SSD Lifespan: How Long Do SSDs Last

[sonny]

"Until a couple of years ago, many IT administrators and managers were concerned about the risk of losing valuable data because of a sudden failure. That’s why it took manufacturers a long time to convince the public that SSDs are safe to use, even when handling sensitive data."
https://www.ontrack.com/en-us/blog/how- ... eally-last

[pp4mnklinux]

The suddent failures, always exists, with SSD, ATA, SATA.... so you must follow the rule of the three copies.

Appart of this, Solid State Drives (SSDs) have a limited lifespan that is determined by the number of write operations that can be performed on the memory cells in the drive and it goes bigger each day.

The lifespan of an SSD depends on a number of factors, including the quality of the memory chips, the controller used in the drive, and how the drive is used. Generally speaking, most modern SSDs have a write endurance rating of at least 1,000 program/erase cycles per memory cell, which means that the drive can be written to and erased 1,000 times before the memory cell begins to fail, but as you can deduce, the more you pays, usually implies, the better quality.... LIFESPAN

For most users, this means that an SSD will last for many years (INDEFINITE VALUE, JAJAJA) under normal usage patterns. However, heavy usage, such as constant writing and erasing of large files or running a server that writes data constantly, can significantly reduce the lifespan of an SSD.

It's also worth noting that modern SSDs typically have built-in mechanisms to help extend their lifespan, such as wear-leveling algorithms that distribute data evenly across the drive and over-provisioning, which reserves a portion of the drive's capacity to help compensate for memory cell wear.

In summary, the lifespan of an SSD varies depending on usage patterns, but most modern SSDs are designed to last for many years under normal usage.

So, as conclusion, no one can tell u a definite period of time during while your SSD is going to work.- There are so many factors influencing it that it depends, depends and,... DEPENDS,, hahah

"Until a couple of years ago, many IT administrators and managers were concerned about the risk of losing valuable data because of a sudden failure. That’s why it took manufacturers a long time to convince the public that SSDs are safe to use, even when handling sensitive data."
https://www.ontrack.com/en-us/blog/how- ... eally-last

[sonny]

So far, only Samsung has performed the fastest, most durable, and most consistently

[BarryK]

Yes, I recently bought a Samsung 870 EVO 4TB SSD. The specs are great. For example, the TBW value is 2,400, compared with 1,000 for a Crucial MX500 4TB SSD -- so can expect the Samsung to last more than twice as long.

There is a cheaper Samsung QVO series, but I am suspicious of those. Seems to be cutting some corners to get more bits.

[Flash]

I'd choose SSDs over hard disk drives any day. I have had several hard disk drives quit working for no apparent reason and at a tragically young age. They failed totally and with no warning. While the same kind of failure is certainly possible with SSDs, I expect that they will fail mostly by the "wear out" mechanism mentioned by pp4mnklinux, though I think his figure of 1000 writes is way off. I've read that memory cells begin to show read errors after 100,000 to a million erase/write cycles. High temperatures or cosmic radiation may lower that figure.

[bigpup]

For sure.

Hard drives are mechanical spinning disks, with a mechanical read/write arm, moving back and forth, across the disks.
A lot of moving parts that can and will go bad.
.

.

The SSD writing limit spec is how many writes, before it may start failing.

The rating TBW
Terabytes Written, or TBW, is the total amount of terabytes data that a SSD can write in its lifetime.
The TBW formula is as follows:
For example, a MLC 128GB SSD, which NAND has 3000 times P/E cycles, should be able to provide 128GB*3000 to equal 384TB data written theoretically.
With average PC usage, for example; around 80 TBW can be performed within 10 years.

Keep in mind a SSD can do reads, with no affect on lifespan.

[sonny]

I guess that even if you only read, the firmware writes in the background, which wears out the memory cells over time.

[wizard]

Pro's and con's for both. I can say that over the years I've had many HD's die just sitting on the shelf. Usually due to the grease in the spindle or r/w arm bearings getting stiff. If you're using either SSD's or HD's it pays to have one of the Linux or MS Windows utilities that monitor critical SMART factors about the drive's use and life. You'll find links for SmartChk or HDSentinel in the forum and try Crystal Disk Info portable for MS Windows.

wizard

[stevie pup]

I've just read through this thread, and I couldn't help thinking back to days gone by. When I would hear some music I liked, then go off to the local record store and buy the vinyl record. Just the one, no copies or back ups. Nowadays my entire music collection is digital, and it appears I need 5 copies to be really confident I'm not going to lose the lot in the blink of an eye. Is this what we call progress?

I personally think that SSD's are over hyped. Yes I can see how they would benefit some people, but everyone? Is an SSD going to make a noticeable difference to someone that just does a bit of online shopping and checks their emails?

Of course, if I had a pile of them that I was desparate to sell, then I would be telling everyone how wonderful they were.

[mikewalsh]

@stevie pup :-

Backblaze - you may, perhaps, have heard of them - are an enterprise cloud provider. Many years ago, they began to publish reliability reports on all their storage drives......and since they usually have anywhere from 250,000 to 400,000+ of the things in service at any given time across their pool of data centres, the rest of the industry uses their annual reports as a pretty accurate guide as to what to use & what to avoid.

For a long while it was always HDDs. About 5-6 years ago, they began using enterprise grade SSDs alongside their more usual HDDs. Only recently have we had available reports on their SSDs, given that the problems - if any - don't usually show up till after the first 3 years or so.

Their most recent report now says that "SSDs are in fact MORE reliable than HDDs":-

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/backb ... -than-hdds

The speed increase alone makes them worth using. I had a 64GB PATA/IDE version for the ancient Dell lappie that died last year. Being P4-based, it was a snail anyway.....but use of an SSD, even over an IDE interface, at least halved Puppy's boot time. Which made it worth the quite reasonable amount I paid for it.

Again, I replaced the main HP rig's Toshiba "spinning rust" for a 1 TB Crucial MX500 last year. Biggest improvement ever! Puppy was always fast on here, but now her paws don't touch the ground. Never come across anything so responsive in my life; everything is pretty much immediate now.

They ARE a worthwhile investment.....but I rather think HDDs will be around for a good few years yet. Reliable, mature technologies don't just die out overnight; rather, they slowly expire as more and more people gradually make the switch-over.

It WILL happen.....eventually. Of that, there can be NO doubt.

Mike.

[8Geee]

I have a 15 yr old RIData 16Gb as 'harddrive' in my netbook. Daily backups + updates.

8Geee

[Flash]

Sorry I don't have the URL. I don't subscribe to the Post. Someone sent me this.

BY CATHY FREE

THE WASHINGTON POST

Coral Amayi was enjoying a river tubing trip in Colorado on July 3, 2010, when she hit some rough rapids and was tossed off her inner tube.

When she climbed back on, she realized the cord that attached her camera to her tube was broken. Her Olympus digital camera – and all of her photos on the memory card – were gone.

“I had pictures of my dog and her puppies, pictures of my friend’s first baby, and pictures of my camping trip on there that I hadn’t downloaded yet,” said Amayi, who was living in Durango, Colo., at the time. “I figured I’d never see them again.”

She also had photos of a friend’s bridal shower and wedding.

Amayi said she was upset over it for several days, but then she decided to put it behind her and bought a new camera.

She’d almost forgotten about the unpleasant episode. Then earlier this month, from her home in Arizona, she saw she was tagged on Facebook by several friends in Colorado.

“They said, ‘Look, somebody found your camera and put your photos on the Durango group [Facebook] page!’” said Amayi, now living in Cochise, Ariz. “I immediately did a happy dance. After all these years? I couldn’t believe it.”

Her camera had been found March 14 by Spencer Greiner of Durango while he was on a fishing trip about a mile downstream from where Amayi had fallen off her tube in the Animas River.

Greiner, 34, said he was cleaning up some trash along the riverbank when he saw the weather-beaten camera poking out of the mud. “With the snow melt going on, there was a lot of trash coming through in the water,” he said. “I thought I’d clean it up a bit.”

Greiner dropped the camera into his fishing pack, thinking he’d toss it later.

“Then curiosity got the best of me once I was home,” he said.

Greiner said he used a screwdriver to pry open the decaying camera and remove the memory card, then he used a card reader to transfer the data to his computer.

“The camera was such a wreck and looked so far beyond reality, I didn’t think I’d be able to see anything,” he said.

He was shocked when 179 photos popped up from June and July 2010. The photos showed a bridal shower, a wedding and a river trip, he said....

[wiak]

They ARE a worthwhile investment.....but I rather think HDDs will be around for a good few years yet. Reliable, mature technologies don't just die out overnight; rather, they slowly expire as more and more people gradually make the switch-over.

It WILL happen.....eventually. Of that, there can be NO doubt.

Mike.

But don't you just miss that warm fuzzy feeling when you hear them spin up and whine (especially nice old ones). As for the clicking and clanking you sometimes get... like growing old.

[sonny]

Backblaze 2022 Hard Drive Failure Rates:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaz ... -for-2022/

Backblaze Finds that Older 'and Smaller' HDDs fail more:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/31/ ... /?td=rt-3a

[Clarity]

Nothing to do with the hardware lifespan. This post asks: Can/does the filesystem(s) active in device use impact lifespan? Further, what about subsystems or applications using subsystems?

Over the years, I have never seen any manufacturer reports of filesystem impacts on hardware life. But they never show us drive use/longevity by the filesystem active on the units they build. So their test, I trust, is purely based upon how they have tested which is not 'real world'. As such I had often wondering if filesystem information placement to the drives and its I/O subsystem differences have any impact of longevity. We all know that there are performance differences depending on how they are setup and used via their connected systme.

Yet, I KNOW manufacturers build according to use in

• Consumer display oriented systems

• NAS

• Games

• Enterprise desktop systems drives

• Enterprise NAS drives

• Enterprise drives with differing motherboard interfaces ie. ATA/SATA/SCSI/etc.

• Those used in space

• etc.

Unless we have knowledge of how they do things in their LABs, we can only 'guess' if that translates to actual lifespan(s) in a model family of a end-point storage device.

I can only trust what they say for new units added to our systems.

I have a USB unit that has run continuously for 2 decades now. I have been concerned since I got it how long it will last. In is continuous operations externally connected to a 2003 32bit laptop running continuously, it has outperformed many of the new drives and system drives I have. I expect it to die; but based upon its behavior, I will have to physically KILL it before it does on its own.

This is just one of many tales we all have about storage units, backups, lifespan, etc.

AS a kid, I loved Alfred E Newman's famous quote: "What, me worry!?"

Smile ... this post is merely thoughts

[sonny]

I believe cloud backups (i.e. iCloud, pCloud) make more sense:
1. Corporate-grade data backup
2. Corporate-grade power backup
3. Encrypted
4. Probably insured

[ozsouth]

I'm sure journalling filesystems i.e. ext3 & ext4, do more writing (reducing lifespan), but ext2 is more prone to corruption. Journalling can be turned off in ext4. For win users, startup times are much faster with ssds.

[bigpup]

Cloud storage is OK, but it is putting your stuff on someone else's computer.

I researched this SSD, lifespan issue a few years ago.

I looked at testing results, where the SSD is used in a continuous writing/reading operation, until it fails.

The results of those tests showed, a SSD will probably last around 10 years or longer, based on expected normal use.
How many writes, an average person will perform, when using their computer.

All SSD's now have a set amount of storage capacity, that is not ever used, and you will never see.
This is there to be used to replace a section of storage, that may go bad.
The SSD's internal wear leveling will detect a section going bad, replace it with some of this unseen storage, move contents to the replacement storage, and deactivate the bad section, to never get used anymore.

The testing showed, that when a storage cell started having write issues.
It usually could still be read and get the data from it.

[stevie pup]

What I was getting at is simply this. Every one of my laptops still has it's original HDD, and all are still functioning correctly. Only when one of them fails will I start looking at what I'm going to replace it with, until then they will be left alone. I do not need to rush out tomorrow to get an SSD just because they're the "in thing", or even more annoying, because someone tells me I should.

My computer use these days is fairly basic and simple, so no, I'm not going to jump for joy and get wildly excited just because something boots up a minute faster.

[wiak]

I'm not so lucky. Did have a couple of computers whose hard drives kept working for a decade, but then they became dodgy, which I got used to, but eventually no tricks helped and they basically became too unreliable.

Another time I bought couple of small storage size ssd cards via Aliexpress. One still works, but in laptop now rarely used. The other worked for two days and thereafter didn't appear as a connected device... yes no use buying cheap rubbish.

[wiak]

Cloud storage probably safer ... maybe... but use local encryption if sensitive data to upload. Then again I hate modern cloud dependency.

[ozsouth]

For me the win speed thing was essential, as my wife was very unhappy with her win10 startup & picture editor speed. I got the same Crucial MX500 1Tb drive that mikewalsh got, about a month earlier (& told him I liked it, after he'd also bought one). It was not expensive & happy wife . . . .

[wizard]

@wiak

Can tell you horror stories about cloud storage, case histories for redundant backups.
wizard's rule #7 "The 'cloud' is great, unless you have no cloud"

wizard

[sonny]

Last year, my 7-year-old WD 2TB external drive died suddenly. The drive was connected to a router and shared by family members. I took the drive out, but there were no signs of life. So I ended up paying a local data recovery specialist more than $300.

Lessons learned:

1. Symptoms: A few months before the incident, there were some disconnections, but I just unplugged and replugged the power cable to fix it.

2. External drive cons: They may be cheaper than the bare ones (considering the bonus enclosure etc). But, the 'hidden' drive may have a lower RPM, may be refurbished. Let alone enclosure's connection issues.

So I decided to pay pCloud $300 for a 2TB cloud for life so I wouldn't have to worry about losing data again. Not to mention the trouble of keeping track of the drive's life, its symptoms, and any outside factors (theft, California's fire, flood, earthquake, etc). I use it to mirror my folder AND as an "eternal" external drive.

[8Geee]

One other thing will help with all storage devices in or attatched to a computer... a UPS device. Glitches cause failures... especially traditional HDDs, but SSD's and other memory components are NOT immune. I do believe that part of the reason for long life is a UPS.

Regards
8Geee

[sonny]

My modem, router, and USB storage are always on a UPS.
Buying a lifetime cloud is like buying "(digital) life insurance" for my family.
Both commitment and peace of mind cost money.

[wiak]

@wiak

Can tell you horror stories about cloud storage, case histories for redundant backups.
wizard's rule #7 "The 'cloud' is great, unless you have no cloud"

wizard

Which cloud service gave you grief wizard? Most losses I've ever had were caused by myself on local machine including electrical faults pulling stuff out when still plugged in... always in a hurry. Dropped my external old backup 1TB drive last week; still going so far. Broken several laptop keyboards taking machines apart - some of these connector ribbons are very delicate on smaller laptops. Usually I am extremely careful, but depends... and once perfect eyesight long gone. Need multiple pairs of glasses on to magnify enough and no coffee helps stop shaky hands soldering. Used to be a whizz at fine soldering - building new electronic boards in design/development used to be my job once. Had technicians to do the assembly but took longer fault-finding their wiring errors so usually did the soldering myself since went for 100% correct first time builds - saved hours overall despite my boss complaining my design time was too valuable to bother with the soldering. But nowadays poor eyesight changes everything. It is annoying to see careless bad work by some electricians and plumbers and so on though. Some are good but some just hopeless despite having the certifications that are legal requirement for such work nowadays. I'm surprised more houses don't burn down - some do...

[pp4mnklinux]

The 3 security copies rule.

The best resource... MULTCLOUD.

[wizard]

@wiak

Which cloud service gave you grief wizard?

No specific one, in each case it was a customers office manager who made a decision to go with a "cloud" backup solution and no redundant local backup. In both cases when disaster struck they were not able to recover their critical business data in a timely manner, one took almost 3 months to regain.

Like you, heavy magnification is my friend and the days of soldering board level components are gone

wizard

[Grey]

I usually buy Silicon Power products if I need RAM, flash drive and SSD. But this Wednesday I bought a 512 gb SSD by Netac. The most common with 3D nand sata3. I just decided to see how and how long it will work for the second computer There will be no secret drawings there, just for emulation and drawing all sorts of nonsense.