Do you put your SSD to sleep?

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Meganano

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I've become addicted to sleep since building my Core I5-2500K rig with it's near zero power consumption in that state. However I've read several postings that suggest that SSD's don't sleep well, in particular,

"Crucial also suggested not to let their (or any) SSD sleep, because they don't do that well." http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148348&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=100&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo

If I have to give up sleep I'd like to be prepared before taking the SSD plunge.
 

tecmo34

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Yes... I would recommend disabling sleep / hibernation. SSD use so little power there is no need to in that sense, plus their access times they startup quickly. The benefit is having it in Idle is the Garbage Collection / TRIM works best that way. Also, there are many reported issues with a SSD bricking after waking up, so it isn't worth it to me :)
 
In "sleep" mode the computer system is still running, but in a lower-power state. Any scheduled tasks will cause the computer to wake up and process them.

In "hibernate" mode an image of the contents of RAM is dumped to the hard drive so that it can be reloaded quickly to without having to go through the normal startup process. The computer is actually off and scheduled tasks will not wake it up.

In "hybrid sleep" mode an image of RAM contents is dumped to the hard drive but power to RAM is also maintained so that RAM contents are preserved and startup is virtually instantaneous. The hard drive image is used to restart the system if there's a power interruption. Although RAM is powered, the CPU is off and scheduled tasks do not wake the system up.

With the OS on an SSD, "Hibernate" and "Hybrid Sleep" modes do write to the SSD, the amount depending on how much RAM is in use. Unfortunately it's not possible to move the hibernation file to a different drive. This means that a nontrivial amount of the write lifetime of the SSD is used to go into these modes.

I have a 160GB Intel X-25M G2 drive and I use hybrid sleep mode, but only a few times a week at most. This drive is rated for a lifespan of "at least 5 years" at a write rate of 20GB/day. In the 18 months I've been using it I've averaged about 5GB/day, which puts me on track for a 20-year lifespan, far longer than I expect the drive to be useful to me.

If you typically have no more than a few GB of RAM in use and if you usually don't use sleep mode more than once or twice per day, I'd say that it's reasonable to use with your SSD.
 

Meganano

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It sounds like there's several issues here,
1. whether the SSD can enter and recover from non-hybrid sleep.
2. avoiding hibernation and hybrid sleep because writing data from RAM uses space and wears out the SSD.

My system is powered through an USP (uninterpretable power supply) which indicates "0" power draw during sleep. After reading the comments from sminlal I changed from Hybrid Sleep to Sleep as there's probably no need to back up RAM when on UPS.

I'm still unclear as to whether non-hybrid sleep will be an issue for an SSD. It will probably take longer to boot and shut down with SSD than to wake from sleep with HDD.

Without need for daily reboots, my reasons for adding SSD reduce to,
1. desire to keep data on separate drive from OS and programs to simplify rebuilding the system when it gets corrupt (This would be satisfied by a 2nd HDD)
2. accelerated loading of programs and that feeling of increased zippiness.
 

Meganano

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I heat my house with wood that falls in my yard, no AC, no public utilities. You may not care, but I do
 

Meganano

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I asked tech support at Crucial about SSD's and sleep. His response was that some systems have trouble, seems it has to do with allowing adequate time for garbage collection before sleep. It would seem that the solution here would be to set the delay before sleep sufficiently high and to minimize writes. I'm surprised that Windows 7 wouldn't manage this as it does other aspects of SSD installation.

But then maybe I should just turn off sleep and replace all my CFL's with incandescent lights and leave them on all day.
 

pGrnd

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This is a long time post, and I asking you due to the

"Also, there are many reported issues with a SSD bricking after waking up, so it isn't worth it to me :)"

can you point me to some references of this issue?
I cant really find anything on that
(and it just happened to me)
 

Maxwelle103

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I would testify to this. It happened two weeks ago. I had, two corsair force gt 120gb ssd in raid 0. upon waking it up from sleep, one of the ssd's failed. I replaced them with two intel 520's. I just turned off sleep/hibernation mode altogether. not worth it for me either.
 

pGrnd

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Hi Maxwelle103

-sorry for you loss-,

mostly I asked, because I had the SSD with no so much use (just about a year), and I lost important info that I didn't have backup for, so I was wandering if Corsair should be responsible for it when it was never advice "DO NOT USE THIS SSD WITH SLEEP MODE, THEY WILL BRAKE WITHOUT ANY PRIOR INDICATION" (the smart was saying perfect health ssd)

and recovering data from an SSD is such a expensive thing....

 

Meganano

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"DO NOT USE THIS SSD WITH SLEEP MODE, THEY WILL BRAKE WITHOUT ANY PRIOR INDICATION"

I that "BRAKE" to a full stop or just enough to slow down?
 
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