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 Post Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2025 2:11 am 
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Curious about this because i have 3 Crucial Solid State Drives in my PC and one of them is showing only 6% lifetime remaining, via the Crucial Storage Executive tool.

The other 2 SSD's are 78% and 98% lifetime remaining so i'm not worried about them but 6% has alarmed me enough that i've freed up space on other drives and moved data to mechanical drives (HDD) so if S.M.A.R.T. is correct and the SSD is close to failing i won't lose any stored data.

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The SSD that is nearing end of life is heavily used and around 5-6 years old, i only noticed it when i couldn't find anything else to do online (one of those days when everything annoys lol) so i decided to look for updated drivers etc and thought i might as well open the Crucial tool to see if there were any updated firmware for the drives... that's when i noticed the end of life warning.

From what i can find online S.M.A.R.T seems to be pretty reliable, and when an SSD fails it's pretty much impossible to recover any data from it so alarm bells rang... replacing the SSD isn't an issue and if what i've read is correct then i'm glad i had a look when i did ~ it's not something i normally check, in fact maybe only once a year, if that!


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 Post Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2025 6:58 am 
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The SMART report is a guideline based on the expected life expectancy of the drive. 6% does not mean that the drive is going to fail but it well could. Personally I only look at reports from drive maker's utilities as a general guideline not something carved in stone. For instance my WD 1 TB M.2 drive is my system drive and is probably going on 2 years old or, at least, well over a year. The WD utilities reports 99% life left. I don't really believe that but it DOES tell me the drive is OK.

With the price of SS drive being pretty low I'd replace the drive just to be safe. The thing could last forever or fail tomorrow; there is just really no way to know from SMART reports. Now if you are running complete diagnostics and it reports an increasing number of bad sectors you KNOW the drive is on the way out. SMART just isn't the same but I'd still replace the drive.

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 Post Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 2:48 pm 
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Thanks Jay, you confirmed what i was already suspecting.

I'm certainly going to replace the SSD in the coming weeks, debating with myself now whether to replace it with a mechanical drive that will be slower but larger for about the same cost.
I'm leaning toward a HDD and moving the data off one of my other SSD's onto the HDD, then use that SSD for any heavy lifting i need to do.


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 Post Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 5:38 pm 
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For me it would depend on the drive usage. For data or media storage, sure, mechanical is fine but I want my system and video conversion drives to be SSD.

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 Post Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 6:58 pm 
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I think we are of the same mind... my other two (non NVMe M.2) SSD's are only being used for storage since i upgraded my PC motherboard and added an NVME M.2 card that Win10 and my software are now installed on, meaning in effect i now have 2 other SSD's that are only being used for storage.

Rather than replace the 'nearing end of life' SSD with like for like, it seems to me it would make more sense to buy a cheaper mechanical drive with (arguably) a far longer lifespan and (certainly) far greater storage space by moving the data off one of my existing SSD's and onto the new mechanical drive, so repurposing that SSD for tasks that need faster read/write speeds.

Curently i'm looking at this 4TB Seagate drive for £89.99GBP from Amazon which when all things considered seems incredibly cheap.

Seagate BarraCuda, 4TB, Internal Hard Drive, 3.5 Inch, SATA, 6GB/s, 5,400 RPM, 256MB Cache, for Computer Desktop PC, FFP:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07D9C7SQH/?coliid=I124LQWHXRBEWO&colid=1S04ZZ9R00Q31

As an aside, as well as my solid state drives i also have 3 older (very old!) mechanical drives meaning all 6 of my motherboard SATA ports are filled, along with one of the M.2 sockets.
By buying the 4TB drive i could not only copy the data from the 'nearing end of life' SSD but also move data from one or more of the old mechanical drives and free up a SATA port so i can plug back in a SATA CD-ROM drive.... I miss having a CD-ROM drive ready and waiting to go, i know... i'm a dinosaur but sometimes they are just easier for me to work with ;)


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 Post Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 7:17 pm 
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I recommend that you also look at Hitachi, now HGST, drives.
HGST Ultrastar 4 TB
These drives actually still have a 5 year warranty. I have several including 4 and 6 TB. Some have been running for 9-10 years without issue.

Hitachi used to be a stand alone company until Western Digital bought them out as Seagate bought out Maxtor. The difference is that WD kept the Hitachi quality just re-branding to HGST. When Seagate bought out Maxtor they just absorbed the drives without maintaining the Maxtor quality.

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 Post Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 7:52 pm 
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Funny you should mention Hitachi and HSGT, i did look for Hitachi drives and couldn't find anything in the UK other than refurbished (wouldn't touch refurbished with a barge pole!).

I did also see mention of HSGT but again anything labelled as such is very few and far between in the UK and what is available is off the chart expensive.

I also noted that Western Digital had bought Hitachi and for a time they maintained the Hitachi (or HSGT) badge, sadly it looks like HSGT and Hitachi are now fully defunct and intigrated into Western Digital, at least in the UK... i don't know for sure.


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 Post Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 8:00 pm 
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Oops, HSGT = HGST in the post above :oops:


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 Post Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 8:18 pm 
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Must be a UK thing as HGST is readily available here.

The main thing I don't like about the Seagate is the 5400 RPM. You will have faster access with a 7200 RPM drive.

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 Post Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 8:27 pm 
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Yes the spin spead of the drive did grab my attention but as this will be for archived data not regularly accessed, it'll be one of the trade offs i alluded to earlier that in reality i likely won't even notice... i hope LOL


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 Post Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 8:31 pm 
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One other thing, i actually kind of liked Western Digital hard drives because in my experience they were cheap and (for me at least) reliable, i can no longer say they are cheap when compared to what else is on the market.


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 Post Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 10:07 pm 
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I DO have a couple of Seagate drives that have lasted well but, even if a little more money, I would still prefer HGST/WD. A lot of that is just the fact that I've had good luck with them so why switch? ;)

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 Post Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 10:18 pm 
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If you don't hear from me moaning about the Seagate Barracuda drive by Jan 2036 it'll be a fair bet the drive likely outlasted me.
Time will tell! LOL


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 Post Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 10:59 pm 
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Let's see... 2036 and I'd be 81 and I wonder if I'll still remember what an HDD is. ;)

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 Post Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 11:05 pm 
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Fear not, i'll be 71 and i'll do my best to remind you how a Hard Drive works if you've forgotten :oops: :rofl2:


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 Post Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2025 1:14 am 
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LOL! In 11 years HDD will probably be used as much as a dot matrix printer is now. In 11 years, even if there are still HDD's available they will be for PCIe connections instead of SATA in the mainstream. PCIe connections are as far ahead of SATA as SATA is over IDE.

BTW, as to longevity, SSD tend to last longer than HDD. I only looked at one article but it stated that an HHD can be expected to last 3-5 years and an SSD up to 10 years. Personally I question this as I have some perfectly fine HHD's that are well over the stated life span. I think some of the shorter stated life span for an HDD is case temperature. I run both my desktops with the side cover off so they are obviously going to run cooler. My main system sits in a recess between my entertainment stands so you would not even know that the side cover is off. The second desktop is in my bedroom with the open side facing a wall so, again, you would never notice the missing side cover. As an example my system M.2 1 TB drive is only currently running at 87F while my 6 TB spin drive is running at 118 F. With the side cover on I guarantee that both temps would be at least 20 F higher. Heat is the enemy especially for an HDD as it has moving parts that rely on bearings and the hotter a bearing runs the shorter it will survive. Shoot my high level video card in my main only runs at around 125 F with 7 games running on my taskbar.. BTW my main is running an AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT for graphics. It is getting a bit long in the tooth at 6-7 years old but still a beast.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2025 10:12 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
BTW, as to longevity, SSD tend to last longer than HDD. I only looked at one article but it stated that an HHD can be expected to last 3-5 years and an SSD up to 10 years. Personally I question this as I have some perfectly fine HHD's that are well over the stated life span. ~Edited for emphasis.

I couldn't agree more with that sentiment about the expected life span of a HDD being between 3-5 years. Maybe in a business server that's constantly working 24/7 under heavy load that is true but in a home PC i very much doubt that to be true.

I've only ever had one HDD drive catastrophically fail on me and that one was well past the 5 year mark, i'm guessing from memory but i think it was around the 10 year mark, even then i was able to recover about 80% of the data from the drive when it failed to be recognised by the OS or the BIOS (Win98 days but may have been Win95?)... in part that was my fault because i didn't act fast enough on the telltale signs that the drive was failing, those typically caused by the drive becoming noisy as the actuator or platter began to flap about.

I'd have to open my case and check the manufacture dates on my current HDD's but i'd be surprised if at least 2 of the 3 currently in use are less than 10 years old, the third i think is maybe 5 to 7 years old but i couldn't swear on that without opening the case and pulling the drive to check the label on it.

In almost every event when i have replaced a HDD it's always been because i needed more storage space... a prime example being i ran a (now long time ago) very old Seagate 250MB drive for about 15 years before i replaced it for a HDD with more storage space, there was nothing at all wrong with the drive other than as videos and binaries grew in size i needed more storage space and i'd run out of motherboard IDE ports to add another HDD, so it was consigned to the history books.
[I did open a topic elsewhere on this Forum several years ago about disposal of old drives purely because i'd amassed a stack of perfectly working smaller HDD's over the years and didn't want them falling into the wrong hands.]

Anyways, what's surprised me is the relatively short lifespan of my "Nearing end of life" SSD after only circa 5-6 years of use, that, and when it does fail it appears that that's it, there is no chance of data recovery from it! :shock:

With all that said, i can't help wonder if the belief that an SSD will outlive a HDD isn't just marketing speak so people will buy them instead of a HDD, especially when it's for local storage on a home PC?


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 Post Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2025 10:55 pm 
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Pretty sure the life expectancy is based on no moving parts in the SSD.


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 Post Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2025 11:04 pm 
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Actually the life of an SSD being significantly longer than an HDD is true and false at the same time. It seems to depend a lot on the size of the SSD as it appears that the larger the SSD the longer the expected lifespan. Especially newer SSD's have what is called 'auto-wear leveling'. This means that writes are spread out over the entire drive to minimize individual sector fails. It just makes sense that a larger drive would have more room to spread out the writes causing less wear on individual sectors making the drive last longer than a smaller unit with less space to spread out the writes.

<edit>
@ David: Yes, no moving parts is a major factor as to why an SSD is expected to last longer but it isn't the whole story.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2025 11:34 pm 
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dvair wrote:
Pretty sure the life expectancy is based on no moving parts in the SSD.

In theory that makes sense but if the read/write ratio doesn't outlive the life expectancy of a mechanical HDD i fail to see the benefit of SSD in a long term storage scenario.

Couple that with when a SSD fails it's all but impossible to recover any data from it unlike a HDD, which when it fails there is at least some chance you may be able to recover some data.

In any case, i'm still not sold on using memory/SSD as a long term storage medium given how quickly this SSD of mine seems to be 'expiring'.

With regular backups of my M.2 card containing my OS and applications, along with at least one SSD for heavy lifting, moving forward i'll likely drop the thought of getting everything onto SSD over time.


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 Post Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2025 9:17 pm 
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In the end i decided to pay a wee bit more for a Western Digital 4TB HDD, this one at £94.99 GBP inc shipping direct from WD in the UK...

WD Blue PC Desktop Hard Drive - 4 TB
https://www.westerndigital.com/en-gb/products/internal-drives/wd-blue-desktop-sata-hdd?sku=WD40EZAX

The main reasons for my decision for this drive over the Seagate drive were because when i looked at drives on the WD website i noticed there was a choice of "Recording Technology", something i'd never heard of before and had no idea what the difference was... a little research later and it appears there's a very big difference.

cf. CMR vs. SMR Hard Drives: What's the Difference?
https://www.howtogeek.com/803276/cmr-vs.-smr-hard-drives-whats-the-difference/

When i went to the Seagate website and looked at the specs for their BarraCuda drives it appears all of them are SMR (something not mentioned at all in the Amazon listings i looked at :hips3: )

Also, i know transferring between 1 and 3 TB of data to the new drive will take a lot of time but i'd rather it didn't take days, or potentially up to a week or more.

Anyway, the decision is made but i have to say in this digital age you can never take anything for granted... it's a constant stream of homework to try and make a correct decision! LOL

Edit: I maybe could have saved a bit more by buying the WD drive on Amazon or elsewhere, but again there was no mention if they were CMR or SMR :twisted:


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 Post Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2025 10:27 pm 
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Question that i hope someone can answer:

I've been trying to find out more about CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) versus SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) Hard Disk Drives, but i keep coming across videos and articles like this where a slower CMR spin speed drive continuously appears to outperform faster SMR spinning drives:

SMR vs CMR - Desktop HDD Group Performance testing
Quote:
SMR is bad, right? Ever wanted to see how bad? I run numerous performance tests on a desktop CMR drive and 5 SMR drives from Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba and find out that they all perform very differently. Find out the Good, the Bad and the Ferociously Ugly.

https://youtu.be/hAijmZsTd2A?si=uYh3Wojy_x5gClUc

I'm struggling to believe that videos like this are accurate because it just doesn't make sense that HDD manufacturers would shoot themselve in the foot like this, i guess they must be because when you look at the comments no-one is calling the video author's out.

My question is this, are these videos to be believed?
I can't get my head around why SMR is slower yet costs more (in most cases) than CMR and gives no apparent advantage at all... it would make sense if a 2TB shingled drive magically stored 4TB for a few dollars more but that doesn't appear to be the case, indeed, it appears you'd be paying a few dollars more to own the worst of the worst.
I also don't understand why the manufacturers are hiding whether a drive is based on CMR or SMR in a Data Sheet instead of being open and up front about it.

I don't get it :dunno:
I'm just glad i picked up on this this when i did and got the chance to order a CMR HDD from WD, still can't help wonder that i must be missing something?


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