Firefox usage of SSD capacity ?  

I'm about to install Firefox on a new PC with an SSD and wondered if bookmarks or other files should be kept on a storage HDD. Did some searching & found several articles & comments about Firefox's high usage of SSD capacity. Some of the comments are a few years old and I'm not sure if this is still a concern.

Should I move the Firefox profiles to an HDD storage drive or is this SSD usage not really an issue?

Thanks

I would think having the browser history, bookmarks & cache on the SSD along with the browser would be best for performance. But if Firefox is going to write to the drive every 15 seconds as some people have mentioned, then that doesn't seem like a good thing for the SSD's lifespan.

I'm not sure if this a real concern or just a relatively small number of people having a problem. Or maybe heavy SSD usage used to be a problem but isn't anymore.

Callender said:

Personally I turn off Firefox disk cache and make it use RAM cache.

I read about doing that too.

Installing Firefox should be a no-brainer, and it is until you find out it may be affecting your SSD's lifespan.

What are the pros & cons about using a RAM cache vs moving the profiles to the D: HDD?

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modern browsers consume a ton of writes on SSD, modern SSDs should be able to handle it.

But if you are concerned then move the profile to a spindle, in my experience however it will make the browser laggy, delays when opening ublock origin menu etc.

I am planning to make a partition for my browsers, so I can keep the speed of nand, but without bumping up the system restore cost on system drive.

Bookmarks dont really affect much its more to do with cookie, history databases, extension data, session data, plus all of it is journaled so basically written twice. So e.g. every time you view a page the history database is rewritten twice.

Here's a couple tips you might find useful.

Acronis True Image lets me specify file/folder exclusions in such a particular way that it also accepts wildcards for this purpose. Some 45 years ago, dd on Unix was the only way to create disk images, but technology always evolves. At least some of it has done that...

If doing a clean install of the OS, then personal data will not normally be lost, as people should be using separate backup routines that can also be used in concert with the aforementioned file/folder exclusions to achieve greater flexibility. I use WinRAR when archiving certain parts of my personal data for long-term storage, whereas simple copy based strategies let me alternate between hot-swappable (USB 3.0) storage devices in such a particular way that lets me instantly change the specific role, or purpose of a device, i.e. change it from backup medium to normal storage medium, and vice versa. I alternate between some of them in this manner, as doing this lets me 1/ verify their integrity on a regular basis, and 2/ physically disconnect the drive before hooking up the other one so that the former one is moved first to a safe location away from the laptop that might blow up if it catches on fire─and away from certain types of errors and hackers or ransomware that might otherwise compromise this particular copy. One of the key benefits is that data can still always be used like normal, and immediately, if you stick to using just a copy procedure instead of using some poorly accessible backup style format that forces you to perform a restore before you can continue to use the data again. Different types of data require different types of plannings. One type does not exclude the other, and, this isn't exactly rocket science, either.

Keeping any and all personal data off of the C: partition is almost always more cumbersome than the small inconvenience that might occur after restoring an image or after doing a clean install. That's just because some user data gets used a lot typically, whereas the need for copying/restoring a relatively small part of user data back onto the C: volume due to the C: having been wiped totally clean is still something that normally occurs several many orders of magnitude less frequently, and, splitting the physical drive up in multiple logical drives by creating additional data partitions and assigning multiple drive letters to them will merely split up the available free space on the device, thus creating a barrier obstacle where there is none.

That being said, I use the portable version of Firefox, and use it in such a particular way that an NTFS junction path is used in order to run it under the supervision of Sandboxie Plus. Running my portable Firefox in normal, non sandboxed mode is still possible by choosing to launch it via its normal filepath instead of the junction so, Sandboxie can keep actively running whenever I need to update my portable Firefox or want to adjust some of its settings and/or addons. I use multiple folder copies of portable Firefox, concurrently and in parallel, each one of which uses different browser settings and different addon configurations. The portable edition of Firefox already keeps most of its data stored in memory instead of keeping it on the SSD, anyway in the first place. A description of how it also is possible to set sandboxed portable Firefox as the default browser can be found in my post:
Does anyone still use tune up utilities like CCleaner?

Putting AllowMultipleInstances=true in a file C:\FirefoxPortable\FirefoxPortable.ini will allow running multiple concurrent instances of portable Firefox. In addition, advanced users can set up multiple different sandboxes within Sandboxie in such a way that different instances of portable Firefox launch within different sandboxes each of which uses different sandbox settings, like different restrictions, etc..

Finally, I should note that all the above tactics are only suggestions. Most people who use Firefox would probably conclude that this is all a bit too far fetched so they prefer to KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), BUT... Albert Einstein's advice was to keep stuff as simple as possible. Not simpler.

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For another bonus, you could also decide to create a Ramdisk that uses Dynamic Memory Management─both the free ImDisk and Romex Software Primo Ramdisk give you this option. Next, you could decide to set the Container Folder of the sandbox in such a way that the contents of the sandbox you use for running your portable Firefox will be on a Ramdisk, and, optionally, also copy your C:\FirefoxPortable folder into this same sandbox after that─and then just change the target of the junction accordingly─before launch.