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[muzicman0]

Hi, I have a client PC running JRiver, and I want to keep it from buffering files to the SSD...if I change the temp directory to a HDD in settings, will that keep it from hitting the SSD with streaming videos/TV?

mm0

[Matt]

Streaming videos and TV doesn't buffer anywhere.  The file is read from the source location.

[muzicman0]

Ok, cool...I assumed a bit was buffered to the HDD...thanks for the heads up then.

[glynor]

Curious... Why?

[muzicman0]

why did I assume that?  Or why don't I want it going to my SSD?

I assumed because of past experience with a small SSD (30 GB) and while streaming from a PC, my available space kept shrinking on the drive until the PC crashed...well, it actually slowed down to a crawl...didn't actually crash!

I don't want it to hit my SSD simply because we watch a lot of TV, and while I know it is debatable on lifespan of SSD's, I have Samsung 840 EVO's, and because of the way they are made, they have a shorter (theoretical) life span than a typical MLC SSD.

mm0

[glynor]

This is what I meant:

I don't want it to hit my SSD simply because we watch a lot of TV, and while I know it is debatable on lifespan of SSD's, I have Samsung 840 EVO's, and because of the way they are made, they have a shorter (theoretical) life span than a typical MLC SSD.

And, you DO NOT need to do that.  Unless you are using a consumer drive to run a database server for a high-volume website, or something similar, you can completely ignore endurance ratings currently.  Seriously.

Even the original "vanilla" (non-Pro, non-EVO) Samsung 840 drive is good for 100TB+ of writes with ZERO ISSUES.  Look at this data:
http://techreport.com/review/26058/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-data-retention-after-600tb

They're up to 600TB of writes, and while the 840 has a few re-allocated sectors, it still hasn't even come close to exhausting its spare area, and is still performing/working as though it was brand new.  Every single other drive, including the 840 Pro (which the EVO will perform similarly to, since it uses a SLC write buffer area) in their test, has zero or almost zero reallocated sectors.

Thats 600 TB of writes.  It has taken them MONTHS of full-time-never-stops-blasting-them-across-the-disk writes to even hit that figure.  It means you could write 600GB per day for four years straight, and not hit issues.  No one is going to write 600GB per day.  Not even crazy people.

Also, keep in mind that when NAND fails, it fails READ-ONLY.  Meaning, you don't lose data, the sector just gets marked as un-writable.

It is a million times more likely that the SSD controller chip or power supply circuitry will fail WAY before you hit any of the current endurance limits.  Endurance is a concern for:

1. Enterprise class database servers that DO write TBs per day.
2. The future, because endurance gets worse with every process node.  A few more, and they'll have do do some tricks or it really will impact consumers.  But, it is simple to just add more spare area, so that's probably what they'll do.

[muzicman0]

Interesting.  OK.  Thanks for the info.

[glynor]

The endurance ratings the manufacturers publish on consumer drives are mostly about marketing.

They can't set them too low, or it'll scare consumers.
They don't want to set them too high, or else enterprise customers will stop buying the high-profit-margin "enterprise class" drives.

It is entirely possible that some of the 840s are worse than the TR sample (and some better).  But, in any case, for most consumers, it is VERY, VERY unlikely to ever be a serious concern.  As I said, it is way more likely that the controller or power supply will blow up first.

Ignore it.