is it okay if I just turn off power if I have a SSD?

Question

I have heard that normal HDD can have bad sectors if the computer turned off from power(without shutting down) ,so I'm wondering , since SSD has no moving parts, is it okay to turn off computer from power.

Solution 1

"I have heard" is a very dangerous term. It articulates someone knowing just enough to be dangerous to oneself.

In normal use, there's typically some data in your ram that's cached - stored for faster retrival. That's periodically flushed into permanent storage. Which in turn stores data in its own ram cache, which is, also flushed into whatever media there is.

Most storage has this, though some modern low end drives have negligible cache and fast controllers to handle things, rather than a chunk of ram sitting on the controller card.

A graceful shut down lets your system handle this and other housekeeping chores, and since you have a speedy SSD, makes sure any in-use data is saved if needed, any cached data is flushed, and so on.

Bad sectors don't typically happen from pulling the plug - they're a consequence of normal, and abnormal wear and tear. You might see half written files and various other file system level artifacts in any case.

Besides, you have an SSD. Shutdowns are fast. Just do it the right way.

Solution 2

You should not power off SSD's without shutting down the OS first. An SSD is effectively a small computer and has firmware running in that, even when you are not writing to the disc, can be doing housekeeping, such as moving some blocks around so as to free space in anticipation of future writes.

The lack of a spinning disk makes them mechanically less easily damaged, but they are still complex pieces of hardware.

Some resilient SSD's are designed to withstand emergency power off and are built with extra-large capacitors that allow the firmware to run for a few hundred milliseconds after power is removed, enough time to save state so that when power is restored they can continue where they left off without corruption.

You may like to read about the complex internal block architecture implemented by SSD firmware described by Emmanuel Goossaert, and check this Ohio State University paper where the authors ran tests powering off SSD's during operation and experienced many types of errors, including bricking one device.

Comments

[sawdust]

See superuser.com/questions/1348647/…