Hardware M.2 nvme SSD

zomborg · Jul 16, 2019

Just curious, I have a 480gb m.2 ssd. I do not use it for storage. It's primary function is as an OS drive.

Would appreciate your input and opinions in these 2 scenarios :

1.You have an M.2 ssd as your os drive and then you have 15 additional TB of storage space (hdd) but they are clean and empty. (fresh)

2. You have an M.2 ssd as your os drive with 15 additional TB of storage space (hdd) that is almost completely full.

Does it apply more stress and heat to your SSD if your other drives are almost full as opposed to being empty?

Also, another question. If your pc remains at idle 24/7 and you never power down, does that shorten the life span of an m.2 ssd?

Thank you

Ryccardo · Jul 16, 2019

zomborg said:
1.You have an M.2 ssd as your os drive and then you have 15 additional TB of storage space (hdd) but they are clean and empty. (fresh)

2. You have an M.2 ssd as your os drive with 15 additional TB of storage space (hdd) that is almost completely full.

Does it apply more stress and heat to your SSD if your other drives are almost full as opposed to being empty?

Not intrinsecally; there are some programs that default to blindly using the partition with the most free space (like older versions of the net framework installer) but not only they're mostly gone, it's not going to be a big deal anyway

zomborg said:
Also, another question. If your pc remains at idle 24/7 and you never power down, does that shorten the life span of an m.2 ssd?

Also not a big deal - some "wear" (not directly related to the kind, also often exaggerated, caused by sector writes) goes on all the time power is passing through - that means the device that will never fail on you is the one you wasted your money on by buying and not using

zomborg · Jul 16, 2019

Ryccardo said:
Not intrinsecally; there are some programs that default to blindly using the partition with the most free space (like older versions of the net framework installer) but not only they're mostly gone, it's not going to be a big deal anyway

Also not a big deal - some "wear" (not directly related to the kind, also often exaggerated, caused by sector writes) goes on all the time power is passing through - that means the device that will never fail on you is the one you wasted your money on by buying and not using

Ok thank you for your insight. So basically the main thing that would cause "wear" or potentially shorten the life would be to constantly write to the drive?

When I built my pc back in 2017, I chose an M.2 because they offered the fastest speeds. At that time I was unaware that M.2 nvme ssd drives had the potential to run hot.

About 1 month ago my pc mysteriously began to shut down on it's own (randomly). Or so I thought.
So I started monitoring it closely. I used speedfan to watch the temperatures. I noticed when I would first power on, the ssd started out at 60c. After a few minutes at idle it jumped to 67c. From what I've read, somewhere between 70-80c they are designed to throttle.

I could not then explain why it was running so hot nor can I now but I have a huge EATX case with lots of room, 5 fans (2 front, 2 top and 1 rear), all cables are neat and tidy with the majority being tucked away in a compartment behind the motherboard and my m.2 slot is all alone near the bottom. There's enough room to land an aircraft. Lol

So I began to research m.2 ssd cooling solutions. There were some expensive, high end options but I finally settled on a less costly diy solution. A member at hard forums recommended using a small aluminum heatsink on top of a fujipoly extreme extreme thermal pad and just zip tie it to the control chip.

After I did that, my SSD now idles at 43c and reached a high of 58c during stress testing.

AbyssalMonkey · Jul 16, 2019

zomborg said:
Ok thank you for your insight. So basically the main thing that would cause "wear" or potentially shorten the life would be to constantly write to the drive?

When I built my pc back in 2017, I chose an M.2 because they offered the fastest speeds. At that time I was unaware that M.2 nvme ssd drives had the potential to run hot.

Correct. SSDs use NAND flash which can be read nigh infinitely. The only real way to "damage" them is by writing to them. Even then, worrying about wear is pretty pointless nowadays, as high quality SSDs can withstand write tolerances of 160GB per day over a period of 5 years. That's pretty insane, and I doubt many people can even hit 300TB of writing to a drive unless they are doing intensive production workloads like video editing or 3D modeling.

Also, be aware: M.2 is just a connection standard and not a protocol. NVMe is the protocol. If an M.2 is using a SATA connection, it will get SATA speeds.

As for your heating issues, I can't offer any help. You can check to see if something has potentially damaged your drive by using either the manufacturer's tool, or something like CrystalDiskInfo to check it's SMART readout. (You may have already done this to check it's temperature.)

zomborg · Jul 16, 2019

AbyssalMonkey said:
Correct. SSDs use NAND flash which can be read nigh infinitely. The only real way to "damage" them is by writing to them. Even then, worrying about wear is pretty pointless nowadays, as high quality SSDs can withstand write tolerances of 160GB per day over a period of 5 years. That's pretty insane, and I doubt many people can even hit 300TB of writing to a drive unless they are doing intensive production workloads like video editing or 3D modeling.

Also, be aware: M.2 is just a connection standard and not a protocol. NVMe is the protocol. If an M.2 is using a SATA connection, it will get SATA speeds.

As for your heating issues, I can't offer any help. You can check to see if something has potentially damaged your drive by using either the manufacturer's tool, or something like CrystalDiskInfo to check it's SMART readout. (You may have already done this to check it's temperature.)

Ok thank you for the clarification on nvme.

Also I had downloaded the manufacturers Ssd toolbox diagnostic program and crystaldiskinfo and ran them both. I've never used them before but I I didn't notice anything obviously wrong when I ran them.

Do you think idling at 43c will be cool enough? Supposedly they can withstand temperatures up to 125c.

Also it has a phison 7 controller. May just be they run hot

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