Resolved: I'm really disappointed in SSD drives...

[jack54]

My 9 year old windows 8.1 PC has started to give me warnings so I updated to a new windows 11 PC with 2 SSD drives. After further investigating I now I ended up purchasing a 2 TB external drive.

Yes the SSDs run very fast but it seems you cannot 'Shred' files as it writes to a new area. So anything I want to securely delete I will have to store on the HDD.
The SSD also has a limited 'total write' lifespan. My 500 GB has approx. 119 TB of write life. This sounds like a lot to me but when you consider it's everything written to the drive IE temp files, zips then unzips, then the actual install. I have no idea how much writing my PC does daily; I guess it's good news that even at 40 GB daily it should still last about 7 years.

Seagate has some nice tools that tell you 'total write' used and % of life left. The optimist in me says "wow look how much life is left"; the pessimist in me thinks 'I watching my drive die'

Oh well I just need to vent a little...

[boatrigm]

I agree with you about ssd drives. But look into Windows bitlocker. This will encrypt your ssd or hdd.

-Mike

[mainsworthy]

The advantage of SSD as main HD is you can switch PC on and off in seconds, I remember a few years ago before the SSDs and it could take 3 to 4 mins to come on, and laptops were 10 mins.

[BBfanboy]

There are third party products on the market that purport to shred files, surely some of them will eradicate an SSD file entry. It may cost a few bills but if you are wanting to eliminate some financial info or such it would be worth it.

[bonjovibj]

My 9 year old windows 8.1 PC has started to give me warnings so I updated to a new windows 11 PC with 2 SSD drives. After further investigating I now I ended up purchasing a 2 TB external drive.io games

Yes the SSDs run very fast but it seems you cannot 'Shred' files as it writes to a new area. So anything I want to securely delete I will have to store on the HDD.
The SSD also has a limited 'total write' lifespan. My 500 GB has approx. 119 TB of write life. This sounds like a lot to me but when you consider it's everything written to the drive IE temp files, zips then unzips, then the actual install. I have no idea how much writing my PC does daily; I guess it's good news that even at 40 GB daily it should still last about 7 years.

Seagate has some nice tools that tell you 'total write' used and % of life left. The optimist in me says "wow look how much life is left"; the pessimist in me thinks 'I watching my drive die'

Oh well I just need to vent a little... wordle

Because the new Creative Cloud applications require a fast local storage device to run efficiently, many users have begun asking the question — is an SSD drive worth it?

[Capt. Harlock]

I like a hybrid system: having an SSD C: drive for system and frequently used apps, and a conventional disk drive for downloads, media files, massive apps, etc. (I've been extensively modifying or building my own PCs for a couple of decades.) I get excellent boot times, and the read speeds on disk drives are more than enough for my music and video files. It's a good idea to put the page file on the disk drive, since it will cut down substantially on read/write operations on the SSD -- but I've never burned out an SSD before it was time to upgrade anyway.

[Rosseau]

This is great advice and much appreciated. I am hanging onto my seven-year-old computer for dear life until I need to move again and hope I make it.

I very much trust what I read here. This forum has always been a great source of info.

[zakblood]

while everyone's opinion and views are equal and respected, i disagree somewhat with most.

my reasons,

boot time,
transfer times on well everything moved from drive to drive, back-up and to thumb drive etc and cloud saving, yes that does somewhat depend on internet speed but drive speed does come into it as well,
install times on all games and apps / programs,
play time FPS are better on a SDD than a hybrid drive and standard HDD, fact.

Operating System: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit (10.0, Build 22000) (22000.co_release.210604-1628)
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 16226MB RAM

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050
Display Memory: 16183 MB
Dedicated Memory: 8070 MB
Shared Memory: 8113 MB
Current Mode: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Drive: C:
Free Space: 439.9 GB
Total Space: 476.2 GB
File System: NTFS
Model: Samsung SSD 980M2 500GB (5-year warranty Sequential Read Speed Up to 3,500 MB/s Sequential Write Speed Up to 3,000 MB/s 600TB written)

Drive: D:
Free Space: 1882.0 GB
Total Space: 1907.7 GB
File System: NTFS
Model: Netac SSD 2TB (Sequential read/write speed for all file types up to 535/510 MB/s)

Games are on Steam, Epic & Origins, main test games on C with longer period test games on D, this is only a test rig, not my main gaming rig.

[Kuokkanen]

SSD and fresh Windows install (first 7 from disc, updates, updates, update to 10, more updates...) has breathed a whole lot of new life to this aging computer (Core i5-2500K). From start to Windows desktop takes around 20 seconds (I need to measure it sometime). Steam does downloads & installs faster on SSD, games start faster with less loading times etc. I have no complaints whatsoever! And prices have come crashing down, though corona & restrictions may have done a number on that. Even cheapest SSD is faster than any HDD, though I understand the general recommendation is to go for second cheapest model if cost/performance ratio is important to you.

[jack54]

Thanks to everyone for commenting. I realize the performance is FAR superior to HDD. I have seen it in person now after 2 months of usage... Window 11 loads like lightning, games, basically everything runs is better. And yet TBW (terabytes written) just blow me away...perhaps a phobia.
I wouldn't be concerned if games wrote to the drive they were installed on.. but "No" most write to the documents folder on the main drive.

There's pros for sure...

[PipFromSlitherine]

My SSDs are going to be getting a lot more work than most, running almost constantly every work day, all day. And writing a lot more than 'most' drives are going to - and in two years I am at 12TB written on a part with a TBW of 300. But every failure I have had has been in the first month (like almost all electronic components). Provided you have a good (off site!) backup solution running I would not worry about it. Your SSD will likely be ticking along without issue in 10 years. I've had platter HDs fail far more than SSDs.

Cheers

Pip

[Dili]

I don't understand the op. The TRIM command in SSD is right away a good way to protect your deleted files, try to recover files from an SSD with any recover application. You can't. But you can in a HDD.

No SSD failure with me, My first one a Samsung is from 2013. I have 4 currently including that one. I have had a couple HDD failures.
Edit: When i bought the laptop with 128Gb Samsung in 2013, it came with also with a 500Gb Western Digital, that already failed with bad sectors.

[jack54]

I don't understand the op. The TRIM command in SSD is right away a good way to protect your deleted files, try to recover files from an SSD with any recover application. You can't. But you can in a HDD.

No SSD failure with me, My first one a Samsung is from 2013. I have 4 currently including that one. I have had a couple HDD failures.
Edit: When i bought the laptop with 128Gb Samsung in 2013, it came with also with a 500Gb Western Digital, that already failed with bad sectors.

Thanks Dili this is good information. Apparently I had misunderstood the deletion process on SSD.

[Kuokkanen]

I have experienced one HDD failure. Warranty was still valid, so got it changed for free with fresh WinXP install, without updates, and viruses & others corrupted it soon after connecting to Internet

One HDD from 1993 or so is still working, though it hasn't seen much use in past 20 years. Computer's BIOS battery died though, and at first I thought HDD was at fault, and it took me some 10 years to figure it out and have the battery replaced.