07-15-2015 01:19 PM
07-15-2015 01:19 PM
Greetings, dear community!
I am thinking of purchasing a second-hand M550 SSD drive of 1 TB.
How do I check a total number of bytes ever written to the SSD?
Thank you for the prompt advice.
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07-15-2015 01:29 PM
07-15-2015 01:29 PM
If you're concerned over wear, number of bytes written is irrelevant. The wear is measured by SMART attribute CA. You can check the SMART data using Crystal Disk Info which will also nicely show the life left as a percentage in a big coloured box in the top left.
07-15-2015 01:34 PM
07-15-2015 01:34 PM
Thank you.
Can you share a screenshot showing the CA and graphic indicator please?
07-15-2015 01:48 PM
07-15-2015 01:48 PM
This review has one: http://www.technologyx.com/featured/crucial-m550-ssd-512gb-review/3/
07-15-2015 09:45 PM - edited 07-15-2015 09:46 PM
07-15-2015 09:45 PM - edited 07-15-2015 09:46 PM
OK.
As far as I see from the screenshot Current CA = 100 and Worst CA = 100.
Does this mean that at the screenshot example the current CA is worst?
What is the best CA value (new SSD) and what is the worst value (dead SSD)?
07-15-2015 11:04 PM
07-15-2015 11:04 PM
It counts down from 100 so that drive is new.
'Worst' for smart data indicates the worst value it has ever been. Threshold indicates what you are thinking of as worst. Though Threshold is unused on the drives.
Also, wear is just a guideline to when the NAND may fail. You can't accurately predict wear anymore than you can predict how long a car will last from its mileage. It might last much longer than indicated, it might not last that much.
07-16-2015 01:51 AM
07-16-2015 01:51 AM
Everything is clear now.
Thank you.
07-20-2015 04:41 AM
07-20-2015 04:41 AM
targetbsp is right that it is NAND wear that is important.
But it is still possible to know total number of bytes written (by host system) to M550 You can use recent version of CrystalDiskInfo (it will show 'Total Host Writes' in the upper right part of the window or you can take the value of 'F6 Total Host Sector Writes' SMART attribute, convert it from hexadecimal to decimal (if necessary) and multiply by 512 bytes. That is what CrystalDiskInfo automatically calculates for you.
07-20-2015 05:12 AM
07-20-2015 05:12 AM
Thank you.
Can you suggest an alternative to CrystalDisk Info for Mac OS please?
07-20-2015 05:17 AM
07-20-2015 05:17 AM
That's an approximation though (unless you always happen to have written multiples of 512 bytes?). But since we've already mentioned that all of this wear measuring is more or less a guess anyway, I don't spose it much matters.