How long does an SSD last? It’s a tricky question to answer

I’ve been enjoying the lightning-fast speeds of SSDs (solid state drives) to store and restore data for a while now. For gaming they provide quick loading times, support the latest graphics, and as a bonus they produce less heat than the old-school mechanical drives I used to use.

But having lost the data on an old HDD (hard disk drive) when it up and failed on me, I’m now wondering about my SSDs’ lifespans. My desktop gaming rig houses a pair that are about eight years old. So, should I be worried?

Further reading: The best SSDs we’ve tested

Could my old SSDs die soon?

The short answer is, yes, I should be a little concerned about their age, especially since I do a lot of writing to them. That’s because like every type of hardware SSDs have a limited lifespan.

Despite their speed and latency advantages over mechanical hard drives, these storage devices are not immune to degradation over time.

The reason they degrade is that like USB drives SSDs are a kind of flash memory device that rely on NAND or V-NAND flash chips to store and retrieve data.

With use, after a certain number of Program / Erase (P/E) Cycles, the transistors in the NAND chips wear out slightly and can wear down to the point where they lose their charge-holding capacity and become less reliable for data retention.

With enough wear these drives will stop working altogether. You can take a deeper look at flash storage and how it works in our article “How long does data last on a USB flash drive?”

SSD lifespan is not an exact science

Unfortunately, there’s no exact way to determine the length of time an SSD will last, but we can roughly estimate lifespan based on different factors.

Manufacturers will generally claim an SSD lifespan of between five to seven years based on theoretical calculations and a number of prevailing indicators. These include factors such as:

• TBW (total bytes written): The amount of total data you can write to an SSD before it stops working
• Program / Erase (P/E) Cycles: The number of times an SSD can write data before the cells start to deteriorate
• Write endurance: The amount of data you can write to an SSD before it reaches its P/E cycle limit

Research backs up these things as being significant factors that can determine how long an SSD will last. But for the average user these metrics are going to be hard to keep tabs on.

An easier indicator is simply your SSD’s age. In fact, a joint study by the University of Toronto Canada and Google found age to be the strongest predictor of SSD lifespan.

The study, which was carried out in a Google data center, found that older SSDs experienced far more data retention errors than newer SSDs. Interestingly, it also found SSDs to be far more reliable than HDDs, requiring replacement at just one quarter of the rate.

Why you can’t exactly rely on manufacturer estimations

Manufacturers’ theoretical calculations generally don’t consider real-world variables and conditions that will affect SSDs.

If a manufacturer’s estimate is 5 to 7 years, an SSD could just as easily last over 10 years with light and infrequent usage and without being exposed to other unfavorable conditions. But the opposite could also be true: With heavy or frequent use and unfavorable conditions an SDD may only last 3 to 5 years.

On that last point, a drive’s TBW shouldn’t matter too much for home use. In fact, you’d have to write data almost constantly in a 7-year period for it to be the reason why your SSD kicks the bucket.

Pexels: Andrey Matveev

How much data would you need to write? Research shows that in a best-case scenario a 256GB SSD can take as much as 1 petabyte (that’s 1,000 terabytes) before it fails. Larger capacity SSDs will take a lot more data than that.

The SDD type you’re using (SLC, MLC, or TLC) – now that’s a different matter. There’s a big difference between the top-rated and most expensive types of SSDs when it comes to the number of P/E Cycles they can take. As a rule of thumb, you can use the following as a guide:

• SLC NAND flash: 50,000 to 100,000 write cycles
• MLC NAND flash: 3,000 write cycles
• TLC NAND flash: 300 to 1,000 write cycles

Apart from data and age, environmental factors like temperature and humidity levels and the extent to which the SSD is exposed to stressors like vibrations will also have an impact on its lifespan.

How to extend an SSD’s lifespan

From the above information you can see that using an SSD less frequently and writing less data to it over time are two ways that you could improve its lifespan. But if you’re anything like me, you’re not going to want to do either of those things.

A better way is to ensure you buy a drive from a reputable manufacturer whose quality you trust, since the quality too can be a determining factor in SSD longevity.

You can also control the environmental conditions a drive is exposed to: For example, keep heat and humidity to a minimum and use an uninterruptible power supply and/or surge protector to prevent power fluctuations leading to failure.

Keeping a small amount of space free is also recommended, since most SSDs use a process called wear leveling that requires free space to work.

You can also use tools to monitor the health of your drive, be they external software programs like CrystalDiskInfo, or tools built into the drive itself, like Western Digital’s Dashboard or Samsung’s Magician.

While you shouldn’t be too concerned about longevity if you’ve just bought a new SSD, if you own an older drive, you’ll also want to keep an eye out for key signs that your SSD could be about to die.

Regardless of these steps, you should always remember to back up your critical data to an external drive. By being vigilant and prepared, you can avoid being caught out if the worst ever happens.