Myth busters - IT Wear and Tear - Are we supposed to keep solid state devices on all the time?

Marty UK

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Hi All,

Another question to mechanical techies out there.

I recall reading about wear and tear dos and don'ts. Is any of the below true?
Feel free to point me to good, credible, web site links for the below :)


True or false?:


1. Old style Spinning Hard disc laptops - Best to turn off when not use?
- This best saves wear and tear of physical moving parts?
- The spinning hard disc is the primary source of wear and tear.


2. New style Solid state Hard Drive devices - E.g. Mobile phones - Best to keep on all the time?!
- The solid state memory addresses only have a fixed amount of reuses - This is the primary source of wear and tear.
- Turning off and turning on these types of devices uses up alot of solid state memory
- Also for iphones, a lot of processes to close, then reopen
- Thus best not to turn off every night. Just put on airplay mode / Night mode / Set on charge / Back up etc.


3. New style Smart Mobile phones - Best for battery to not turn off every night?!
Would this be true as well?

Hope you can advise

Kind regards
Martin
 
Both Hard Drives and SSDs are sufficiently durable that you're not going to wear them out during normal use in their useful lifespan. Unless you're doing something very disk heavy - unlikely on a laptop or phone - then it's not something to worry about.

Batteries obviously do wear out but I'm not sure whether a very small overnight drain or the large spike from startup would be worse. Charging behaviour and heat seems to be the big killer though.
 
I found useful failrly recent web site:

Sept 2018


Key outtake for SSD Drives:

"...

Just like hard drives, SSDs can wear out, though for different reasons. With hard drives, it’s often just the mechanical reality of a spinning motor that wears down over time. Although there are no moving parts inside an SSD, each memory bank has a finite life expectancy — a limit on the number of times it can be written to and read from before it stops working. Logic built into the drives tries to dynamically manage these operations to minimize problems and extend its life.

For practical purposes, most of us don’t need to worry about SSD longevity. An SSD you put in your computer today will likely outlast the computer. But it’s sobering to remember that even though SSDs are inherently more rugged than hard drives, they’re still prone to the same laws of entropy as everything else in the universe.


...."
 
Li-ion batteries can only be charged a certain number of times - and don't like being run flat. They will quite happily tolerate top up charges - which older cell chemistry batteries like NiMH would not, leading to memory effect and reduced charge capacity. It's therefore better to not fully discharge them, but to keep them topped up where possible.

I re-boot my phone and laptop on a weekly basis just to ensure updates etc. are applied. I send my laptop to sleep when not in use, so this limits read/write operations to the SSD.
 
It was NiCd that suffered heavily from the memory effect rather than NiMH. NiMH is frequently used in applications where it gets topped up such as car batteries and cordless phones.

NiMH is actually pretty contemporary with Lithium Ion. Wikipedia's Battery History article says NiMH was released commercially in 1989, Lithium Ion in 1991.

While Lithum Ion batteries don't like being kept in a discharged state, neither do they like being kept fully charged and repeatedly topping them up to 100% will hasten their aging.
 
My experience with my last two pc’s, both with hard drive failures. I’d turn my pc on in the morning and off at night. Last hd went after 5 years. My son who almost always leaves his pc on 24/7. It must be over ten years old, with no issues.
 
My experience with my last two pc’s, both with hard drive failures. I’d turn my pc on in the morning and off at night. Last hd went after 5 years. My son who almost always leaves his pc on 24/7. It must be over ten years old, with no issues.

Go Figure! :)
 
Both spinning disks and SSDs have sector (a small blob of data-space) re-mapping algorithms. This means that if a bad sector is detected, then it is 'quietly'* changed in firmware to point to a different part of the storage.
Both of the disks have a stochastic (i.e. one off) chance and a deterministic (i.e. how many times they have been written to) chance of getting any sector as being marked bad.

With spinning disks, leaving them on for long periods of time is often 'less risky' than turning them off at night and back on again in the morning. There is also a difference between a server and desktop version of a disk in this aspect. I have delivered to a customer, (at their demand) a few thousand disks to go into a server farm, but at a cheaper 'desktop' version. For 2 years these disks were running 24/7 without any detected issues. However, after a power cut, 60% of the disks failed to start spinning again. SSDs would not have this issue (nothing to spin), but, would desktop SSDs would be subject to a higher deterministic wear of the 'memory', as the components are cheaper and not necessarily built to the same demanding specs.

What I have heard from some people, but have not had a manufacturer confirm, is that an SSD shouldn't be used for backup media. As after a while too many 'bits' of data on the 'memory' could be flipped if the SSD is left unpowered without the error correction code running. Not too sure on this myself. I know for standard memory this is 'an issue' (not one that most people would see), but SSD memory is a different type of beast.

So, if both disks were run for light house-hold use for the same amount of time for a year, turning them off and on twice a day, you would expect more failures on the spinning disk.
However, if they were under heavy use and left on 24/7, if they are both desktop variants probably the SSD would fail first due to running out of spare sectors to re-write.
IF you left an SSD on overnight, with the way OS's write logs and stuff to disk, and turn the spinning disk off, then I would suspect that the SSD might fail first.

Probably best turning both off, that way you save electricity costs, and instead by a second external disk and ensure you backup to that once a week. (that might also save you from ransomware too)


* it can be detected/checked and is a way of determining old age.
 

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