Fel wrote:Now, my question for you guys: will it tremendously reduce the lifespan of my SSD if I install my favorite games on it instead of the platter HD to maximize game performance, or should I just install everything but my OS on the plannter HD?
It depends on the kind of game if you will be able to get a speed improvement from the SSD or not. What a better storage location can't improve is the game's frame rate, but faster loading times between levels is certainly possible. In some rare cases with games that use a dynamic (on-the-fly) loading, an SSD may be able to avoid sudden drops in frame-rate or improve visual impressions as well.
On the topic of SSD life-time, I have more to write. It's easy to say that you'll very likely be fine for the next five years. A more detailed answer is complicated however:
You need to understand how an SSD works and stores data. x bits of information are stored in a single cell, which can be written to y number of times. In your case that is 3 bits and 1,000 cycles per cell (standard Samsung TLC characteristics). A 250GB Samsung 240 EVO probably has a flash capacity of 256GB (which is an internal over-provisioning mechanism of a few percent) and a total write capacity somewhere in the region of 150 to 300TB.
On the one hand you have a write amplification, which means that for every gigabyte of data you (or the operating system) write, maybe 1,5 or 2GB will be written on the SSD. The real-life write amplification in practical use depends on the type of SSD (brand and product), the type and volume of data to be written and the available space. In the end it comes down to this: wear-leveling causes the SSD's firmware to shuffle data around, so that all cells are "used up" about equally. There is no way around that, but the less free space you have available on your drive, the more data needs to be moved from one place to another. With little free space available on the SSD, you will reach a higher write amplification and lower the total life expectancy of your drive.
On the other hand you have flash chips that will likely last longer than the promised write cycles. In the
Xtremesystems forum someone tested the Samsung 840 120GB with TLC memory and it lasted for 3,500 cycles, which is 2.5 times beyond the promised endurance. While I'm aware that hard-core benchmarking of a few weeks shouldn't be taken as fact in real-life situations over a period of several years, Samsung's TLC flash can be much more robust than promised.
So what does all of that mean for you in terms of life expectancy? It's simple: you can help along a bit by leaving some amount of space on the SSD unused. It's usually recommended to use no more than 90 percent of the total storage capacity of any SSD, because using more over a longer period would definitely cause a higher write-amplification and shorten the life expectancy. Then again, it is always a good idea to leave some free space on your system partition
Games are not an issue when it comes to the SSD life. Yes nowadays they're really big and not really conductive to be used on smaller/older models - SSDs began to make sense at 16/32GB and there are still many 64GB in use today, while a modern game may require 20 to 50GB - but other than that, they're exactly the type of data you should want to have on your SSD (very few writes, many reads). If you have the space for games on your SSD, then don't hesitate to use it!
As long as you're not thinking of writing several dozens of gigabytes per day - a consumer SSD with TLC flash is definitely not the right drive for video-editing or other applications with a high data throughput - there's nothing to worry about anyway. In fact, Samsung's 840 non-Pro series is fine for most consumers and here's one example from my own computer:
My Samsung 840 250GB has been in almost daily use of 8 to 14 hours per day for about a year now and I've written a mere 2.86TB on it so far. That's a wear leveling count of only 1.7 percent, meaning that there are still 98 percent for me to use. Granted, I have an additional 3TB drive in my computer to store all kinds of data and there is an 8TB NAS in my network for media and backup purposes, but the SSD hosts the operating system, all my installed applications, all of my office documents, a number of games and some other stuff like content for Visual Studio (my modest programming needs), Adobe Lightroom (my photo management databases) or Helium Music Manager (not the music itself, merely the database and a collection of covers). My usage - writing small amounts of data very often - is ideal for an SSD, because the total volume is small, yet I can profit from the fast read/write performance.
I still prefer the XP as I am more familiar with it. I am struggling with the new Windows.
