[satyr]

At the bottom of the post there are two or three specific questions, but for the beginning let's start (I'll try to be as short as possible) with the whole story...

In May last year I got myself a brand new Dell Mini 9 netbook (with Intel Atom N270 CPU and 8 GB SSD). And even though I was taking a good care of the SSD (actually, I was almost paranoid about/obsessed with it, meaning that for instance I was trying to avoid as much unnecessary disk accesses/writes as possible; e.g. I've rather used a USB key as a location for Shared folders, I haven't installed many additional programs, and especially not huge ones etc.), especially compare to my friend who has the same type of SSD (and who carelessly installs almost everything that he crosses, and also in general he puts much more stress to his - the same Dell Mini 9 - netbook, by for example viewing online TV on it etc.), it died no more than 1 year later, while in friend's case his SSD now works normally for more than 2 years!

Now, the computer was still under warranty so I got a new one for free, but that doesn't matter much (if that can/might/will happen again) and it's beside the point here. I mean, I am interested in general: is there anything else (beside not stressing it unnecessarily) that I could do so that I would have a better chance for this new SSD of mine to last longer?

As first, I noticed that by default it's set to have no pagefile (i.e. "No paging file" under System - Performance - Advanced), which I later changed to 512 MB initial and 1024 MB maximal size (since I remember reading on Ars Technica forum that some apps require pagefile even if the machine has plenty of RAM), and so I am asking this again: maybe this is actually a good thing (a sort of a precaution measure)?

Secondly, since one of the members on Ars Technica forum said that defragging will make SSDs wear out faster, I am wondering: maybe this is also the reason why Dell's technicians (or whoever initially setup my system) disabled the Task Scheduler service on my Dell Mini 9 netbook (the boot-file placement optimization is a part of Prefetching, which requires/runs through Task Scheduler)?!

Thanks for any advice, opinion, tip, or whatever!

---------- Post added at 03:05 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:51 AM ----------

Oh and one more thing/question: do you think that (as a precaution measure) I should turn-off write caching feature (it is on by default) as I am used to do in case of common disk-drives?

You see, the main reason that I am used to always disable it on all my new Windows XP installations (and also on my friends' computers) is that I've read somewhere that experiencing a power outage or a system freeze/restart can not only cause data loss/corruption (which might not matter that much), but can also result in hard-disk's failure.

[holmes4]

We've seen a lot of folks here with SSDs that died early. I don't think it's due to excessive writes, but rather component failure. I have one of the original RunCore SSDs and it's going on close to two years now, but others have seen those fail as well. It's not a case of how well you care for it.

Microsoft says there's no harm in having the pagefile enabled on an SSD, but if you have 2GB RAM my advice is to disable it - at least that's what I have done. Defragging is definitely a no-no. Windows 7 will automatically disable its defragger if it detects an SSD. XP didn't have an automatic defragger. I would not fuss with settings such as write caching (which uses RAM and is harmless or even beneficial.)

[satyr]

Originally Posted by holmes4

We've seen a lot of folks here with SSDs that died early. I don't think it's due to excessive writes, but rather component failure.

Well, that's a sad news for me!

Originally Posted by holmes4

XP didn't have an automatic defragger. I would not fuss with settings such as write caching (which uses RAM and is harmless or even beneficial.)

Yeah, I still use XP. Anyway, regarding the write caching feature; you say that it's using RAM, but isn't this particular write caching strictly hard-disk (or in this case SSD) related - in terms that it's "occurring" on the disk itself (i.e. AFAIK a cache located on the disk itself)?

Isn't what you're describing the so-called file caching (i.e. file cache), for which I know for sure that it's "happening" in (and it takes/occupies otherwise unused) RAM?

And thanks for the quick reply holmes!

[holmes4]

Write-caching, as usually meant, is where the operating system stores a copy of data written by applications to RAM with the idea that it may be referenced again soon. The data is eventually flushed to the disk but if the system crashes or dies before this write takes place, the file could become corrupted.

Write caching would have less of an effect on a good SSD, but it certainly isn't harmful and disabling it simply slows down your system.

Perhaps you mean something else.

[Veazer]

Originally Posted by holmes4

... XP didn't have an automatic defragger....

Actually it did, though I can't recall if it only defragged prefetch files or the whole disk. It's a little tricky to find info about it, but here's some from the XP embedded site: Disabling Disk Defragmentation

You can access the setting with the "Optimize disk when idle" setting in TweakUI.

[asjunk]

I think Steve is definitely right that it's likely component failure. I bought a Vostro A90 in late April 2009 and my STEC 16GB went kaput about a month after the warranty went out (of course, the warranty extension was almost as expensive as a new 32 GB drive, so I guess I'll come out ok in the end).

Anyone know if there's been any kind of recall on these devices? Anecdotally, the failure rate seems really high.

[nd4spdbh]

i dunno what you guys are having problems with.... i will of had my mini 9 for 2 yrs come this xmas... i got it with a 4gb ssd, which i quickly swapped out for a 8gb stock stec... been using the stock 8gb stec for a good 1.5 yrs now... no page file, and im semi conscious on how many programs and stuff i write to the ssd. Running windows 7 pro since i got it in september of last yr. i use the mini quite a bit during the school year, not so much in the summer, but it definitely gets its use.

I really think the ssd failures are caused by excessive heat... one of the first things i did when i got the 8gb stec was take off all the stickers on it so the chips on it are bare and exposed.

[asjunk]

Originally Posted by nd4spdbh

i dunno what you guys are having problems with.... i will of had my mini 9 for 2 yrs come this xmas... i got it with a 4gb ssd, which i quickly swapped out for a 8gb stock stec... been using the stock 8gb stec for a good 1.5 yrs now... no page file, and im semi conscious on how many programs and stuff i write to the ssd. Running windows 7 pro since i got it in september of last yr. i use the mini quite a bit during the school year, not so much in the summer, but it definitely gets its use.

I really think the ssd failures are caused by excessive heat... one of the first things i did when i got the 8gb stec was take off all the stickers on it so the chips on it are bare and exposed.

I would have said the exact same thing until the day mine failed! I had no problems with it at all -- didn't seem to be slowing down, didn't seem excessively warm, etc. etc. I used it irregularly for light web surfing, and only had a limited number of apps installed (hell, I was only using about half my 16 gb drive even with a full install of win 7 professional). Then one day: kaput. The BIOS still recognizes the drive, but none of the OSes I've tried to install (win7, winxp, ubuntu, snow leopard) will install, and none of the utilities I've tried for hard disk recovery (about a half dozen flavors of linux from USB drives) can even access the drive.

In any case, I wish you all the best with yours -- it may just be that there was a bad batch out there, or perhaps it's just some weird quirk with certain drives -- or hell, it might just be the luck of the draw.

[nd4spdbh]

wow.... *knocks on wood* my mini 9 has been a dream, id die if it died :-P guess id just have to buy another 8gb stec on ebay LOL.