# Expected lifespan of Samsung QVO SSD - Is this correct?



## TivoRocks193 (Aug 10, 2005)

So I was trying to do some math to understand how long newer SSDs will last in a 6 tuner Tivo and derived the following:

1. Samsung QVO 870 4TB - 640 hours - 1200 TBW ($400)
2. Samsung QVO 870 8TB - 1280 hours - 2400 TBW ($800)
3. Samsung EVO 870 4TB - 640 hours - 2400 TBW ($480)

TiVo Bolt 6 tuners:

144 hours per day if HD and continuous use on all tuners
160 hours = 1TB
0.9 TBW per day
1. Samsung QVO 870 4TB -> about 3.5 years
2. Samsung QVO 870 8TB -> about 7 years
3. Samsung EVO 870 4TB -> about 7 years

Is this relatively correct? Not looking for 3 decimal point accuracy, just ballpark accuracy. Aka I don't care if it's 3.5 years or 3.8 years, but if it's off by a factor of 10 let me know.

Of course, that's assuming worst case use. Writing less or using sleep/power saving mode would certainly extend the life span beyond this. Also, I'm assuming a TE3 TiVo, as some drives don't work with TE4.


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## lhvetinari (Jun 24, 2019)

The issue isn't just raw data written, but the order in which it is written. One would imagine that it's sequentially written since it is just constant video streams, but since MFS specs aren't public it's hard to tell. 

That being said, 160 hours=1TB might be conservative, depending on your system. Sounds accurate from my TWC service, but my Comcast service beat the snot out of video and you could get 275 hours of HD in 1TB, which would mean even less data written.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

You're in the +/- 800% ballpark. Everyone who does this math bakes in different assumptions, and each assumption swings the needle by +/- 400% .

When I do the math, I do it based on my local average bitrates, where (as ihvetinari said), one hour is about 1.6GB (or less), so the total is really only ~250 GB/Day with all six tuners spinning. 

When I do the math, I have no real notion of what sort of write amplification are going to happen. The Tivo's filesystem (large block/sequential) has the potential to be the best case scenario (almost no write amplification when using a decent drive like the samsungs). But, we don't know that, it could just as easily be implemented in way that is horribly mean to SSDs. So I swag it at 4x write amplification.

Also keep in mind the TBW numbers are mostly warranty numbers on samsung drives, not technical limits. It's not going to burst into flames when it crosses the line, and some drives far exceed their rated TBW. Another factor you have to swag.

And with those assumptions, I fall into about the same ballparks you do, in the 3-7 year range. 

That said, I would have to put some thought into the problem of QVO sustained write speeds, because on the one hand, once you fill the high speed cache, they suck, badly, down to spinning rust levels, or worse. But on the other hand, the Tivo doesn't really need a very high data rate, so it may never be capable of filling the front end cache, I'd have to go do some research...

When my TE3's HD goes (and it is thinking about it), I will almost certainly put something like a 4TB 870 EVO in it without any concern. Whether it gets me 3 years, or 29 years, we just won't know until more people try it and we collect more real world data. Until then, all we can do is keep an eye on the reports of the very small number of users who have both done it, and are occasionally pulling and checking the stats on their drives, (One?), or have had failures.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

TivoRocks193 said:


> So I was trying to do some math to understand how long newer SSDs will last in a 6 tuner Tivo and derived the following:
> 
> 1. Samsung QVO 870 4TB - 640 hours - 1200 TBW ($400)
> 2. Samsung QVO 870 8TB - 1280 hours - 2400 TBW ($800)
> ...


That might be right. But I'm not sure about their QVO drives. I tried one and sent it back. But then my use case was for reading or writing hundreds of gigabytes of data to/from the drive with my 2K and 4k BD rips. And the QVO can't do that very well for writing since it's speeds slow way, way down when writing a lot of data. While the Evo has no problems keeping speeds at around 500MB/s(4Gb/s). Even when copying hundreds of gigabytes of data at a time..

Another thing I use a Samsung EVO drive for is a Blue Iris PC. Blue Iris aggregates the video from my fifteen IP cameras. So it is constantly being written to and read from.

I have been using a 1TB EVo 840 with Blue Iris since September 2014. It has been in use 24/7/365 since then with my IP cameras. And the last time I checked it was showing around 60% of it's life left. I've had no issues with it in that use case.


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## TivoRocks193 (Aug 10, 2005)

I ended up going with the 4TB EVO (2400 TBW) and so far no issues (expanded with mfsr). It definitely seems faster, at least loading/updating. After using it a day I took it out and checked the TBW and it was below 500 GB, so on track for long life. I guess I'll post in the future if it fails/suceeds.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

TivoRocks193 said:


> It definitely seems faster, at least loading/updating.


I tested a bunch of sequences with and without the SSD; it made no measurable difference. The variation between trials was significantly greater than the averages between SSD and spinning rust.


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## TivoRocks193 (Aug 10, 2005)

ej42137 said:


> I tested a bunch of sequences with and without the SSD; it made no measurable difference. The variation between trials was significantly greater than the averages between SSD and spinning rust.


Did that include guided set up and loading the guide updates? It seemed like SSD was done in 1-2 minutes whereas magnetic took 10+ minutes the first time I ran the guided set up.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

TivoRocks193 said:


> Did that include guided set up and loading the guide updates? It seemed like SSD was done in 1-2 minutes whereas magnetic took 10+ minutes the first time I ran the guided set up.


No, I didn't test anything that's only done once.


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## jmbach (Jan 1, 2009)

ej42137 said:


> I tested a bunch of sequences with and without the SSD; it made no measurable difference. The variation between trials was significantly greater than the averages between SSD and spinning rust.


That would make sense for the Roamio and newer models. With the Roamios there are 3 working non MFS partition on the drive. The sqlite, /var, and swap partitions are all on the drive. With Bolt and newer units the only partition on the drive is the swap partition. All other working non MFS partitions are on the internal flash drive. So the Roamios would benefit the most with an SSD drive and Bolt and newer units with little to no improvement.

Has anybody tested to see if recording transfers would be quicker? I can see that as a possible improvement in speed depending on size of recording. Assuming the drive is the bottleneck and not the TiVo itself.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

jmbach said:


> That would make sense for the Roamio and newer models. With the Roamios there are 3 working non MFS partition on the drive. The sqlite, /var, and swap partitions are all on the drive. With Bolt and newer units the only partition on the drive is the swap partition. All other working non MFS partitions are on the internal flash drive. So the Roamios would benefit the most with an SSD drive and Bolt and newer units with little to no improvement.
> 
> Has anybody tested to see if recording transfers would be quicker? I can see that as a possible improvement in speed depending on size of recording. Assuming the drive is the bottleneck and not the TiVo itself.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk


The drive isn't the bottleneck. Even with a Bolt, with no recordings or live TV buffering, it maxes out at around 500Mb/s for transfer rates. Plus the four tuner ROamio only has a 100BT Ethernet port. So it's speeds can't go beyond 100 Mb/s. Real world the ROamio OTA/Basic will max out at around 94Mb/s transfer rates.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

jmbach said:


> That would make sense for the Roamio and newer models. With the Roamios there are 3 working non MFS partition on the drive. The sqlite, /var, and swap partitions are all on the drive. With Bolt and newer units the only partition on the drive is the swap partition. All other working non MFS partitions are on the internal flash drive. So the Roamios would benefit the most with an SSD drive and Bolt and newer units with little to no improvement.
> 
> Has anybody tested to see if recording transfers would be quicker? I can see that as a possible improvement in speed depending on size of recording. Assuming the drive is the bottleneck and not the TiVo itself.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk


Just to be clear, it was a Roamio that I tested with an SSD.

I used KMTTG to download a 3GB recording in PS and TS mode; it was a little faster on the SSD machine, 72.20 Mbps versus 69.30 for PS mode, 143.18 vs. 126.74 for TS mode. Not the kind of improvement I'd expect if disk I/O was the limiting factor.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

ej42137 said:


> Just to be clear, it was a Roamio that I tested with an SSD.
> 
> I used KMTTG to download a 3GB recording in PS and TS mode; it was a little faster on the SSD machine, 72.20 Mbps versus 69.30 for PS mode, 143.18 vs. 126.74 for TS mode. Not the kind of improvement I'd expect if disk I/O was the limiting factor.


THose transfer speeds are slow for a ROamio Pro. WHen I used to have a ROamio Pro I would hit 220Mb/s download speeds with no tuners buffering. And around 190Mb/s download speeds with the the tuners buffering. And those were average speeds with large files being transferred. Like a 20GB or 30GB file size. Not a small 3GB file.


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## TivoRocks193 (Aug 10, 2005)

1.5 years later update!

TiVo bolt (6-tuner) running perfectly fine with SSD 4TB Samsung EVO (2,400 TBW)
Performance (especially on startup) is noticeably better/faster
Power Saving = ‘Low’ (sleep after 4 hours of no use, tivo suggestions recorded)
Current Terabytes Written = 193 TB
Estimated Harddrive lifespan based on TBW = 18+ years
Pretty awesome if you ask me. Drive is currently on sale on Amazon for $299 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QBL36GF


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