Move safari cache off SSD?

[RadicalxEdward]

Hello all,

I recently installed a Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SSD (75TBW) as my main boot drive into a late 2011 macbook pro. I also put in a 2TB 5400rpm drive for media (which i have a lot of). I also stream a lot over netflix though. Like I leave it running most of the day and fall asleep to it at night. So it's running like 12-24 hours a day (it's running more often than not whatever the number may be).

So I was wondering if I should move whatever folder safari uses as a cache off the SSD and onto the HDD considering netflix streams as 3GB an hour for HD. Or should I just leave it alone? I'd rather not have to replace either drive anytime soon since I'm not great at backing things up. (just recently acquired enough hard drive space to even start trying) so if the SSD can help increase the life of the HDD (or vice versa) then that's good. but knowing the SSD has a limited number of writes (that's much smaller than older SSD's) just kills my OCD/anxiety. Every file is a countdown to the death of my drive. lol.

 

[MacUser2525]

Simple to do the math 3*24=72gb a day or roughly 1000 days until the theoretical death of the drive. That said I have never managed to kill one off google on "the tech report ssd endurance" to see what they are capable of, spinning drives loose a couple of them a year. If you are that worried about writes to the drive then you better look into it getting mounted with the noatime option to stop the writing to it every time any file is accessed.

 

[RadicalxEdward]

Simple to do the math 3*24=72gb a day or roughly 1000 days until the theoretical death of the drive. That said I have never managed to kill one off google on "the tech report ssd endurance" to see what they are capable of, spinning drives loose a couple of them a year. If you are that worried about writes to the drive then you better look into it getting mounted with the noatime option to stop the writing to it every time any file is accessed.

I have turned off logging access times. and that 1000 days isn't really much when you factor in that's only from a single source of writes. That's not counting anything else i do on my computer.

I just looked up the stats on my drive and it says total runtime is 130 hours. and total data written is just under 300gb, that's 2.3 GB per hour every hour. And I've barely done anything that would write to the drive except netflix. I've used my HDD for everything. The only writes I've manually done is adding a couple small applications and a few screenshots. no benchmarking or anything and hardly running any applications other than the browser.

People act like you can't kill an SSD from writes. That it will take decades or centuries for an average user. But TLC NAND is less durable than MLC which is less durable than SLC. and we are using more and more data all the time without even noticing. I won't be surprised if my SSD is dead within 1-2 years even with me babying it and 23% spare area and barely using it.

Though I did just find a guide for setting up firefox to use the RAM for cache instead of a folder. maybe i'll do that and only run netflix in that. I'll miss safari's pinned tabs feature though. Especially since they're not just favorites, they shared between windows. so if i'm playing something in netflix, i don't need to find which window it is to pause it, i can just hit the netflix pinned tab in any window and there it is.

 

[Weaselboy]

Give this a read for an endurance test on a TLC SSD.

These cycles are just "ratings" and not a brick wall where the SSD will just stop working when it hits 1,000 writes. The quote below is from the article.

The first SSD, the one you could follow live on the stream, had its first re-allocated sector on May 22, after 2,945 program/erase cycles and 707 TiB of written data according to the S.M.A.R.T. data. That's quite remarkable, as Samsung guarantees a lifespan of 1,000 cycles, while in reality their SSD last three times longer.

Honestly, I think you are worrying about this too much. I guess I could see it if you paid $500 for the SSD, but this is an $80 drive. If you only get three years out of it and have to buy a new one then... what would you guess a 250GB SSD will cost by that time? It seems like you are going to be doing a bunch of work to maybe save yourself a small sum of money in three or more years.

 

[jbarley]

I won't be surprised if my SSD is dead within 1-2 years even with me babying it and 23% spare area and barely using it.

Back in 2009 when I purchased a new 2009 mini, I installed an Intel 80GB SSD in it to replace the original HDD.
To-day that Mini-SSD combination is still running at peak efficiency according to several benchmark apps.
This system for the first 5 years was used daily for net surfing, emailing and watching online movies, all without the benefit of Trim.
I really think you are worrying over nothing.

 

[Isamilis]

I moved all cache to ram disk. faster and automatically cleaned every time I restart.

 

[RadicalxEdward]

Honestly, I think you are worrying about this too much.

You guys are absolutely right. Even if I had to pay another $80 3 years from now, that really wouldn't be that bad.

I started using Firefox with it setup to use RAM as cache space for Netflix but it's not as stable as safari.

Thank you guys for putting my fears to rest. Now I just have to figure out the best way to setup my home folder for the SSD/HDD split. Symlinks vs aliases vs system preferences but I can create a new post for that.

 

[RadicalxEdward]

I moved all cache to ram disk. faster and automatically cleaned every time I restart.

I've seen ram disk options for windows. What do you use to set this up on the Mac side?

 

[Isamilis]

I used iRamDisk. But the recent version, seems only move safari cache, while the old one that I used move the whole cache folder. So far no issue on 10.11.2 (I have no relationship with the developer).

 

[leman]

Your 2011 laptop is much more likely to die before your SSD does. And its almost 2016. People should finally stop worrying about nonsense like SSD write endurance.

 

[RadicalxEdward]

I used iRamDisk. But the recent version, seems only move safari cache, while the old one that I used move the whole cache folder. So far no issue on 10.11.2 (I have no relationship with the developer).

Do you know what the version number was for the one that worked better for you?

Your 2011 laptop is much more likely to die before your SSD does. And its almost 2016. People should finally stop worrying about nonsense like SSD write endurance.

A. Laptops don't just randomly die. There are specific things that go wrong. And if they're well maintained they can last much longer. All the more reason to take care of them especially if you have limited income.

B. Ssd's may not be anywhere near new, but their price vs capacity ratio has only been in a range that the average person can afford relatively recently. Like the people walking into Walmart that don't even know how to get help in forums. So the average person isn't experienced with ssd's and all the different things you need to know to use them properly. They're not as simple as HDDs.

C. Any consumer that isn't experienced with SSDs is going to buy one, read the manufacturers claimed write limit and do the math. They're not going to assume it's underrated. They're going to assume it's over rated just like the capacity (just like the terabyte vs tebibyte issue) and as they become educated, they'll learn how SSD write endurance per cell has gone down substantially over the years with the advent of MLC and then TLC drives. Now we have 3D TLC NAND which is even newer. So it's understandable. That people will wonder whether to be concerned about write endurance or not.

 

[leman]

A. Laptops don't just randomly die. There are specific things that go wrong. And if they're well maintained they can last much longer. All the more reason to take care of them especially if you have limited income.

Laptops are highly complex electronic devices with limited lifespan. This lifespan becomes even more limited if you are using it. Around 50% fail within 5 years from purchase. Its not a car and its not a pair of shoes where cleaning/oiling prolong the lifespan. Sure, you can make sure that your electricity supply is good and that you don't expose the machine to extreme temperatures/humidity/dust, but thats about it. Besides, if you have limited income you should purchase a laptop that you can't afford to replace after the warranty runs out.

So the average person isn't experienced with ssd's and all the different things you need to know to use them properly. They're not as simple as HDDs.

I fail to see a principal difference to HDDs for the consumer. You buy the most reputable brand with the specs you need at the most reasonable price. The user experience is the same, except that SSDs are faster and have less capacity.

..and as they become educated, they'll learn how SSD write endurance per cell has gone down substantially over the years with the advent of MLC and then TLC drives. Now we have 3D TLC NAND which is even newer. So it's understandable. That people will wonder whether to be concerned about write endurance or not.

Its still a non-issue. I run database servers on SSDs. Haven't seen any more failures that with HDDs. Sure, endurance was important with early generations of SSDs. But today? Please.

 

[simonsi]

A. Laptops don't just randomly die. There are specific things that go wrong. And if they're well maintained they can last much longer. All the more reason to take care of them especially if you have limited income.

The point is that laptops are made of a small number of expensive components, when one of them fails it usually renders repair uneconomic (screen, logic/motherboard). The laptop is likely to succumb to one of these prior to the SSD suffering from excessive writes, that is the issue.

 

[Isamilis]

Do you know what the version number was for the one that worked better for you?

Version 2.4.8, running fine from Mavericks and now El Capitan 10.11.2.

 

[RadicalxEdward]

I fail to see a principal difference to HDDs for the consumer. You buy the most reputable brand with the specs you need at the most reasonable price. The user experience is the same, except that SSDs are faster and have less capacity.

Its still a non-issue. I run database servers on SSDs. Haven't seen any more failures that with HDDs. Sure, endurance was important with early generations of SSDs. But today? Please.

When (average) people buy HDDs they only look at a couple main things: price, capacity and sometimes RPM

But there are many differences with SSDs. For instance, there are several performance features of the 850 evo (and many other SSDs) that only work on NTFS and not HFS+ and sometimes exFAT. Not all tasks receive a speed boost from having an SSD, so with the limited space available, most people have to decide what content to leave on an HDD and what to leave on an SSD. People need to understand TRIM and how to enable it. And there are many other factors as well, but the point is, there's more to think about when comparing, buying and using an SSD compared to a normal HDD. And it's normal for people like me who AREN'T running database servers on SSDs to have questions and concerns since we don't have the experience of someone who uses them all the time and has for years.

Not to mention, while perhaps write endurance may not matter for most people, it doesn't mean it doesn't matter to anyone. So just brushing it off as a non-issue doesn't really help.

When I first decided to buy an SSD I ended up having to do tons of research. To understand the terminology. To figure out the best way to split my files between the SSD/HDD (besides just OS on one and media on the other). Whether or not to use fusion drive, etc.

 

[RadicalxEdward]

Give this a read for an endurance test on a TLC SSD.
These cycles are just "ratings" and not a brick wall where the SSD will just stop working when it hits 1,000 writes. The quote below is from the article.

Just read the article, and while writing sequential data non-stop isn't a realistic way to simulate write endurance, and the SSD was the pro model (twice the write endurance of the evo) and therefor they'd get higher numbers (according to the information i've read), the point still stands that if my drive functions even 10% of what theirs did, then I have absolutely nothing to worry about. Thank you for posting that link.

I used iRamDisk. But the recent version, seems only move safari cache, while the old one that I used move the whole cache folder. So far no issue on 10.11.2 (I have no relationship with the developer).

I found this handy article about moving the Safari cache to a ramdisk (without having to buy software) specifically for the reason of reducing SSD wear.

 

[Weaselboy]

...and the SSD was the pro model (twice the write endurance of the evo)

No that test is for the EVO with TLC NAND. The Pro uses MLC NAND. It is confusing because they just call it the "Samsung 840" without the EVO on there... but it is the EVO. They specifically mentioned the Pro when comparing the NAND types.

 

[RadicalxEdward]

No that test is for the EVO with TLC NAND. The Pro uses MLC NAND. It is confusing because they just call it the "Samsung 840" without the EVO on there... but it is the EVO. They specifically mentioned the Pro when comparing the NAND types.

You're right, I was thrown off by them both not specifically saying evo/pro and using a picture of the pro for the article. (the pro has the red square, evo doesn't)

but that just means the evo is even more durable than i thought after reading that. sweet. (^_^)

 

[2984839]

The SSD is exactly where you should have the cache. It will be much faster to read to and write from a cache there than on the HDD.