SSD double partition wear and failure?

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Gordy7

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#279777 8-Nov-2020 09:27

What happens with SSD wear and failure on a system partition and on a second hidden partition?

On a few computers with a HDD I have created a Windows System drive image and stored the image for recovery on a hidden partition.

If an SSD Windows system partition fails in some way is it possible to access the hidden partition?

I know ideally a recovery image should be stored on a different physical drive... but not always possible.

Gordy

My first ever AM radio network connection was with a 1MHz AM crystal(OA91) radio receiver.

Batman

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#2599744 8-Nov-2020 09:35

depends on where the failure point is

best not to do partitions for this reason, but others may beg to differ

i learnt it the hard way over a decade ago

Gordy7

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#2599792 8-Nov-2020 09:40

From a brief search it appears that SSD wear levelling takes place across the whole drive.

So, I guess that provided the physical SSD contents are accessible, it should be possible to recover the system partition from the image.

Gordy

My first ever AM radio network connection was with a 1MHz AM crystal(OA91) radio receiver.

Gordy7

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#2599796 8-Nov-2020 09:44

Batman:

depends on where the failure point is

best not to do partitions for this reason, but others may beg to differ

i learnt it the hard way over a decade ago

Various manufacturers put a recovery partition on their HDDs.

So, I have simply followed that practice when I rebuild someones computer.

Gordy

My first ever AM radio network connection was with a 1MHz AM crystal(OA91) radio receiver.

k1w1k1d

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#2599805 8-Nov-2020 09:58

I always assumed that the OEM recovery partition was to be used when the owner hosed the system, not for HDD failure. The OEM could just advise the owner to use this partition to return the computer back to original.

nzkc

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#2599898 8-Nov-2020 13:19

I think storing the "backup" (or recovery) on the same device is foolhardy.

Keep things separate so if one fails you can go to the other. And ideally use an offsite service - such as one of the many cloud providers that do this.

Gordy7

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#2599906 8-Nov-2020 13:40

I work on family and friend's computers.

They mostly don't want to invest in decent external storage and I don't want to store their backups on my own drives.

These computers often have a long history and when I get Windows up to date and with their favourite applications I don't want to go through the time consuming process again to restore their compters..... mainly after they screw up the software in some way.

Using OEM restore is sometimes a possibility.... which is generally on a partition of the the same HDD as the system.... but doing many updates after the OEM restore can take a lot of time...

Gordy

My first ever AM radio network connection was with a 1MHz AM crystal(OA91) radio receiver.