Should I fill my SSD before formatting? I know that sounds like a silly question, but I know these SSD drives have a limited R/W life. So if I'm only shooting 25% of drive full, then dumping, formatting, and repeating, would I want to leave files on there to get to the full capacity?
O7Q and SSD's
- Thread starter dapoopta
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rejdmast
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AtticusLake
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Bottom line, it shouldn't be a problem. Formatting a drive (with a "quick format") doesn't really do anything special to it; it just updates the file table to be empty, and the free block list to contain the addresses of all the available blocks. (That's why files can be recovered after a format.) So basically you're just writing a few blocks to the drive, just as if you were writing a normal file. Wear levelling will take care of that.
A low-level format on a hard drive is different, and a lot more work, as it actually does re-format the drive. I wouldn't ever do this (it takes hours) except if I was going to sell the drive or computer, to erase it thoroughly.
A low-level format on a hard drive is different, and a lot more work, as it actually does re-format the drive. I wouldn't ever do this (it takes hours) except if I was going to sell the drive or computer, to erase it thoroughly.
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AtticusLake
Well-known member
The point of wear levelling is that when you do a quick format and write over the "same sectors", those are not in fact the same sectors -- they get moved every time you write them. The entire file system you're working with -- FAT, NTFS, or whatever it is -- is just a bunch of data stored on the flash drive. The drive ITSELF does dynamic re-location of the physical locations those blocks are stored at every time you write them.
Essentially FAT thinks it's writing physical blocks of the disk, and on a conventional hard drive that's true; but on a flash drive, there's actually another whole layer of logic under the FAT filesystem. This is the layer that does the wear levelling.
This is why securely erasing stuff is hard on flash drives. If you overwrite a file with junk data, by writing to the exact same "physical blocks" it's stored at, the new data you write actually ends up in a different place, and the original data is still there -- and theoretically recoverable.
(Actually, the same thing is true on hard drives, with modern journalling file systems -- for a different reason.)
Essentially FAT thinks it's writing physical blocks of the disk, and on a conventional hard drive that's true; but on a flash drive, there's actually another whole layer of logic under the FAT filesystem. This is the layer that does the wear levelling.
This is why securely erasing stuff is hard on flash drives. If you overwrite a file with junk data, by writing to the exact same "physical blocks" it's stored at, the new data you write actually ends up in a different place, and the original data is still there -- and theoretically recoverable.
(Actually, the same thing is true on hard drives, with modern journalling file systems -- for a different reason.)
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I think Solid States are a LOT more durable than the traditional hard drives so I would image you could format numerous times. I think that's the point of SSDs for video is just that they are very durable and have a much longer shelf life.
Basically, after downloading the footage I tend to erase and reformat the SSD and it's been fine so far. The reason for that is simply for organization and workflow. If you only download after filling the disk, that could be dangerous as your would be backing up less frequently and there will more confusion if you backup then don't erase the disk. Not worth making a mistake.
If this is any gauge, on my old 7D and 60D, I formatted the CF and SDHD cards (basically smaller versions of CD SSDs) countless times and they've always been fine when using good brands like SanDisk. Crappy brands like Kingston I did run into problems after a while, but like I said, if it's a reputable company you should be fine.
Basically, after downloading the footage I tend to erase and reformat the SSD and it's been fine so far. The reason for that is simply for organization and workflow. If you only download after filling the disk, that could be dangerous as your would be backing up less frequently and there will more confusion if you backup then don't erase the disk. Not worth making a mistake.
If this is any gauge, on my old 7D and 60D, I formatted the CF and SDHD cards (basically smaller versions of CD SSDs) countless times and they've always been fine when using good brands like SanDisk. Crappy brands like Kingston I did run into problems after a while, but like I said, if it's a reputable company you should be fine.
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AtticusLake
Well-known member
Mechanically they are very durable, as there are no moving parts; but the OP's point is that, unlike magnetic media, flash memory -- i.e. a specific block of flash memory -- can only be written a few thousand times before wearing out. That's why wear levelling is so important. The good news is that wear levelling is essentially built into an SSD, so we can forget about it.