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Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

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Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#301

Post by EpicEng »

Retra wrote: post #294
Reason077 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are unjustifiably worried about SSD endurance. The reality is that even with fairly heavy use, most of them will far outlive the computers they're in. And their owners for that matter! I purchased my current SSD in March 2015 - it's a Samsung 850 EVO 512GB. It's done 7332 Power_On_Hours, and 36486573259 Total_LBAs_Written, which works out as just under 17 TB written, or about 31.6 GB/day. That kind of sou…

>The reality is that even with fairly heavy use, most of them will far outlive the computers they're in. I'm not sure what the lifetime of a computer is. In my family, we are still occasionally running machines from circa 1995. They work fine. When should I stop using my MacBook? The only reason I'd stop is if it died in a way that can't be cheaply fixed.

>I'm not sure what the lifetime of a computer is. In my family, we are still occasionally running machines from circa 1995.

Pretty sure it's not 21 years, c'mon...

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#302

Post by alexhawke »

Reason077 wrote: post #296
acqq wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The warranty on your EVO is just 150 TBW. The older generations typically had better endurance, the newer generations are more dense (cheaper to produce) but less durable. If you keep with 17 TB per one and half year your SSD should be OK for your for at least next 11 years.

The warranty on your EVO is just 150 TBW. Yes, but endurance tests almost invariably show that the warranty ratings are extremely conservative. The 1TB 850 PRO (which uses exactly the same NAND chips as the 850 EVO, just a different controller) has been endurance tested to more than 7 Petabytes. See: http://packet.company/blog/ The older generations typically had better endurance, the newer generations are more dense…

No, you're wrong. The 850 PRO uses MLC while the EVO uses TLC. But given that they're both constructed on Samsung's 3D-VNAND technology, their endurance is still much higher than the competitors out there.

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#303

Post by brucedawson »

lighttower wrote: post #8

Chrome, on my system, is even more abusive. Watch the size of the .config/google-chrome directory and you'll see that it grows to multi-GB in the profile file. There is a Linux utility that takes care of all browsers' abuse of your ssd called profile sync daemon, PSD. It's available in the debian repo or [1] for Ubuntu or [2] for source. It uses `overlay` filesystem to direct all writes to ram and only syncs back to…

> Chrome, on my system, is even more abusive.

The OP is complaining about excessive write traffic, which wastes power, steals disk-time from other applications, and may wear out SSDs prematurely.

A large profile file does not imply excessive write traffic, so it's not clear from your report that Chrome is hitting the same problem at all. Definitely worth watching, but big-file != excessive-writes.

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#304

Post by rasz_pl »

daveguy wrote: post #12
RussianCow wrote: post #4

Serious question: Is 12GB a day really going to make a dent in your SSD's lifespan? I was under the impression that, with modern SSDs, you basically didn't have to worry about this stuff.

If you can get a petabyte of r/w out of an SSD then 12 GB/day (of writes only) will exhaust the device in 228 years (1 PB * 1000 TB/PB * 1000 GB/TB / 12 GB/Day / 365 Days/Year). If there is also an associated 12 GB/day of reads then half that estimate (unlikely to be equal due to the nature of the cache). Either way -- not a significant degradation. Edit: Degradation or not -- i'd personally rather have my drive reso…

Times of samsung 830 using 27nm SLC are over, its Drives that reach >1PB or write endurance are no longer on the consumer market. You can buy them (SLC), but you wont after seeing the price.

You can do nice tests that will last for hundreds of TBs .. until you pause for 24 hours and realize all the data is gone.

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#306

Post by petecox »

blinkingled wrote: post #6

Even better just disable session restore entirely - Browser.sessionstore.enabled - Since Firefox 3.5 this preference is superseded with setting browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo and browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo to 0. As I understand this feature is there so if the browser crashes it can restore your windows and tabs - I don't remember having a browser crash on me since the demise of Flash.

Thanks for the tip.

I'll see if it has any affect on my laptop's battery life and fan usage.

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#308

Post by rasz_pl »

__jal wrote: post #38
HorizonXP wrote: post #2

Wow, that's really unfortunate. I just built a new PC with SSDs, and switched back to Firefox. Even with 16GB of RAM on an i3-2120, Firefox still hiccups and lags when I open new tabs or try to scroll. This new issue of it prematurely wearing out my SSDs will just push me to Chrome. Hopefully it doesn't have the same issues.

My home desktop is an i5-1620 with 64G RAM running Ubuntu 16.04, and Firefox just hiccups and lags, period. It is sad. I need to find time to experiment with Chrome while blocking all the Google chatter to see how functional it remains without being able to tattle to the mothership (otherwise I won't use it).

Try Vivaldi.

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#309

Post by nchelluri »

brucedawson wrote: post #303
lighttower wrote: post #8

Chrome, on my system, is even more abusive. Watch the size of the .config/google-chrome directory and you'll see that it grows to multi-GB in the profile file. There is a Linux utility that takes care of all browsers' abuse of your ssd called profile sync daemon, PSD. It's available in the debian repo or [1] for Ubuntu or [2] for source. It uses `overlay` filesystem to direct all writes to ram and only syncs back to…

> Chrome, on my system, is even more abusive. The OP is complaining about excessive write traffic, which wastes power, steals disk-time from other applications, and may wear out SSDs prematurely. A large profile file does not imply excessive write traffic, so it's not clear from your report that Chrome is hitting the same problem at all. Definitely worth watching, but big-file != excessive-writes.

I think your point is valid, but even so the person you were replying to turned out to be correct.

There's an edit at the end of the article:

> Currently in the middle of a Chrome Version 52.0.2743.116 m test. We have been able to see a pace of over 24GB/ day of writes on this machine...

24GB is higher than the 10-12 he was complaining about from Firefox, even.

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#310

Post by aylons »

gcp wrote: post #89
aylons wrote: post #26

In Linux where should this be written? Inside the home folder? Maybe moving this folder to a HDD should suffice.

Why would you not want to use your SSD for what it's meant for?

Some things are in the SSD, others on the HDD. This seems to wear the SSD while being seldomly used. Looks like a good case for HDD.
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