Does having swap memory damage SSDs too much, what do you think about it?

  • dosse91
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    1 year ago

    Check the SMART status. If you’re using KDE you can install plasma-disks which nicely integrates into it and warns you of potential failures.

    This won’t predict controller failures of course, those are generally unpredictable, but sometimes SSD controllers that are about to fail will show massive lag spikes or straight up disconnect while you’re using them, if that happens back up your stuff immediately.

    Another sign of early failure is extremely slow write speeds. All SSDs slow down a bit after a while once the cache is full, but if you see speeds slower than a mechanical drive, the memory is dying.

    Very rarely, you’ll see uncorrectable errors like being unable to open a file, a corrupt file system or files with corrupted chunks (usually 4kb blocks of zeros). If that happens it’s already too late.

    Also, the health status of a drive only indicates how worn the memory is, don’t expect the drive to last until it gets to 0%, it’s rare to even get to 60%.