Originally Posted by
jdshscja
Average SSD's are around 100,000 per cell, while there are some now rated for 1 million per cell. Just for reference it would take around 6+ months of continuous writing to reach 100,000 for a 60gb SSD(this also assumes you are writing at full speed, which is unlikely), so it is quite likely you could make 5 years with average use.
Wow, where I have seen 100K write cycles quoted for SLC (single-level cell) SSDs I've never seen anything quoted by a manufacturer of MLC (multi) drives over 5K (google SSD "write cycles".) SLCs are very rare, typically used by enterprises, expensive and almost always less than 32GB. The average consumer will get a MLC drive. Even worse are the new TLC (triple) drives like the Samsung 840 (non-pro) which only are rated by Samsung to give 1K write cycles. As said before even the TLCs with load-leveling and average use will give you a 5+ year lifespan. Note that the 1K and 5K numbers are a very conservative number and you can get 2x, 5x, whatever from them.
Very cool article here about some folks who stress tested some of those Samsung 840 SSDs 24/7 - they got about 2 1/2 months of use with about 3-4K write cycles before the drive died. Even with that they calculated the lifespan under light/normal use would be for 24 years. Hope they returned the bad drives under warranty
http://us.hardware.info/reviews/4178...nal-conclusion
Although I'm waiting to see how the new Samsung EVO SSD performs. Preliminary reports show the 1TB version initial offering being between $500 & $700 with some good performance upgrades.
If you decide to replace the SSD in your Air you have to be careful, the latest Haswell core ones use a PCIe interface. Real old ones have it soldered in. In my old 2011 model I picked up one of the OWCs and it is substantially faster, albeit pricey, than the original.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/O...a_Pro_Air_2011