TS12 trashes my Windows 7 64bit?

What's a "limited number of times" Shane? Should I worry about this or just buy another SSD when it fails? And why should this be different from any other EEPROM style of memory?

Seriously though, I've never had any "non volatile" memory fail - ever! In practice, and based on my support experience for fielded systems, I've had more hard disks fail, including those to MilSpec.

Personally (touch wood!) - I wouldn't worry about it.

Under normal use, it's not a problem, same if you only accidentally defrag it once or twice. It's if you do it more than that that can cause it to wear out quicker.

Shane

pcas1986 said:

What's a "limited number of times" Shane? Should I worry about this or just buy another SSD when it fails? And why should this be different from any other EEPROM style of memory?

Seriously though, I've never had any "non volatile" memory fail - ever! In practice, and based on my support experience for fielded systems, I've had more hard disks fail, including those to MilSpec.

Personally (touch wood!) - I wouldn't worry about it.

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Hi Paul,

Shane is correct on this. SSDs are simply EEPROMs as you state meaning you write to the device by changing the voltage to a higher amount and the data stays on the "drive". The data is read at a lower voltage. There is software in the system ROM and perhaps on the device its self that emulates a hard drive, meaning this device now appears as a hard drive.

When a drive is defragmented, you are actually writing to the drive many thousands of times. With a regular hard drive this doesn't matter but with one of the SSDs it does because you are changing the voltage on the device many times and lowering the lifespan of the device.

The modern defragging programs such as Diskeeper and others will not allow you to defrag an SSD as this is built into the program as a no-no.

With John's system, I would suspect either an under powered or a dodgy power supply because this can cause the symptoms he mentioned, particularly with hard drives and relations, and in particular with video cards.

John

JCitron said:

Hi Paul,

Shane is correct on this. ....

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Thanks, another lesson learned.

With John's system, I would suspect either an under powered or a dodgy power supply because this can cause the symptoms he mentioned, particularly with hard drives and relations, and in particular with video cards.

John

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During my last upgrade I had to replace the power supply to a greater capacity (600W). That was because of the video card.

Thanks again for all the replies. Things have gone from bad to worse and I cannot even re-install windows so it looks as if I need to get the drives reformatted (I have no other SATA facility myself). As regards the PSU, it is 550W and an article in Custom PC said that a system close to mine would only need 375W. I still do not know what caused the disaster unless it was to do with having one of the drives from my old computer in the caddy when doing some installing.

My basic trouble is, being retired now for over 20 years, I find it difficult to keep up with and understand all the problems of modern computers. When I retired we were using in our college computer department 8086 machines running GEM and had one 80286 machine with a 5MB HDD and had just acquired a 80386 machine with Windows 3. Also like most first generation computing teachers and lecturers I was self taught, so my ignorance is now showing up.

teddytoot said:

Thanks again for all the replies. Things have gone from bad to worse and I cannot even re-install windows so it looks as if I need to get the drives reformatted (I have no other SATA facility myself). As regards the PSU, it is 550W and an article in Custom PC said that a system close to mine would only need 375W. I still do not know what caused the disaster unless it was to do with having one of the drives from my old computer in the caddy when doing some installing.

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Powersupply looks to be underrated, extra drives and higher current requirements of a mid to top end card will push up the requirement - see here for the Asus Power supply calculator http://support.asus.com/powersupply.aspx?Slanguage=id-id Onboard graphics and one hard drive would probably be around 300 to 350 watts.

However that motherboard I think should be able to detect PSU instability problems and flash up a warning during bootup or shut the PC down, unless it was disabled in the bios, default should be on, possibly what happened when in Trainz?

If you can get the system running the formatting can be done by Windows setup for the system drive and any other drives formatted from within windows but check the powersupply requirements first.

Thanks Malc for the link. Yes this does look like the problem as the Asus site recommends 650W. I actually came to that conclusion last night. Thinking about it I realised that was probably why when I tried to change the bios setting from power saver to normal I got an overclock failed message. Now to find a recommended PSU and I shall then have a completely new PC except for the case and fans! Then I can get back to Trainz.