSD might only last 100,000 cycles - but over 90% would last 1 million cycles. The difference was managed internally by the controller using a combination of over-provisioning and bad block management.

Even if you don't do incoming inspection and testing / rejection of flash chips over 90% of memory in large arrays can have endurance which is 5x better than the minimum quoted figure.

Since publishing this article, many oems - including Micron - have found the market demand big enough to offer "high endurance" flash as standard products.)

AMD marketed "million cycle flash" as early as 1998.
Sustained write speed:- 80M bytes / sec (That's the fastest for a flash SSD available today and assumes that the data is being written in big DMA blocks.)
capacity:- 64G bytes - that's about an entry level size. (The bigger the capacity - the longer the operating life - in the write endurance context.)

Today single flash SSDs are available with 160G capacity in 2.5" form factor from Adtron and 155G in a 3.5" form factor from BiTMICRO Networks.

Looking ahead to Q108 - 2.5" SSDs will be available upto 412GB from BiTMICRO. And STEC will be shipping 512GB 3.5" SSDs.

 

Thanks Dougg, I read your article and feel a little more at ease. EasyPeasy is designed for netbooks and atom processors so I guess it can't be too bad.
Still if anyone knows extra tweaks that will ease write traffic let me know.
Have any of youaspire users had a SSD failure?- and if so after how long and on what OS?
Cheers, Tad

 

Is there any way to check disk wear? I've been using my AAO with an 8GB SSD for a total of about 7 months. Ubuntu was installed about 2 months in with a 1GB swap partition (not sure how great that is for my HD...) and an ext2 filesystem. So far, it's still alive.

In terms of usage, I don't do a lot of end-user file deleting/writing to the hard disk; this is generally just used for internet browsing/email/note taking (though I do that in Google Docs, so it doesn't affect my HD much). Hibernation is never used, although it's in a perpetual state of suspend or on. The only time I power it off is when it powers itself off due to a dead battery.

I'm not sure how long this'll last, but I'm hoping maybe for another two years or so. With the purchase price that I paid being about the same as an iPod touch, I don't really expect it to last (or at least see daily usage) for more than 3-4 years.

 

I've been using my AAO 110 for about 9 mos already.. I've reinstalled the OS so many times.. Linpus to XP to Mandriva, then back to linpus on several versions, and now ubuntu 9.04NR....and it's still working...

 

It seems my fears were unfounded....

 

I am not an expert but I have researched the concept of wearing out SSD's and it appears to me is that if you use ext3 format then you will have more wear on your SSD due to more system writes while ext2 will not have as many system writes.