Question / Help Streaming video and SSD Lifespans

[mythyc]

Hey guys, this is probably a stupid question since even google can't answer this for me, but:

Does streaming live video (of a game) from an SSD reduce said SSD's lifespan significantly? Is the process write-intensive, or read-intensive, or none of the above? Would I be better off just using my HDD to stream?

Or am I just worrying for nothing...I got myself a really nice SSD (samsung 840 pro) and I want to maximize its lifespan. I see many testimonials claiming that the difference between streaming from an SSD and an HDD is negligible, so if it does more harm then good, I'd rather just avoid it.

In the event that you would need to know this: I normally stream games @ 60 fps x 900p.

 

[R1CH]

You only wear out an SSD by writing to it which streaming doesn't do unless you save to file / local record. Even then, unless you run a stupidly high bitrate, compressed video is not big enough to cause any noticeable wear or tear on an SSD. You'd need hundreds of gigabytes of writes per day to do any kind of life reduction.

It's better off just to pretend there's no such thing as write endurance on an SSD, since for all realistic workloads it won't be an issue.

 

[amalehuman]

Doesn't streaming software write to your drive (SSD/HDD) before broadcast? Or is it that it just goes to RAM only before uploading the content? I did some research but haven't been able to figure this out.

 

[Lain]

Settings aside, if you are just streaming, it does not use the hard disk at all. It only uses hard disk if you are actually recording to file. Hard disk is not used for caching, only RAM. (And if anyone would know this it would be me because because I wrote it)