The primary benefit of using SSDs over HDDs is their speed. Solid State Drives offer incredibly faster performance compared to the traditional hard disks. SSDs don’t have physical moving parts (such as spinning platters) and as such, they consume little energy and make no noise.
However, SSDs have a few major drawbacks. They’re very expensive and thus, limited in size. There are ‘write’ limitations with SSDs. Writing too much data can decrease your SSD’s overall lifespan. So, if you’ve recently bought an SSD, sit back and read this guide to get a glimpse about it’s expected lifespan and the best practices to improve your SSD’s life expectancy.
How to find how long your SSD may last?
To be precise, there’s no absolute answer. The exact lifespan of your SSD cannot be entirely predicted. However, there are several hints which can help you measure the possible lifespan of your SSD. Unlike traditional hard disks, you can get an educated guess.
SSD warranty in terms of Total Bytes Written (TBW)
Each SSD has a fixed warranty in terms of how many bytes can be written to the drive. The warranty is specified by your SSD manufacturer and the amount of total bytes is based on the internal product research, product quality, specifications, and other factors.
For example, Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD that offers 1 TB of storage, has a warranty covering a total of 600 TB of data written on it within 5 years. 600 TB equals 614,400 GB. Another SSD, Crucial CT200P5SSD8 that offers 2 TB of storage, has a warranty covering 1200 TB of data written on it. 1200 TB equals 1,228,800 GB.
If you’ve bought the SSD online, go to the product page and look for the product description. You may also check the documentations that came with your SSD, or contact the manufacturer/ vendor for the accurate information. Most often, your manufacturer hides this information into the backdoor, or prints it with a very smaller font size.
Other Factors
Other factors such as manufacturing defects, voltage fluctuations, inadequate ventilation also play a crucial role. For example, If your SSD has manufacturing defects, it may not last long. If you’re using a Desktop computer, voltage fluctuations can cause physical damage to your SSD. Lack of adequate ventilation inside the hardware components can cause overheating and degrade the SSD’s life.
Does it mean my SSD will only last until the specified TBW?
Absolutely not. Your SSD might usually last longer than the specified limit. TBW only hints at the manufacturer’s expectations about the drive’s lifespan, and not a fixed lifespan. However, we highly recommend you to take a complete backup of all the important data on your SSD when you’re about to approach the maximum TBW of your SSD. Your SSD might fail or stop working at any point in time in the future and you may lose your precious data. In other words, the probability of data loss increases as you reach and cross the manufacturer-specified TBW warranty.
How do I find out how much data I’ve written to my SSD over years?
As you write more data to your SSD, the more your SSD wears out. Finding out how much data you’ve written to your SSD can help you determine how close to the manufacturer specified TBW your drive is. Thankfully, it isn’t a complicated task. There are freeware tools that show this information.
- Download and install CrystalDiskInfo. (The application’s download page has so many misleading ads, don’t click anywhere to avoid downloading something else)
- After downloading the application in the form of a compressed Zip file, open it using a free file compression software such as 7 Zip File Manager.
- When you open the main application file, CrystalDiskInfo will start showing real-time information about your computer such as the temperature, drives, serial number, power information, etc.
- Click the drive letter (such as C:\) corresponding to your SSD, and then look for “Total Host Writes”. The program will display the total GBs of data written to your SSD till now.
Best Practices to Improve SSD’s Life Expectancy
Don’t Defragment your SSD
Traditional hard disks required to be defragmented on a regular basis. Since HDDs have mechanical parts including platters, that causes your data to get scattered across all platters and take more time when you need to open that file. Modern operating systems automatically take care of any fragmentation.
In contrast, SSDs DO NOT require defragmentation as there are no mechanical moving parts and they quickly read data irrespective of where it resides. In fact, defragmenting your SSD on a regular basis will kill it’s lifespan. SSDs have a major limitation in terms of number of writes, defragmenting will do more harm than good.
Avoid Write-intensive Operations
Avoid performing operations that write too much data to your disk. Writing too much data to your SSD will decrease its lifespan and sooner you’ll need to change it. For example, avoid downloading large movies and large ISO files to the drive on your SSD.
Don’t Store Paging File on SSD
Your operating system temporarily writes data to your hard disk, when your computer runs low on memory. If you’ve the Virtual Memory feature enabled, disable it for the drive located on your SSD. Instead, configure your Windows settings to store the Paging File on your Hard Disk.
1. Click on the Start icon.
2. Type “advanced system settings”.
3. Open “View advanced system settings” from the results.
4. In the new dialog box System Properties, click on the Settings button under Performance category.
5. Click on the Advanced tab.
6. Click on Change under the Virtual Memory category.
7. Uncheck the box Automatically manage paging file size for all drives.
8. Select a drive stored on your SSD (for example, C:\)
9. Select No Paging File and click on Set.
10. Repeat the same for other drives that are stored on your SSD.
11. Click on OK > OK > OK.
12. Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.
Warning: Entirely disabling the Virtual Memory is not recommended if you’ve lower or insufficient RAM. Your computer may experience system freezes, unexpected restarts or Blue Screen of Death if it runs out of RAM. Upgrade your RAM or store the Paging File on your HDD.
Configure Programs to Store Temporary Data to Another Drive (HDD)
The applications installed on your computer constantly read and write data to temporary directories. Change the program settings to store the temporary data to another partition located on your Hard Disk Drive (HDD).
Alternatively, you can change the following setting to migrate the temporary folders created by your operating system to another drive.
1. Repeat the Steps # 1-3 under the “Don’t Store Paging File on SSD” section.
2. Click on the Environmental Variables in the Advanced tab.
3. Select “TEMP” and then Edit.
4. Click on Browse Directory and select a folder stored on your Hard Disk to migrate the TEMP directory.
5. Click on OK.
6. Similarly, select the “TMP” folder and then Edit, and choose a different location for the TMP folder.
7. If you’ve Microsoft OneDrive installed, do the same for the OneDrive and OneDriveConsumer folders.
8. Click on OK > OK.
9. Restart your computer.
Make Sure Your SSD is Not Full
Don’t use your SSD to its full capacity and keep sufficient free storage. Keep at least 10-15% of free storage for maximum read/ write efficiency.
When your SSD is filled to its full capacity, the writing performance is reduced and your SSD starts writing data into cache and reading only partially filled blocks.
You can free-up a large amount of storage by deduping your files. Find and delete duplicate documents, images, videos, music and other files that occupy a large storage.
1. Download and install Clone Files Checker Windows 11 Duplicate File Finder.
2. Click on System Scan > Add.
3. Choose a destination folder/ drive to scan and then click on OK.
4. Start the scan and wait for a while. Once the scan is finished, click on Review & Fix.
5. Now, check the files you want to delete/ move. You can automatically check hundreds of duplicates by clicking on the Select Duplicates button and choosing a selection criteria.
6. Click on Select Action > Delete.
Avoid Using on Obsolete Operating Systems
Do not use a Solid State Drive (SSD) on older operating systems Windows XP and Windows Vista. These versions of Windows do not use the TRIM technology required for the SSDs. Even though your SSD might work on these versions, it is not a recommended practice.
Don’t Disable TRIM on Modern Operating Systems
Do not disable the TRIM feature on modern operating systems while using an SSD. Every time data is deleted from your SSD, your operating system sends the TRIM command to your SSD for post-processing.
Don’t Store Infrequently Used Very Large Files
Don’t use SSDs to store movies, large ISO files and other files that you may not need frequently. Instead, use your SSD to store the operating system and program files.
Avoid Benchmarking Tools
Avoid using benchmarking tools that write a lot of data to your SSD just to determine the read/ write speed, performance and efficiency of your SSD.
