XPS 8930, PCIe SSD % used increasing to quickly

Thanks.  Out of the box from the unit came with indexing enabled, large limit for pagefile size, and SuperFetch enabled.  Also, I was using multiple user accounts.  All these things together were causing 160 GB/day of writes to the SSD.  I am now down to 90% of that value (under 16 GB/Day) after disabling indexing and SuperFetch, limiting pagefile size and going down to one user account.  Still, with far fewer writes, the "Percentage Used" S.M.A.R.T. parameter is increasing at an alarming rate.

I was very surprised and quite disappointed that the unit came with settings that would cause it to die early.

I will probably have to switch to a conventional hard drive.

I came to the forum because I knew I would get honest answers from real users.  Thanks for your input.

SSD's have a limited number of writes and then they are dead.
This is true of any Drive.
With TLC drives the max number is 90 percent Less.
With QLC drives its half again.
Worse windows feature updates use about 30 Gigs of space.
Log files and Swap and indexing can easily write your drive to death in a few HOURS let alone a month.

Endurance of Drives is directly proportional to the number of writes.

If you are worried about this you should have a conventional hard drive instead.

Most SSD's are only guaranteed for 36 months max.

Some only 12 months.

This is also why 4TB MLC SSD drives are still very Expensive.

SAMSUNG MZ-76P4T0E 860 PRO 4TB

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-MZ76P4T0E-Solid-State-Drive/dp/B07DN4VMQX/

M2 sticks having fewer cells

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-2TB-MZ-V7E2T0BW/dp/B07C8Y31G1/

Fixstars SSD-13000M is $13,000

You get what you pay for.

Thanks. Out of the box, the unit came with indexing enabled, large pagefile (swapfile) size, and SuperFetch enabled. I was also using multiple user logins on this unit. All of that together caused 160 GB/Day of writes to the drive. After disabling indexing, limiting pagefile size, disabling SuperFetch, and going to one user account, I am now down to under 16 GB/Day of writes to the drive. Still, the "Percentage Used" S.M.A.R.T. parameter is increasing at an alarming rate, and it doesn't seem to correlate to the current daily writes to the SSD.

I was quite surprised and quite disappointed that the unit came with settings that would allow it to die early.

Looks like a change to a conventional HDD is in this unit's future.

I came to the forum because I knew I would get honest answers from real users. Thanks again for your input.

It could also just be a bum SSD, out-of-the-box.

You probably should contact Dell Tech Support ASAP to see if they're willing to replace that SSD under the warranty. Have Service Tag handy when you contact them...

I am not sure you should be worried. I use Samsung Magician and HWINFO64 to report the SMART data for my SSDs and HDD and I see no entry for Percentage Used in the SMART data. I have had my SSD for 2 years and HWINFO64 reports that the Drive Remaining Life is 99%. I don't know how HWINFO64 calculates this. According to HWINFO64, Total Host Writes for my boot SSD is 3249932768.3.

Also I could not find Percentage Used as one of the S.M.A.R.T. attributes on the S.M.A.R.T. Wikipedia page. Do you know the ID# for that attribute?

The endurance of a SSD is proportional to the number of writes, but if SSDs have an endurance problem as bad as some believe, then you would think you would see a lot more complaints about this, given that they have been in use for a while and growing in popularity.

I am using Hard Disk Sentinel Pro to look at the Drive Health and S.M.A.R.T. parameters.  Hard Disk Sentinel Pro will report the S.M.A.R.T. Parameters given to it by the drive.  For every other drive I have ever used that program for, Hard Disk Sentinel Pro reports a  parameter number along with the parameter the drive manufacturer chooses to report about the drive.  This PCIe SSD has no such number for any of its S.M.A.R.T. parameters (but the 1 TB hard disk drive in the unit for document storage does have S.M.A.R.T. parameter numbers).   I was amazed and surprised that there is no parameter number associated with any of the S.M.A.R.T. parameters for this PCIe SSD. (I too, had checked the S.M.A.R.T. Wikipedia page).  "Percentage Used" is one of the reported "S.M.A.R.T. parameters.

Are you saying that "Percentage Used" is one of the S.M.A.R.T. parameters on the Wikipedia page? I did a search on that page and could not find it. I am curious what the description is for Percentage Used.

BTW: Do you have the latest version of Hard Disk Sentinel, 5.40.xx ? Looks like they made a lot of hardware support improvements and fixed some bugs...

If Percentage Used is an indication of the loss of endurance what are some of the other S.M.A.R.T. attributes indicating such as Wear Leveling Count (ID #177), Erase Fail Count (ID #182), Program Fail Count (ID #181), and Media Wearout Indicator (ID #233). The programs I am using reports some but not all these attributes.

I could not find "Percentage Used" on the Wikipedia page.  But Both Hard Disk Sentinel and Crystal Disk Info report back a parameter for this unit labeled "Percentage Used".

Parameters such as Wear Leveling Count (ID #177), Erase Fail Count (ID #182), Program Fail Count (ID #181), and Media Wearout Indicator (ID #233) are not reported by the SSID to Hard Disk Sentinel or Crystal Disk Info.

What is reported is:

Critical Warning, Composite Temperature (Kelvin), Available Spare (Percent), Available Spare Threshold, Percentage Used, Data Units Read (512000 b), Data Units Written (512000 b), Host Read Commands, Host Write Commands, Controller Busy Time (minutes), Power Cycles, Power On Hours, Unsafe Shutdowns, Media and Data Integrity Errors, Number of Error Information Log Entries, Warning Composite, Temperature Time (minutes), Critical Composite Temperature Time (minutes), Temperature Sensor 2

Crystal Disk Info reports ID 5 as "Percentage Used". For S.M.A.R.T., this space is normally used for "Reallocated Sectors Count". The 5th parameter reported by Hard Disk Sentinel Pro is also "Percentage Used".

I have determined that the 256 GB SSID that Dell supplied is a Phison PCIe NVMe M.2 (Form Factor 2280).

I decided to install CrystalDiskInfo 8.0 on my system and here are the results. You may have to wait until the photo is approved before you can see it, but when you can see the image you will see that ID #5 is Reallocated Sector Count is reported, and that ID #177 or B1, ID #186 or B6, and ID #181 or B5 are also listed. I can't tell you why your CrystalDiskInfo is different. I have a second SSD and the same attributes are reported just like this one. I blacked out my serial number on the image below.

I also did some research on your SSD but I could not find an endurance figure. I assume that most SSDs that specify an endurance figure base it upon the NAND technology being use and that it is mostly a theoretical estimate.

Maybe these apps don't report Phison SSDs correctly...?

Still think you should contact Dell Tech Support and see what they say. You do have a warranty so take advantage of it. If they agree to replace the SSD, you can immediately turn off those settings in Windows to cut down on SSD use from the get-go. And/or image the existing SSD (eg with Macrium Reflect Free) and clone it on the new SSD, so those settings will already be changed.

I do have the latest version of Hard Disk Sentinel Pro.  

Thanks.

The page linked below has a list of Hard Disk Sentinel compatible SSDs.I did not notice your SSD on the list.

https://www.hdsentinel.com/compatibility_ssd.php

You seemed to be focused on Percentage Used. Is there another S.M.A.R.T. attribute that indicates there may be a problem with your SSD?