WARNING! Mozilla Firefox KILLS your SSD!

Yes it is true and it is not a joke! We all heard scary fairy-tails that if you don't limit writes on your SSD then it is going to die soon. Why I said fairy-tails? Because as I thought if you use your SSD for general use as everybody else in his internet or gaming computer/notebook then you will not exceed those high write limits till death (notebook's death).

You thought the same, I thought the same and why not? You need to write 20-30GB per day to kill your SSD in 5 years and it is more than Windows itself, right? Even with write amplification (on every usual SSD (MLC or TLC)) the amount of writes to the NAND flash will be much more than the size of what you really want to write to the SSD if your SSD will be fulled more than ~50%. Less free space left on SSD, bigger amplification it gets which can come to 5-7 times more. I recall Anandtech or another site used number 10 when they counted the approximate life of SSD to insure public that there is nothing to afraid of.
Some of you guys told that in 5 years you already get new machine with much faster SSD anyway however these drives will stay in working condition much longer.

But here is my story.
I have 128GB SSD (Plextor M5Pro), installed Windows 7, insured that it is properly aligned, has proper AHCI drivers, even overprovisioned little bit. After that I moved Temp folder to a RAMDrive (just because I want to be on a safe side anyway) and put small 150MB paging file there too. Yeah, paging file on a RAMDrive, you heard right and just trust me I know what I am doing and don't need to discuss about it here.
After all this I was happy that I have fast OS on a clean SSD and with a knowledge that my SSD will live even longer than anyone else's.

Couple weeks later I decided to install SSDReady monitoring tool which tells you how much info was written to your drives (Free version) and what files exactly were written and where (not free). I did that because I was surprised that CrystalDiskInfo shew almost 500GB writes and up to 300GB actually written data (thanks to cache which SSD have) to the NAND!
And I was shocked with what I saw. The only program which was writing data to my SSD like a crazy was my favorite Mozilla Firefox browser! For 10 minutes it could write 160MB with just opened 2 tabs in browser WHILE NOT DOING ANYTHING!!
For TEN MINUTES!!!
And it wasn't written to FF's Cache folder, NO! It was written to APPDATA\Roaming!
And if you close the browser it will decrease writes but anyway it may sometimes write some information to APPDATA\Local. Nice trick, ha?

What A H@ck I ask! Mozilla, really WTH??!

 

Why didn't you just set your browser cache to memory cache instead of disk cache? That's what I do.

 

What's the default setting? Because with ultrabooks and all, we're now having lot of people who have no idea what you just said owning machines with SSDs. If Firefox's default setting is disk cache, that's a huge problem.

 

Default setting is browser.cache.disk.enable true.

browser.cache.memory.enable was set to true on mine, but it may not be for some others. I also added in browser.cache.memory.capacity and set it to -1 so Firefox can use as much memory as it wants.

 

Because this way each reboot cache will be erased and I will see long load times on every page.

But as I see the problem is not in cache. It is in Mozilla's AppData\Roaming folder.
Specifically file cookies.sqlite-wal which takes the biggest amount of writes, then go cookies.sqlite, places.sqlite-wal, places.sqlite and sessionstore.js.tmp. Why can't Mozilla hold those changes in RAM or at least in Temp folder? I get that maybe it's due to safety and possible browser crash or BSOD but then let us choose where to write all that info!

 

Should i switch to chrome?

How about Opera?

 

2 tabs of what? a flash video easily go to a few hundred mb.

and that hardly much write, 500GB on 300 power count?

Plextor power on always reset itself for w.e reason.

 

ssdready got down to 1.6years life expectancy with my Samsung 128gb, but ssdlife gives me over 9 years?

John.

 

screw it, i'll use IE. Had enough of mozilla's crap lately.

 

I will test them in couple days.

I wouldn't start a panic here if I was watching youtube video in 1 tab and another video online in another. Even if 1 tab of NBR forum, it's all the same. And I power off laptop oftenly so 300 power count shouldn't mislead you. Just today I did it like 7-10 times experimenting with BIOS/Optimus settings.

I guess because your laptop doesn't stay on forever. SSDready is trying to redict while monitoring SSD work. If you let it doing its job for a day where 12 hours laptop will be turned off then it will be much more accurate.

 

Well, yeah. If you're power cycling more than 10 times a day, a memory cache is moot since its constantly being reset. But for users like me, who only power on once... maybe twice a day, moving the browser cache to memory is far less hassle than rerouting the disk cache away from APPData/Roaming (if it can be done).

 

Portable browsers option Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB, portable and cloud drives Dragon/Chrome https://forums.comodo.com/news-anno...1-is-now-available-for-download-t98761.0.html with Imdisk, Task scheduler create Task>User "System" / Run hidden / check run with the highest privileges>Triggers /Begin Task at Startup>Actions Program / imdisk Arguments -a -s 1024M -m J: -p "/fs:NTFS /v:RAMDisk /q /y" (1GB ramdisk, 512MB, 256MB.....) Conditions>Uncheck everything>Settings>Uncheck Stop the task if it runs longer than 3 days, I have Both Dragon and Firefox, speed save passwords etc...and place it in the portable browsers folder.

Batch file, launch at startup edit Imdisk task, Actions>New>Programs/batch file location...

@echo off
XCOPY D:\PortableBrowsers\*.* J:\PortableBrowsers\ /E /Y /C

"D" set the proper drive letter, PortableBrowsers folder / root directory.

+Speed + Security + SSD lifespan....:hi2:

 

Good news: Running chrome now

 

I rest my case.

 

Guess I have nothing to worry about for a while.

 

I can only speak from my own experience, but I use Firefox frequently and my SSD has 1.6TB written over a year. It may be more accurate to say Firefox is killing your SSD instead of generalizing it to everyone. Perhaps the way you use your system requires different tweaking.

 

Or perhaps his SSD if faulty. If FireFox is killing it, you probably should RMA it to Plextor.

Nearly all SSDs sold today should last you 9-10 years. Which is probably much longer than most of us plan to keep the SSD, upgrade to faster SSD, maybe SATA 4 or whatever...

 

@djembe and @Zymphad, Please read at least this post carefully. I am not waiting for approval or confirmation from someone. This thread was written to someone who can read, fully without skipping any rows of first post. Generally first post tells everything.
So everything is written there already so any smart guy would read and do his own conclusion for himself, with his kind of usage and his kind of definition and determination of what Firefox does.

Example: If 1.6TB is written for a year, where 1.2TB was written by Firefox someone may still think that Firefox doesn't kill his SSD... because 4-8 years left is enough and by that time bla-bla... Someone else may think opposite.

 

Hello, not at all questioning you are experiencing some problem, but from my experience FF does not kill my (OCZ) SSD, 1 year of usage and remaining SSD life says 8 years+, all looks perfectly fine after using FF extensively.

 

Same here with my Crucial M500, which gets hammered twice as hard because I use FF in both Windows and OS X on the same drive.

 

Easy now gentlemen. This thread was meant to show how Firefox can cause premature wear to an SSD. Two possible solutions have already been given. No need to argue about context. That's for places like Anandtech.

 

So for those of us who don't understand 90% of the technical discussion in this thread:

(1) If you're the sort of person who downloads a browser and leaves all of its settings on default, is Firefox a bad idea for a SSD-equipped machine?
(2) Is this problem unique to Firefox, or do IE and Chrome have similar issues in their stock settings?

Many thanks...

 

1) If you do not write on SSD too much of data every day AND OK if your SSD life will be about 5-6 years then you shouldn't worry. But if you write to it a lot then leaving browser opened will be additional pressure on SSD's life.
2) I got an answer from people who know FF better than me. It happens due to logging. Size of frequently rewritten files depends on the quantity of opened tabs and the history of each tab. I haven't tested other browsers yet, will do soon.

At this moment I increased time interval of rewriting one of those frequently rewritten files.
This killing is as long as smoking. People smoke and don't worry because believe that they will die sooner than cigarettes action. But if you smoke not only cigarette or started to smoke early or smoke too much every day... (I hope everybody got an allegory)

 

Oh how I love these raging bring out the pitchforks and torches stories where a single person with an isolated problem tries to gather all the masses and burn down somebodies home.
I have all 3 of the major browsers and use all 3 of them daily and FF has not been working my disk more than any other.

Chances are since your such an "uber tweaker" *cough*

and have all these fancy settings that you assumed would do you some good you actually broke your FF and corrupted how it worked or set something wrong.

It could be as easy as some spyware/malware working overtime as well that you do not know about.

Software issues are tested and proven by volume testing and isolating the root cause, not by an isolated incident that you have no case to be presenting and even less a case to be prosecuting.

 

dude, change the NBR steam group's avatar. image link is in the only discussion.


Sent from my PI39100 using Tapatalk

 

Okay, I will try it. You said that Firefox with 2 open tabs wrote 160MB of data in 10 minutes while doing nothing. Using the same program, I am monitoring my system with 5 open tabs in Firefox. Since I don't have the professional version, I do not know which programs are adding to my total writes, but i can say that in 10 minutes with only loading a couple extra web pages, my total write count has increased by approximately 50 MB. Even if this is all from Firefox, I would argue that it seems likely your system specifically is having more problems in this area than others, and there may be some setting or combination of programs that is causing your system specifically to act in this way. That is all I was saying.

 

@djembe, Thank you.
Could you also monitor tabs which are not recently created but shew different sites before?

 

A quote from MoonChild (developer of Palemoon Browser, An optimised fork of firefox )

as seen in Palemoon Forum:
Pale Moon forum • View topic - WARNING! Mozilla Firefox KILLS your SSD!

 

OK, people. If you are still subscribed to this topic here is short conclusion:

1. I managed to move the FF's profiles to the RAMdrive without using some 3-rd party tweaking. Just used FF's preferences itself which I could set. Or you can put portable Firefox on the RAMDrive too.
Type about:support in the address bar and press Enter.
Click the Show Folder button.
Exit Firefox.
Move the folder that opened in a Windows Explorer window earlier to its new location, then make a note of the path (e.g. D:\Stuff\zdy89wk3.default) (and backup it on another location just in case).
Click the Windows logo orb on the taskbar.
In the search box, paste the following, then press Enter: %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\
Open the profiles.ini file in Notepad.
Change IsRelative=1 to IsRelative=0 and change the path value to the new location of the profile folder.
Save and close the file.

Remember that if you put the profile to the RAMDrive then you should set an option to load the ramdrive's image when computer start's up and backup the image fo the drive before shutdown.
2. I wrote that panic-like title а the thread so would more people read this thread becaue in fact here is some important information which some people should know. Unfortunately some people jumped here like bulls to a red rag thinking (or hoping) that I am a tyical example of a noob who scares of any shadow and jumping around the SSD like a gorlum saying my "precious".
In fact you had to read carefully whole frst post where I wrote that this "killing" will not actually kill it earlier than 4-5 years and that some people may think that it is fine anyway because they gonna buy another one later. Unfortunately those who haven't read first post entirely told me the same like I don't know.
3. The reason I created this thread is because:
1) some people already write a lot to the SSD due to their job or type of work and in that case Firefox' influence is much more dangerous. Some people write 10GB per day on the SSD so if Firefox will write another 5-10GB then SSD will degrade much faster than owner would like to.
2) another reason is because some people would want their SSD live longer that 5 years anyway (maybe they live not in the USA). Because you can move SSD to another computer while laptop's manufacturers will always put slow HDDs in many latops.
3) It is better to use something when you know that it doesn't have such a limited life cycle. Laptop may OR MAY NOT die in 4-5 years, however SSD + Firefox WILL definitely die in 4-8 years depending on how you use it.

 

And those software "life readings" are far from accurate. I did 200TB writes to a 128GB TLC Samsung 840 SSD and still isn't dead, and according to the ~ 1000 writes of TLC it should have died at about 100TB writes. Read other sites that have done extensive endurance testing that have exceeded published life write cycles by 2-5 times, so you're like safe for a minimum of another 10-12 years... don't sweat it. And if you have to buy another SSD in 5 years they'll probably cost $40 for a 256GB version... relax.

It is perhaps a bit alarming that Firefox writes more compared to other browsers, so if you want to state that Firefox writes a lot, then do so, but it's a bit ridiculous to scream bloody murder when it's just crying wolf.

 

The problem is that in the closest future more TLC type SSDs will jump on the market. Samsung was the first but not the last for sure. And who knows how accurate numbers gonna be for them?

I believe that it is even more than just alarming that moving single FF's browser's profile to another source brought such a big difference, don't you think? Compare screenshot with the one in the first page. Just a single FF's folder out while full OS + all other software is still in and such a difference.

 

i have literally everything in my ramdisk lulz