{"id":565455,"date":"2023-03-18T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-18T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-long-does-an-ssd-last\/"},"modified":"2023-03-18T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-03-18T11:00:00","slug":"how-long-does-an-ssd-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-long-does-an-ssd-last\/","title":{"rendered":"#How Long Does an SSD Last?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a28964712a4a\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a28964712a4a\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-long-does-an-ssd-last\/#%E2%80%9CHow_Long_Does_an_SSD_Last%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;How Long Does an SSD Last?&#8221;<\/a><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-2' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-long-does-an-ssd-last\/#SSD_Lifespan_Basics\" >SSD Lifespan Basics<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-long-does-an-ssd-last\/#How_Long_Do_SSDs_Last\" >How Long Do SSDs Last?<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-long-does-an-ssd-last\/#Studies_on_SSD_Lifespan\" >Studies on SSD Lifespan<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-long-does-an-ssd-last\/#Why_You_Dont_Need_to_Worry\" >Why You Don\u2019t Need to Worry<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CHow_Long_Does_an_SSD_Last%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;How Long Does an SSD Last?&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<div>\n<!-- UNCACHED CONTENT --><\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 1920px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"type:primaryImage wp-image-878413 size-full \" data-pagespeed-no-defer=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/52651182109_5600f4fda3_o.jpg?width=1198&amp;trim=1,1&amp;bg-color=000&amp;pad=1,1\" alt=\"An NVME SSD. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" data-credittext=\"Corbin Davenport \/ How-To Geek\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"type:primaryImage imagecredit\">Corbin Davenport \/ How-To Geek<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Under normal conditions, your average solid-state drive (SSD) will last many years before it fails. You will likely replace other components &#8212; like your GPU or CPU &#8212; that have become outdated long before your SSD dies.<\/p>\n<p>When large-scale flash storage first came to the consumer market as an alternative to conventional hard drives, the biggest concern (aside from price) was longevity. Tech fans had a pretty good idea of the <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/general\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"General\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">general<\/a> reliability of hard drives, but solid-state drives (SSDs) were still something of a wild card.<\/p>\n<h2 role=\"heading\" aria-level=\"2\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"SSD_Lifespan_Basics\"><\/span>SSD Lifespan Basics<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Now, the market for <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/775303\/best-internal-ssd\/\">SSDs has matured considerably, and we have a lot more data on\u2026 well, data. The good news is that SSDs have proven to be extremely reliable and certainly at least as good as hard drives in terms of data retention and failure rates. The bad news is that SSDs tend to fail more often with age\u2014and not with extended data reading and writing, as formerly predicted.<\/p>\n<p>That means that you\u2019re no more likely to lose data with an all-flash setup versus a standard hard drive, but it\u2019s still essential to keep a backup of important files.<\/p>\n<p>Before we go on to some of the testing, it\u2019s important to get a quick primer on some of the more technical terms associated with SSDs:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>MLC and SLC<\/strong>: Multi-Level Cell memory is cheaper and slower, generally found on consumer-grade SSD drives. Single-Level Cell memory in enterprise and enthusiast-grade SSDs is faster and technically less prone to data loss.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Memory Block<\/strong>: A portion of the physical memory on a flash drive. A \u201cbad block\u201d is inaccessible or poorly accessible to your computer, causing a lower-than-reported level of available storage and potential read and write errors for files and software.<\/li>\n<li><strong>TBW<\/strong>: Terabytes Written. The total amount of data written and re-written to a drive over its lifetime, expressed in terabytes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With that in mind, let\u2019s answer this question.<\/p>\n<h2 role=\"heading\" aria-level=\"2\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"How_Long_Do_SSDs_Last\"><\/span>How Long Do SSDs Last?<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Your typical SSD will survive many years of typical home use before it is at a considerable risk of failure. Exactly how long it\u2019ll last depends largely on how much data is written to the drive, as well as the drive\u2019s age and the ambient conditions. Anecdotally, asking around the How-to Geek office, none of us have ever had an SSD die on us \u2014 and we\u2019re putting way more miles on our computer components than the average person is. But besides anecdotes, what does the data say about how long your fancy new SSD will last?<\/p>\n<p>SSD vendors tend to rate the reliability of their drives on three factors: standard age (like any warranty), total <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/806926\/what-does-tbw-mean-for-ssds\/\">terabytes written over time, and the amount of data written to the drive per specific amount of time, like a day. Obviously measuring by these three different standards will return different results based on methodology. And the very fact that there are three extremely loose standards for \u201cwear\u201d on a digital component should illustrate something to the end user: accurately predicting how long it will take a specific SSD to fail is more or less impossible. We can only give a very vague point of maximum possible data retention, after which using the drive will put you in danger of immediate loss of data and computer operation.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 730px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-878414 size-full \" data-pagespeed-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/NVMe-SSD-SATA-SSD-SATA-HDD.jpg?trim=1,1&amp;bg-color=000&amp;pad=1,1\" alt=\"Multiple drives, including two SSDs and a 2.5 inch HDD. \" width=\"730\" height=\"411\" data-credittext=\"Corbin Davenport \/ How-To Geek\" src=\"\/pagespeed_static\/1.JiBnMqyl6S.gif\" onload=\"pagespeed.lazyLoadImages.loadIfVisibleAndMaybeBeacon(this);\" onerror=\"this.onerror=null;pagespeed.lazyLoadImages.loadIfVisibleAndMaybeBeacon(this);\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"imagecredit\">Corbin Davenport \/ How-To Geek<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 role=\"heading\" aria-level=\"2\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Studies_on_SSD_Lifespan\"><\/span><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" name=\"autotoc_anchor_2\">Studies on SSD Lifespan<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>There have been several studies trying to determine a more precise lifespan for solid-state memory. A few of the more well-known ones include:<\/p>\n<p><strong><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/hexus.net\/tech\/news\/storage\/90920-google-datacentre-ssd-study-offers-surprising-conclusions\/?\">A joint study between Google and the University of Toronto<\/a> covering drive failure rates on data servers.<\/strong> The study concluded that the physical age of the SSD, rather than the amount or frequency of data written, is the prime determiner in probability of data retention errors. It also determined that SSD drives were replaced at Google data centers far less often than conventional hard drives, at about a one-to-four ratio. But it wasn\u2019t all positive in favor of SSDs: they experienced higher uncorrectable errors and bad blocks at a much higher rate than hard drives over the four-year testing period. <strong>Conclusion<\/strong>: in a high-stress, fast-read environment, SSDs will last longer than hard drives, but be more susceptible to non-catastrophic data errors. Older SSDs are more prone to total failure regardless of TBW or DWPD.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/techreport.com\/review\/26523\/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-casualties-on-the-way-to-a-petabyte\">The Tech Report\u2019s study<\/a> on longevity between\u00a0major brands.<\/strong> Among six brands of SSDs tested, only the Kingston, Samsung, and Corsair high-end drives managed to survive after writing over 1000 terabytes of data (one petabyte). The other drives failed at between 700 and 900 TBW. Two of the failed drives, Samsung and Intel, used the cheaper MLC standard, while the Kingston drive is actually the same model as the one that survived, only tested with a similar methodology. <strong>Conclusion<\/strong>:\u00a0a\u00a0~250GB SSD can be expected to die sometime before one petabyte written \u2014 though two (or perhaps three) of the models exceeded that mark, it would be wise to plan a contingency in case your specific drive under-performs, even if it uses more expensive SLC memory.<\/p>\n<p>Larger capacity SSDs, due to having more available sectors and more \u201croom\u201d to use before failing, should last longer in a predictable manner. For example, if a 250GB Samsung 840 MLC drive failed at 900 TBW, it would be reasonable to expect a 1TB drive to last for considerably longer, if not necessarily all the way to a massive 3.6 petabytes written.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/users.ece.cmu.edu\/~omutlu\/pub\/flash-memory-failures-in-the-field-at-facebook_sigmetrics15.pdf\">Facebook publicly published an internal study<\/a>\u00a0(PDF link) of the lifespan of SSDs used in its corporate data centers.<\/strong> The findings were focused on the environmental conditions of the data centers themselves \u2014 for example, they came to the fairly obvious conclusion that extended proximity to high heat was damaging to an SSD\u2019s lifespan. But the study also found that if an SSD doesn\u2019t fail after its first major detectable errors, then it\u2019s likely to last far longer than overly cautious software diagnostic software. Contradicting Google\u2019s joint study, Facebook found that higher data write and read rates can significantly impact the lifespan of a drive, though it isn\u2019t clear if the latter was controlling for the physical age of the drive itself. <strong>Conclusion<\/strong>: Except in cases of early total failure, SSDs are likely to last longer than indicated by early errors, and data vectors like TDW are likely to be overstated by software measurement because of system-level buffering.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, all of those studies are looking at intense datacenter applications. The average home user won\u2019t come anywhere close to that kind of utilization.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/cloud-backup.html#af9xut\">Backblaze<\/a>, a cloud storage and computer backup company, has been performing <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/ssd-drive-stats-mid-2022-review\/\">a study comparing SSDs and HDDs<\/a>\u00a0as boot drives for their servers.<\/strong> It is closer to the stress an average user might put on their drives. Their study is simple: How many boot drives die per year? What is the annualized failure rate of HDDs vs. SSDs?\u00a0<strong>Conclusion:<\/strong>\u00a0HDDs and SSDs will die at a similar rate for the first 3 years of operation, but after that, the failure rate of HDDs begins to rapidly increase, whereas the failure rate of SSDs remains fairly constant for at least 5 years. Whether or not SSDs will hit a \u201cfailure wall,\u201d an age where many drives begin to spontaneously fail is not clear yet, however you can likely count on your drive working for at <em>least<\/em> 5 years.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-324753 size-full \" data-pagespeed-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/img_59add3998c017.jpg?trim=1,1&amp;bg-color=000&amp;pad=1,1\" alt=\"Industrial servers, like you'd find in a data center. \" width=\"730\" height=\"300\" data-crediturl=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=avP5d16wEp0\" data-credittext=\"Google\/YouTube\" src=\"\/pagespeed_static\/1.JiBnMqyl6S.gif\" onload=\"pagespeed.lazyLoadImages.loadIfVisibleAndMaybeBeacon(this);\" onerror=\"this.onerror=null;pagespeed.lazyLoadImages.loadIfVisibleAndMaybeBeacon(this);\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tests on industrial data servers, like the ones used by Google and Facebook, give us insight into SSD longevity. <span class=\"imagecredit\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=avP5d16wEp0\">Google\/YouTube<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 role=\"heading\" aria-level=\"2\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Why_You_Dont_Need_to_Worry\"><\/span>Why You Don\u2019t Need to Worry<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Taking all of this data in at once, what overall conclusion can we draw? Looking at these studies consecutively, you might be concerned that your SSD will burst into flames after a year or two. But keep in mind, two of the studies were on enterprise-class data centers, reading and writing data more or less constantly every day for <em>years<\/em>, and the consumer-oriented study was done specifically to stress test drives with constant use. In order to reach a petabyte of total written data, the average consumer would have to use his or her computer more or less nonstop for a decade, maybe even multiple decades. Even gamers or \u201cpower users\u201d will probably never reach the stated maximum amount of data written for a drive under its warranty. The Backblaze analysis, which is closer to normal use, paints a more optimistic picture \u2014 most of their drives are doing just fine after five years of use in a professional environment.<\/p>\n<p>In other words: You\u2019ll probably <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/659242\/the-five-best-pc-upgrades-to-improve-performance\/\">upgrade your entire computer before your SSD fails.<\/p>\n<p>Now, it\u2019s still possible for your SSD\u2019s\u00a0electronic components to fail, just like any computer part. And the likelihood of your SSD experiencing a data retention failure does go up the longer it\u2019s used. Since that\u2019s true, it\u2019s always wise to keep your critical data backed up to an external drive and (if possible) to a remote location as well. Just remember to plug your SSD in regularly if you\u2019re using it for long-term storage. But if you\u2019re worried about your SSD failing at any moment or being less reliable than your trusty old hard drive: don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script>\n setTimeout(function(){\n  !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n  {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n  n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\n  if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\n  n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\n  t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n  s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s) } (window, document,'script',\n  'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n   fbq('init', '335401813750447');\n   fbq('track', 'PageView');\n  },3000);\n<\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more like this article, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/technology\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Technology category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/322856\/how-long-do-solid-state-drives-really-last\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;How Long Does an SSD Last?&#8221; Corbin Davenport \/ How-To Geek Under normal conditions, your average solid-state drive (SSD) will last many years before it fails. You will likely replace other components &#8212; like your GPU or CPU &#8212; that have become outdated long before your SSD dies. When large-scale flash storage first came to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":565456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/52651182109_5600f4fda3_o.jpg?height=200p&trim=2,2,2,2","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-565455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}