Re-imaging frequently on an SSD

Anyone have experience imaging / cloning an SSD drive over and over using tools such as Symantec Ghost? At work I have a test machine which I constantly re-image daily (XP, Vista, 7) to reproduce various problems and I'd like to reduce the amount of time I spend waiting for the OS to initialize each time.

Would something like re-imaging cause excessive wear on the SSD? I'm thinking of switching out the older 2.5" SATA disk to an SSD, but I wonder if the re-imaging process would impact wear performance enough to the point where it's not worth it due to deterioration over time.

I'm not too familiar with SSDs and I've read various things about write performance and the method of erasure for old files, etc. which gives me the impression that overwriting lots of old files due to the cloning process might not be ideal for an SSD.

Find more posts tagged with

Save $250 on 2025 certification boot camps from Infosec!

Book now with code EOY2025

Button

Comments

forkvoid

Why not do all your work in a VM?

MentholMoose

docrice wrote: »

Anyone have experience imaging / cloning an SSD drive over and over using tools such as Symantec Ghost? At work I have a test machine which I constantly re-image daily (XP, Vista, 7) to reproduce various problems and I'd like to reduce the amount of time I spend waiting for the OS to initialize each time.

Would something like re-imaging cause excessive wear on the SSD? I'm thinking of switching out the older 2.5" SATA disk to an SSD, but I wonder if the re-imaging process would impact wear performance enough to the point where it's not worth it due to deterioration over time.

I'm not too familiar with SSDs and I've read various things about write performance and the method of erasure for old files, etc. which gives me the impression that overwriting lots of old files due to the cloning process might not be ideal for an SSD.

Wear leveling in SSDs is very good at prolonging the lifespan so it should be fine unless you have a large image and you are writing it several times per day. Here's an older article about Intel SSDs which are supposed to handle 100GB of writes per day for 5 years. Newer SSDs should be better.
Intel X25-M SSD: Intel Delivers One of the World's Fastest Drives

docrice

forkvoid wrote: »

Why not do all your work in a VM?

We virtualize a lot in our testing environment, but in many cases some of the software we test integrates at a pretty low level (hardware-wise), so there are times where we have to use physical machines since many proprietary chipsets can't be duplicated in a VM.

forkvoid

docrice wrote: »

We virtualize a lot in our testing environment, but in many cases some of the software we test integrates at a pretty low level (hardware-wise), so there are times where we have to use physical machines since many proprietary chipsets can't be duplicated in a VM.

Ahh, that's a good reason. I see so many desktop support guys doing all their image building on physical systems where a VM would suffice, and save all kinds of trouble.