When to replace the SSD boot drive?

How long are these things generally good for? I've had my Mac Pro 2013 for over 2 years now and I use it every day for long hours. I've been seeing lots of spinning beach balls and I can't guarantee that the cause of any certain issue is the drive, it just got me to thinking. The OS, applications and a few other things reside on the SSD boot drive. These things are good for only a few writes and not really viable for long term use. For example, a website updating it's cookie will count as a single write. Cache stored in the web browser... same. How often should a Mac Pro user replace their internal SSD drive? And while we're at it, any recommendations on the best makes on models to get?

I have been using a Crucial M4 500GB SSD in my Mac Pro mid 2010 since I bought it in November of 2011. I have the same SSD also as a second internal drive in that machine. So, for just over 4 years they are still running smoothly. I do, for sure have backups of both drives via time machine and a clone with Carbon Copy Cloner of the boot drive. Crucial 's warranty at the time I bought them was 3 years, and newer Crucial models are faster with same or better warranties.

I would personally use them until I begin to see any drive related issues before I would consider replacing them as long as you have regular backups. I routinely check for SSD firmware updates and have updated 3 or 4 times since I installed the drives. I have also repaired permissions regularly on these drives and, according to the manufacturers recommendation, since they do not take advantage of Apple's SSD trim, I have let the computer sleep while ensuring the drives did not sleep periodically. Supposedly this allows the SSD to reorganize itself and do the necessary maintenance it requires. Either an Apple SSD or some third party such as Angelbird (I think) will allow the trim function to be enabled so the sleep process above is unnecessary.

The second drive is for media and projects that are currently being worked on until completed at which point they are archived externally somewhere else. This drive is also written to and read from extensively and so far seems to be fine.

That's been my experience.

A bad SSD drive may or may not give symptoms when it goes out. When it does, it is very similar to a spinning disk drive. But they'll last many years. The read/write estimates on drives is per block, not per drive. So that many reads/writes for each block of the drive.

Drives go out when they go out, and you may have no warning. Doesn't matter if it is SSD or spinning disk. Have a backup, no debating it. If you have no backup, well, prepare to lose data. Drive type doesn't matter.

Then there's "what to you have to replace it with"

I was considering replacing my 256GB SSS in my late 2013 MacPro with a larger drive. There's only the OWC option even though the SSD is most certainly replaceable. I found out that the OWC driver is actually seen as an external drive, making Bootcamp for WIndows out of the question (which is what I wanted to do).

To date, there's no replacement available and, no, Apple doesn't offer you the opportunity to buy one of their larger SSDs to replace it with.

So if that SSD goes and it's beyond warranty you're pretty much SOL short of OWCs "internal" external option.

Well that's not good! Apple or someone else should step up to the plate. What would make the OWC drive be seen as external?

I believe it's because they have to use their own controller card. I've noticed a few customer complaints relative to that as they're not clear that it appears as an external drive you can boot from which is not quite the same as an internal drive. I guess Apple isn't allowing access to some aspect of the system.

Read the two B&H reviews. I don't think OWC itself is the issue. It's that people thought they were getting an internal system drive.
www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1106981-R...sb3_thunderbolt.html

Redifer wrote: How long are these things generally good for? I've had my Mac Pro 2013 for over 2 years now and I use it every day for long hours. I've been seeing lots of spinning beach balls and I can't guarantee that the cause of any certain issue is the drive, it just got me to thinking...

According to this test, they last a long time, very roughly 1 petabyte (1,000 terabytes): www.pcworld.com/article/2856052/grueling...urability-fears.html

A worn-out SSD would result in a hard I/O failure. It is unlikely that would result in a beach ball with no other errors. You can check your console system log or use one of the below utilities to check, but it seems unlikely.

Macs with factory-installed SSD already have TRIM wear leveling support, so there is no need for 3rd party tools to enable this.

There are various disk and SSD monitoring and diagnostic tools. I have not used any of these, I am only listing them:

DriveDX: binaryfruit.com/drivedx
SSDHealth: itunes.apple.com/us/app/ssd-health/id569141856?ls=1&mt=12
Chameleon SSD Optimizer: chameleon.alessandroboschini.com/
SmartMonTools: www.smartmontools.org/

SSD's are definitely the way to go, or at least "Flash" storage for the fastest speeds today.
The rumors of SSDs lack of longevity is as Joema points out, is "Greatly Exaggerated". Lots of other test out there.
However, implementation and system integration is complicated. Apple doesn't help.
How a drive does or doesn't use "Garbage Collection" and "Trim", how it interfaces with the computer, controller chips all affect SSD/Flash storage. It gets very technical quickly. There is also the fact that some drives do just in time block erasure vs. routine background block erasure. This is controlled by the device chip's firmware and the computer's software.

Here are just a couple of articles that may be informative for folks that focus on the AngelBird and reference the OWC drive…
barefeats.com/hard213.html
create.pro/blog/angelbird-ssd-drives-awa...2go-pocket-reviewed/

Hope this helps, Greg