CrystalDisk Info - Optane drive shows 96% after about 9 months.

hsehestedt · Apr 11, 2022

Actually, item 3 is the percentage of available spare capacity available. Item 5 is purely based upon the amount of data written in percent. 100 percent is the warranted amount but this value can go beyond 100 up to 255.

See the explanation here in the SMART attributes for NVMe section.

Common SMART Attributes for Intel® Optane™ Technology...

Explains how SMART attributes can monitor the health of a storage device. This article describes common attributes supported on Intel® SSD's.

www.intel.com

EDIT: The numbers shown on your Intel in the first screenshot indicate it probably has a warranted value of 600TBW. Are you sure that the 300TBW is not for the 512GB model? 300TB is terrible for a 1TB.

hsehestedt · Apr 11, 2022

I stand corrected. I looked it up and the TBW rating is in fact only 300 for that drive. That's interesting because that disagrees with the values reported by SMART. I wonder if that is a marketing to limit the warranty but that the drive is actually more durable than what they advertise.

cereberus · Apr 11, 2022

hsehestedt said:
Actually, item 3 is the percentage of available spare capacity available. Item 5 is purely based upon the amount of data written in percent. 100 percent is the warranted amount but this value can go beyond 100 up to 255.

See the explanation here in the SMART attributes for NVMe section.

Common SMART Attributes for Intel® Optane™ Technology...

Explains how SMART attributes can monitor the health of a storage device. This article describes common attributes supported on Intel® SSD's.

www.intel.com

EDIT: The numbers shown on your Intel in the first screenshot indicate it probably has a warranted value of 600TBW. Are you sure that the 300TBW is not for the 512GB model? 300TB is terrible for a 1TB.

I looked in several places, and they all said 300 TBW

Intel Optane Memory H10 M.2 NVMe SSD Review: QLC Flash Meets Optane Caching

Intel's Optane Memory H10 fuses the speed of Optane with the capacity and cheap pricing of QLC flash, all on one M.2 stick.

www.tomshardware.com

I guess that's what you get when buying a cheap deal.

As an aside, if I did replace this, I would probably just buy a conventional nvme drive. I tested optane on or off and it makes very little difference.

As my laptop sees both drives, I presume if I disable the optane memory, I could just clone OS to new nvme, and it should just boot ok as I already have drivers for conventional nvme. Would I need to change the controller in my bios?

Any idea?

cheers

C.

cereberus · Apr 11, 2022

hsehestedt said:
I stand corrected. I looked it up and the TBW rating is in fact only 300 for that drive. That's interesting because that disagrees with the values reported by SMART. I wonder if that is a marketing to limit the warranty but that the drive is actually more durable than what they advertise.

Yeah I suspect you are right re. warranty. The link you gave is first I have seen that actually resembles english not gibberish.

I was joking when I said temperatures were in Kelvin but that is exactly what they are! Why on earth would they use Kelvin - vast majority of people do not know what Kelvin is (and our friends across the Pond, probably less so)!!

cereberus · Apr 11, 2022

hsehestedt said:
EDIT: The numbers shown on your Intel in the first screenshot indicate it probably has a warranted value of 600TBW. Are you sure that the 300TBW is not for the 512GB model? 300TB is terrible for a 1TB.

How do you make conclusion re. 600 TBW?

Bree · Apr 11, 2022

cereberus said:
What is interesting is cache memory has no threshold

Cache memory will be DRAM, that does not wear out like NAND memory, so will have no threshold.

cereberus · Apr 11, 2022

Bree said:
Cache memory will be DRAM, that does not wear out like NAND memory, so will have no threshold.

According to this and other articles I have read, optane is not DRAM but a form of non volatile RAM but as you say it is not NAND and hence more durable.

Optane Persistent Memory vs Optane SSDs – confused? Then read on – Blocks and Files

Sponsored Intel® Optane™ is a memory technology that has the potential to boost performance in key areas of the data centre, thanks to attributes that combine access speeds close to that of DRAM with the non-volatility or persistence characteristics of a storage medium. This means Optane™...

blocksandfiles.com

Wynona · Apr 11, 2022

Very interesting thread.

I just downloaded and installed CrystalDiskInfo.

I don't have a clue about reading this, but it looks OK to me. This desktop is around a year or so old.

BTW, I discovered awhile back that my C:\ Drive is Optane, but it's not turned on.

The-Hive · Apr 11, 2022

Thanks for sharing @cereberus It's good to see a real comparison and not just words on a page from a manual or website

hsehestedt · Apr 11, 2022

cereberus said:
How do you make conclusion re. 600 TBW?

Total writes are shown as 22,900 GB and total life used is 4%.

22,900 / 0.04 = 572,500 GB or 572 TB.

So if my theory is correct, it should show 5% life used or 95% remaining when you hit about 30,000 GB (30 TB) written.

hsehestedt · Apr 11, 2022

I get the feeling that every once in a while the marketing number vs what the hardware considers to be lifespan of the drive varies a little bit. I have a LOT of SSDs (20+) and for the most part the numbers all match the published specs. However, I have one or two outliers. For example, I have a 1TB Seagate Firecuda 520 with a published TBW of 1,800. Do the calculation and that means that healt should drop by 1% every 18,000 GB. However, my total writes are only 18,249 GB so far, but health is already down to 98%.

Bottom line is that marketing and the tech folks don't always fully agree :)

cereberus · Apr 11, 2022

hsehestedt said:
Total writes are shown as 22,900 GB and total life used is 4%.

22,900 / 0.04 = 572,500 GB or 572 TB.

So if my theory is correct, it should show 5% life used or 95% remaining when you hit about 30,000 GB (30 TB) written.

Yeah.

I will probably hit that at about 1 year as I do not thrash this drive as much. So, I have theoretically 20 years assuming I thrash it as a high rate but I am 99.9999% certain that will outlive me (but not @Wynona of course

).

From Kingston web page: https://media.kingston.com/support/downloads/MKP_521.6_SMART-DCP1000_attribute.pdf

The description here is much more specific.

Percentage Used: Contains a vendor specific estimate of the percentage of NVM subsystem life used based on the actual usage and the manufacturer’s prediction of NVM life. A value of 100 indicates that the estimated endurance of the NVM in the NVM subsystem has been consumed, but may not indicate an NVM subsystem failure. The value is allowed to exceed 100. Percentages greater than 254 shall be represented as 255. This value shall be updated once per power-on hour (when the controller is not in a sleep state)

What I do not get is my other drive still shows as 100%. Lets assume it is about to flip to 99% based on 1700 GB (rounded up)

This would mean the endurance is approx. 1700 TBW, and web pages state 600 TBW.

I guess all this proves is vendor quoted endurance bears no resemblance to reality, and is basically a marketing ploy (aka scam) to ensure nobody ever can claim on the warranty.

It is all a moot point really - drives fail for many other reasons e.g. interface electronics, and that is far more likely.

Thanks to all the guys responding here guys for valuable inputs - I feel I now understand SMART better now.

Now if I could understand WEI ...... LOL.

cereberus · Apr 11, 2022

Wynona said:
Very interesting thread.

I just downloaded and installed CrystalDiskInfo.

View attachment 26649

I don't have a clue about reading this, but it looks OK to me. This desktop is around a year or so old.

BTW, I discovered awhile back that my C:\ Drive is Optane, but it's not turned on.

Why not turn optane on?

Re. drive, you should be good for at least 600 TBW. Long way to go yet.

hsehestedt · Apr 11, 2022

Update to my last post. It may actually be that 2% for that drive is correct. I'm learning new stuff because of this thread

.

The drive in question is a Seagate drive. CrystalDiskInfo is showing that I have 18,249 GB written to that drive. However, the Seagate software for the drive says that I have 20 TB written. So, I suspect that CrystalDiskInfo considers one kilobyte to be 1,024 bytes whereas Seagate considers it to be 1,000.

So, cereberus, it may be that you roll over to 5% life used (95% remaining) before CrystalDiskInfo reaches 30,000 TBW. I'll have to do the math conversion, but I'm too lazy right now

.

Wynona · Apr 11, 2022

cereberus said:
Why not turn optane on?

Re. drive, you should be good for at least 600 TBW. Long way to go yet.

I guess because of the problems Hazel had with her system that had optane active. It seems to be just too much of a hassle to work with. Besides, the computer's as fast as I need it to be; I can wait 5 seconds longer for something to happen. :)

Thanks on the drive info. After reading this thread, I gathered the drive is good to go. The thing will outlast me and probably my kids.

cereberus · Apr 11, 2022

hsehestedt said:
Update to my last post. It may actually be that 2% for that drive is correct. I'm learning new stuff because of this thread :).

The drive in question is a Seagate drive. CrystalDiskInfo is showing that I have 18,249 GB written to that drive. However, the Seagate software for the drive says that I have 20 TB written. So, I suspect that CrystalDiskInfo considers one kilobyte to be 1,024 bytes whereas Seagate considers it to be 1,000.

So, cereberus, it may be that you roll over to 5% life used (95% remaining) before CrystalDiskInfo reaches 30,000 TBW. I'll have to do the math conversion, but I'm too lazy right now :).

Yeah - there are 10 types of people who understand binary:
Those that do
Those that don't

I can convert GB and GiB - no worries.

cereberus · Apr 11, 2022

Wynona said:
I guess because of the problems Hazel had with her system that had optane active. It seems to be just too much of a hassle to work with. Besides, the computer's as fast as I need it to be; I can wait 5 seconds longer for something to happen. :)

Thanks on the drive info. After reading this thread, I gathered the drive is good to go. The thing will outlast me and probably my kids.

My optane is on, and it just works. Totally unobtrusive.

Regards to SMART - I have learnt that the figures e.g. 96% do not mean your disk is reducing in capacity by 4% but you are nominally 4% of way through life expectancy of drive. As it is statistical, eventually there will come a time when some cells are worn out, and drive will start to reduce in capacity. We both have a long way to go yet.

The thing I have learnt most is that it is all somewhat meaningless as figures are relative to artificial figures quoted by vendors.

However, it is good to keep an eye on the drive - any unexpected rapid change is probably a warning sign.

PerpetualCycle · Apr 11, 2022

hsehestedt said:
Incorrect. Just like standard SSDs, Optane memory still has a limited number of write cycles, however, the number of cycles is simply MUCH larger. This is why Optane memory still has a TBW rating. If it was truly unlimited, Optane memory would not have TBW or DWPD ratings.

No my statement was correct. They do not age like traditional NAND based SSD in that they do not need an erase cycle before a block of memory can be written to. You misinterpreted my statement. Everything electronic wears out, I did not say Optane does not. For client class storage, Optane endurance is on the order of tens of thousands of TBW or greater, NAND Based are on the order of hundreds to 1000. So on the order of 20x more endurance.

He should not be seeing Optane degrading like that.

EDIT: see my updated comment below.

PerpetualCycle · Apr 11, 2022

cereberus said:
I looked in several places, and they all said 300 TBW

Intel Optane Memory H10 M.2 NVMe SSD Review: QLC Flash Meets Optane Caching

Intel's Optane Memory H10 fuses the speed of Optane with the capacity and cheap pricing of QLC flash, all on one M.2 stick.

www.tomshardware.com

I guess that's what you get when buying a cheap deal.

As an aside, if I did replace this, I would probably just buy a conventional nvme drive. I tested optane on or off and it makes very little difference.

As my laptop sees both drives, I presume if I disable the optane memory, I could just clone OS to new nvme, and it should just boot ok as I already have drivers for conventional nvme. Would I need to change the controller in my bios?

Any idea?

cheers

C.

View attachment 26635

Ah, this is not pure Optane but QLC NAND with a small 3D XPoint cache. QLC NAND has a pretty low endurance and for this drive it is 300 TBW. You have already written 23 TB which is around 8% of 300 TB.

So it makes sense.

The name of the non-volatile memory technology is 3D XPoint. Optane is the marketing name Intel gave their 3D XPoint porducts, which apparently includes anything with any amount of 3D Xpoint memory in it.

Unfortunately they call this QLC NAND nvme drive an Optane drive.

So, nm.

cereberus · Apr 11, 2022

geneo said:
]=-[O98ITYREAS\zxdcfvgjkl;'

geneo said:
No my statement was correct. They do not age like traditional NAND based SSD in that they do not need an erase cycle before a block of memory can be written to. You misinterpreted my statement. Everything electronic wears out, I did not say Optane does not. For client class storage, Optane endurance is on the order of tens of thousands of TBW or greater, NAND Based are on the order of hundreds to 1000. So on the order of 20x more endurance.

He should not be seeing Optane degrading like that.

According to articles I have been reading, it is only newer optane drives based on persistent memory. The drive I have is based on technology of about 3 years ago. Maybe it is like the Optane DC Solid State Drive layer in diagram below?

I have no idea if this is relevant, or it may be crystaldiskinfo simply misinterprets the integrated cache drive?

In the end, I have no control over what programs say, so no point in worrying about it.

CrystalDisk Info - Optane drive shows 96% after about 9 months.

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