Regardless of the stronghold conventional hard drives had on the market, the emergence of SSD surely dimmed the glory HDD received. Agreed that traditional hard drives cost less than a solid-state drive when comes to storage space but in today’s world performance is appreciated more than cost. And obviously in terms of performance SSDs are far ahead than mechanic HDD’s. This is the reason that now many users have already switched to SSD and lot are planning to do so.
But since most users who have switched to SSD were initially the HDD users makes a most common mistake i.e. treating SSD same as HDD. And ultimately leads to decreasing its life.
Therefore, in this article, we will sum up some tips that you should avoid increasing SSD life.
Defragmentation Isn’t Required:
Yeah, defragmentation is recommended on a mechanical HDD as the drive’s head moves over the magnetic platter to fetch the data stored over the disk. In case the data is scattered over the drive the head must move to each part of the drive to fetch the required data, resulting in slow reading of the data. However, once you defragment the drive all the scattered data comes to one single place and make the reading of data fast.
But in case of solid-state drives, there is no mechanical movement and it can read the data anywhere from the drive at the same time. This is because unlike HDD data is stored as blocks in SSD that helps in reading the data quickly no matter where it exists. Therefore, if you defrag SSD then instead of improving the functionality of drive it will decrease its life. As the process of defragmentation is increasing the write operations on the drive that is already limited.
Never Wipe SSD
If you are initially an HDD user then you very much aware that even Shift+Delete do not delete the files permanently from your drive. As the permanently deleted files can be easily recovered by any recovery software. Therefore, to completely wipe HDD users often use a wiping software that overwrites the empty space with random data and makes sure that the deleted data can’t be recovered by any means.
But this is not the case with SSD. You do not need to wipe them with wiping software. If you are using SSD on Windows 7 and later version or Mac OS x 10.6.8 or above you do not need to wipe the SSD with any external software as all these OS supports TRIM. It means whenever you delete a file that is on SSD the OS automatically sends the instruction to SSD that the file is deleted using a TRIM command and the data is completely data that can be recovered by any means.
Therefore, it is recommended to avoid wiping tool to increase solid-state drive life.
Never Fill SSD to The Fullest
If you have filled the SSD to its limit then its performance will degrade sharply. To get the maximum performance from your SSD leave at least 25% of free space on it. This is because greater the empty space you have on your SSD easier it would be performing read-write operations.
On the contrary when you fill the drive to the maximum, first SSD needs to look out for the block that is partially filled, then read that block, modify the data block with new value data and then write it back to the drive. All this is a tedious task that needs to be accomplished every time you try to perform a write operation the drive.
So, make sure to leave at least 25% of free space if you want to increase solid state drive performance.
Never Store Large or Lesser Accessed Files
It is true that we all have our PC filled with movies and videos and music files. But never use the solid-state drive to store these large files. One obvious reason is that costlier as compared to mechanical hard drives and storing such files will not make a much difference when you access them from a normal hard drive or solid-state drive.
Another reason is that as the number of reads and writes operations do matter in deciding the life of SSD, writing these large files on the drive will decrease its lifespan.
Therefore, the critical files like the program files, operating system files that are used frequently should be stored on SSD. To store all other files, use the conventional hard disk.
Disable Hibernation:
If you are on Windows operating system then you might have enabled hibernation, as it helps you to quickly log into the Windows. Whenever you hibernate your PC the computer saves the current content of RAM to the hard disk and when you log in to the system it quickly restores the state that is before hibernating. If you are using an SSD then writing the file again and again on it will decrease its life.
Apart from these 5 things that you need to avoid increasing solid state drive life and performance it is recommended to update the firmware of the SSD before using it.
So, folks if you too wish to increase the life of your SSD along with getting maximum performance then try to avoid the 5 things listed above in the article. Also, if you are using SSD along with HDD then use HDD to store all media contents on it and SSD to store operating system files.