SSD Health Status?

[Acronis]

I have Samsung EVO 840. I didnt checked this drive for health until now, I was surprised to see there is 79% health. it is much worse than mechanical drives that I bough at the same time (100%). I expected ssd technology to be more durable that mechanical drives.
What caused to health fall rapidly? is there any way to improve its health, formatting?

http://imgur.com/a/0gehG

 

[13thmonkey]

HDDs and SSDs age very differently.

HDD's are 'just' monitoring various attributes like spin up time, temps, various counts, damaged sectors etc. If these are all normal then it's 100%, but it could fail tomorrow, with no further warning. They are just indicators that we know when they go bad the drive is likely to have a problem.

SSD's monitor some of these same things, but also they are known to have a limited number of write cycles per flash cell, depending on the architecture 1,500-10,000 (10,000 is impossible to buy now). The controller takes account of how much spare capacity it has to replace worn out cells, how much writing has occurred, and it knows that it has used up n% of it's rated ability to write data. This is what is likely to be the cause of your reduced percentage.

Reading the HDD 79% i'd be worried, it'll mean lots of bad sectors and something that it deteriorating.

Reading the same 79% on an SSD i'd not be at all worried as it's just telling me that you can use it for 5x longer than you already have before it runs out of the ability to write. Assuming this is solely a write problem i'd be happy taking it down to 10%, or as a storage drive 5%, with a HDD i'd be swapping it at 90% ish.

Given it is solid state this is the only 'wear' that occurs, and it is predictable and the drives are built to manage it, for HDD's it's not very predictable and nothing can be done to manage it.

 

[smorizio]

make sure your older drive has the newest firmware. if it does not some firmware on ssd may wipe the drive.
as posted above ssd can read all day long without hurting the live of the drive but extra writes will. check that windows swap file and indexing are off on your pc. look on line at ssd and windows tips and tricks. there are few setting with ssd and windws that you want off to cut down on non needed writes. another tip is have your browsers swap and download folder on your data drive and not the ssd. try and keep temp programs and movies and music and games off the ssd.

 

[13thmonkey]

So the 840 seems to have been released in 2013, lets say it was brought in 2014, so you've had 3 years so far, assuming that your usage pattern will continue as it has been, then you've got another 12 years before that hits zero. Plan to replace or supplement it in 5 or so.

As always have a working backup plan in place....

 

[RARRAF]

the ssd health rating is gauged by the software you are using nothing to do with the actual drive why would you buy an 840 they came out years ago I thought standard now days was an 850 anyway no you cannot format an ssd just enjoy it.

 

[13thmonkey]

the ssd health rating is gauged by the software you are using nothing to do with the actual drive why would you buy an 840 they came out years ago I thought standard now days was an 850 anyway no you cannot format an ssd just enjoy it.

Who said just brought? Brought at the same time as some HDDs is what was said. And yes you can format an SSD, but you are correct in that it will achieve nothing, other than increasing the wear count.

 

[Acronis]

Thanks for explanations.