Solid-state storage devices (such as flash memory devices) have a downside in that the storage device is degraded each time that data is written to it. Specifically, each storage cell within the solid-state storage device can typically only be written to approximately 10,000 times and then it may no longer work.
Accordingly, wear-leveling methodologies are often employed to move data around to wear out the entire storage device simultaneously. These devices usually utilize extra “hidden” storage capacity (i.e. over-provisioning space) so that data may be swapped into these “hidden” areas to increase the likelihood of more uniform wear and to also allow the solid-state storage device to maintain its rated capacity even after the individual storage cells begin to fail. Typically the extra “hidden” storage capacity (i.e. the over-provisioning space) is a fairly significant amount (e.g., 40% to the total capacity). Accordingly, a 500 gigabyte drive may have approximately 200 gigabytes of extra “hidden” storage capacity available for swapping.
Often, solid-state storage technology is used in memory vaulting applications. As is known in the art, memory vaulting is the process of storing a “snapshot” of the content of volatile memory at the time of a power/system failure. Accordingly, once the power/system is restored, the volatile memory may be repopulated with the data included within the snapshot and the system associated with the volatile memory may resume functioning as it had just prior to the power/system failure. Accordingly, through the memory vaulting process, the impact associated with a power/system failure may be reduced, as the impacted system may quickly return to functionality once the power/system failure is rectified.
As memory vaulting only occurs during a power/system failure event, the individual storage cells included within the solid-state storage device used for memory vaulting are essentially only written to and read from once for each power/system failure event. Accordingly and due to such a low quantity of write operations, such memory vaulting systems exhibit disproportionately little wear when compared to other portions of the solid-state storage device that may be perform tasks that exhibit much greater wear (e.g., cache storage).