1

I'm about to buy a new laptop. I anticipate wanting to download some video (for one thing, higher quality than just streaming it). Based on this question I'm concerned that the downloading may wear my drive (an SSD) out faster and am looking for advice. I won't be a super-heavy user: let's say I'll download an hour a day of video. Which of the following is a good approach?

  1. Don't worry about it.
  2. Make the download location an external drive, either a USB key or a regular hard drive, as suggested on the thread I linked to above
  3. Make the download location a network-attached drive
  4. Something else?

What I don't know about #2 and #3 is whether either or both of them stress the built-in drive on my notebook. Are little pieces of the download written down a temporary directory on that drive (potentially even as virtual memory--I'm not at all sure whether this is used meaningfully these days) before finding their way to their ultimate home? Are #2 and #3 different as far as this goes?

I guess I should ask the same question about streaming video. Does streaming create a workout for your drive or is everything kept in RAM?

Other relevant threads here and here imply that #2 is okay by virtue of suggesting it but don't address #3 and aren't explicit on the subject of what behaviors create strain for drive A even if the ultimate destination of a download is drive B.

Community
  • 1
kuzzooroo
  • 275
  • 1
    The answer is #1. By the time you wear it out, you've probably already got a new computer anyway. ;) Why not use a resource monitor to monitor what/how much disk activity is happening on the drive you're concerned about? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Oct 24 '13 at 18:38
  • The first question you linked actually tries to explain wear, but it refers mostly to HDD's. As SSD have a different wear pattern (defined in maximum read/write cycles), the "rule" would be to minimize IO to and from the disk. The disk is used more than you think, but, as @techie007 said, it is not something a regular user should concern. – Doktoro Reichard Oct 24 '13 at 18:39

1 Answers1

0

Don't worry about it. It would take more than a decade of heavy use to wear out a modern SSD, and by that time it'll be obsolete anyway.

David Schwartz
  • 61,880
  • Thanks, this is certainly the answer I was hoping for. Does anyone have a link to any study or other information establishing that wear is not an issue for normal users? – kuzzooroo Oct 24 '13 at 19:33