Intel SSD 530 NAND Write Problem

[fZhan14]

Hello, everyone:

I bought an Intel SSD 530 120G for my laptop several days ago. It worked well with the OS Win8.1 Pro x64.

When I paid attention to the NAND writes, something make me confused.

The situation is as follow:

The SSD with the OS is the first(primary) Disk, and the HDD is the second one. I have moved the cache of IE, chrome and Firefox to the Hard Drive using IE setting or mklink command, and verified it correctly. With the explorer working, the written data stream from cache is produced in the HDD partition theoretically, also I have got this conclusion through the System's Resource Monitor and the Diskmon from Microsoft website. When I cached several Movies embedded in any explorer without other operation separately, there are lots of written data traffic produced in the HDD partition, and just little data wrote in system disk(SSD), it's no doubt. Finally, each test(using one kind of explorer) improved less than 200Mb in Total Host Writes which is normal for system operating, but this process also consumed about 3Gb SSD's Total NAND writes in total in the CrystalDiskInfo 6.0.1. Also I have got the same result with the newly Intel SSD Toolbox, AIDA64 3.20 and CrystalDiskInfo 6.0.1. In fact, this written data traffic produced by explorer's cache in HDD is calculated into the SSD's total NAND writes.

Actually I'm not care of the SSD's wear, and I'm sure it couldn't reach the limited lifespan with normal usage until next generation product arrives. This accidental discovery confused me now, and the result above make me suspect the theory, Putting IE/Chrome or System cache into other medium/drive saving your SSD's wear.

Q:Here, I want to know what makes this strange condition happen, the drivers, system's bug, bad support for old mainboard, the system's setting&config or the special system log?

Testing condition:

Thinkpad R400(GM45 motherboard)/P8700/8Gb RAM/Intel 530 SSD+Hitachi 7k500/Intel 5300 AGN/Win 8.1 Pro X64 with the Win 8.1's Default config and drivers, except trunning the service Superfetch off mannually.

I could make sure the location of explorer cache(IE, Chrome, Firefox) in HDD, also the written data traffic in HDD, and the vast imprived NAND writes in SSD simultaneously.

Thanks for your help.

[jbenavides]

Hello,

We are very interested in the issue that you reported, and we are reviewing all the information that you have provided about this condition in your systems.

If possible, we would like to obtain reports using the "export" function of Intel® SSD Toolbox. This will create a log that you can then attach using the Advanced Editor. As you have done with other tools, you can get one log, then run the system for some time and then obtain a new log.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/18455/Intel-Solid-State-Drive-Toolbox Download Intel® Solid-State Drive Toolbox

[Pte_R]

Attached are two exports from the SSD tool. The first started at 12h00 and the last at 18h02, so during a 6 hours timeframe. The computer was on all the time (no sleep mode), and it was idle most of the time (only some light browsing activity). You can see that during this 6 hours the NAND writes increased with 61GB while the HOST writes did not increase. I see this all the time that every hour the NAND writes increase with 10GB/hour independent of the activity of the computer.

Please advice/comment

[jbenavides]

Hello,

We would like to get additional information for analysis. Please check you private messages for details about this.

[HLaw2]

I run into a similar problem on my server running MySQL on FreeBSD. The SSD drive I am using is SSDSCKJW120H601 with Intel NUC.

According to smartctl report, the host writes is around 63GB and the power on hours is 2187. It seems normal to me as this server is for internal use and act as a backup server only.

However, the total NAND write is 1160GB, which is 18:1!!! My backup server always writes small data randomly (small system and MySQL log files). As mentioned in previous post, I guess it may be the reason for high NAND write to host write ratio.

My concern is whether high NAND write will significantly affect my SSD life. I know maximum host writes is 20GB per day and my host writes per day is far below than that.

[MMuir2]

I have literally 2 dozen machines with this issue.

All are showing at least a 9:1 ratio, several have 18:1, checking the writes on the hosts and the overall computer writes, it's not the computers causing this.