You can significantly extend the life of your Solid-State Drive (SSD) by managing its storage capacity, ensuring it operates at a cool temperature, and keeping its firmware up to date. In this article, we’ll explain why those practices are effective (and explain why a few other practices aren’t so effective).
If you’ve lost data from an SSD, we’re here to help. Datarecovery.com provides risk-free evaluations, and we support every case with a no data, no charge guarantee. To learn more, call 1-800-237-4200 or submit a ticket online to schedule an evaluation.
Why do SSDs have a limited lifespan, anyway?
Three older SSDs.
NAND flash memory has a finite number of write cycles. Under normal usage, a modern Solid-State Drive (SSD) can be expected to last for many years — if you’re like most users, you’ll replace your computer and upgrade your storage long before the drive wears out.
SSD lifespan is typically measured in Terabytes Written (TBW), and even entry-level drives are rated for massive amounts of data.
Many commercial SSDs are rated for around 360 TBW. If you had a drive that met that spec, you could theoretically write 100GB of data to it every single day for ten years. That’s about twice as much data as the typical “power” user will write on a daily basis.
And when manufacturers estimate their drives’ lifespans, they’re usually fairly conservative. That’s good news for consumers: One test performed by TechSpot found that most popular consumer drives can withstand write cycles that extend well into the petabyte range (a petabyte is 1,000 terabytes).
Of course, in the real world, you’re unlikely to get 20+ years of service from any SSD, regardless of its TBW rating. That’s largely because solid-state technology isn’t perfect — and neither is your computer’s power supply, its operating system, or the other components that play a role in maintaining the integrity of your data.
Extending the Life of Your SSD
If you’re new to solid state storage, here’s a quick overview: Unlike traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) with spinning platters and read/write heads, SSDs rely on memory cells to store data. Every time data is written or erased, these cells undergo a small amount of wear.
When that wear becomes excessive, the electronic components that store your data become unreliable. That’s when data loss occurs.
To limit the chances of data loss, drives have wear-leveling algorithms that spread the work evenly. However, the way that you use your storage will play a role in your drive’s longevity.
Here’s what you need to do to get the most out of your SSD (and fortunately, it’s not that much!).
1. Avoid Filling the SSD to Capacity
We recommend keeping at least 10-25% of your SSD’s total capacity free. Tech magazines often call this “over-provisioning,” but we prefer to just call it “saving some space.”
Why? To write new data to a partially filled block, the drive must first read the existing data, copy it into memory, erase the entire block, and then write the old data plus the new data back to the block. This process, known as write amplification, results in more data being written to the flash memory than the user actually intended.
When your drive is nearly full, it has very few completely empty blocks to work with. This forces it to perform this read-modify-write cycle more often, increasing write amplification and accelerating wear.
By keeping a healthy amount of free space, you give the drive’s controller plenty of empty blocks to work with, keeping it fast and durable. This is also a good practice with traditional HDDs, by the way, but for entirely different reasons: Traditional hard drives are prone to fragmentation, which can slow down performance.
Related: Does Defragmenting A Solid-State Drive Cause Data Loss?
2. Manage Temperature and Ensure Proper Cooling
Heat is the enemy of all electronic components (along with water, fire, and…well, pretty much every natural element, to be honest).
SSDs are no exception. High operating temperatures can accelerate the degradation of the NAND flash cells and potentially shorten the drive’s lifespan.
For most desktop and laptop users, this isn’t a major concern as long as the computer has adequate airflow. Ensure your computer’s fans are clean and that case vents are not blocked. If you are a power user who frequently transfers huge files or works with high-bitrate video, you might want to grab a heatsink for your M.2 NVMe SSD, as they can get particularly hot under sustained load.
In our labs, we’ve seen failures in high-performance systems where poor airflow was a contributing factor. A well-ventilated case is well worth the investment.
3. Keep Your Firmware Updated
Firmware is the software that controls the SSD’s operations. Manufacturers regularly release firmware updates to improve performance, fix bugs, and enhance the efficiency of core functions like wear-leveling (spreading writes evenly across all memory cells) and garbage collection.
Updating your firmware ensures your drive is running with the latest and most effective management algorithms, which directly contributes to its longevity. Most manufacturers provide a free software utility for this purpose. It’s a good idea to check for an update once or twice a year by visiting your drive manufacturer’s website.
Note that if you do need to update your drive’s firmware, you should back up your drive completely before beginning the process.
4. Don’t Disable TRIM
We almost decided not to include this tip, because it’s not applicable to about 99% of users — if you bought your computer with an SSD pre-installed, or if you kept the default settings when installing your SSD, you’ve got TRIM enabled.
TRIM is a command that allows your operating system to tell your SSD which data blocks are no longer in use and can be marked for deletion. Without TRIM, the SSD doesn’t know you’ve deleted a file until you try to write new data to that spot, which forces it to erase the block first, slowing down the write process.
Once again, you probably don’t need to do anything here. If you’ve disabled TRIM for some reason, though, you’ll want to turn it back on — while TRIM can cause some data loss issues in specific circumstances (such as when you accidentally delete a file), it’s an essential part of your SSD’s operating instructions.
All modern operating systems, including Windows (7 and newer), macOS, and Linux, automatically enable TRIM when they detect an SSD.
What to Do When an SSD Fails
Even with perfect maintenance, any storage device can fail. SSD failures can be complex. In most cases, it’s not that the NAND has worn out — failures are usually caused by issues with the controller, firmware corruption, or electronic issues.
At Datarecovery.com, we specialize in recovering data from all types of SSD failures. Our engineers use purpose-built systems to interact directly with the drive’s controller and memory chips, bypassing the standard interfaces that become inaccessible when a drive fails. We’re able to reconstruct your data even in cases of severe electronic or firmware damage.
If you’ve lost access to critical data on an SSD, reach out. Contact our experts at 1-800-237-4200 or submit a case online for a free evaluation.
Common Myths About SSD Lifespan
Do I need to defragment my SSD?
No, SSDs do not require defragmentation.
Defragmentation is a process for mechanical hard drives that physically reorganizes scattered file pieces into a single continuous block to reduce seek time. Since SSDs can access any data block at the same speed regardless of its physical location, defragging offers no performance benefit.
And since the process involves moving large amounts of data, it creates thousands of unnecessary write cycles that actively shorten your SSD’s life. Modern operating systems know this and will automatically disable defragmentation for SSDs.
But I defragmented my SSD, and I swear it made it faster.
There’s no possible way that defragmenting your hard drive made it operate any faster. However, most people will also shut down programs before defragging a drive, and they might restart their machines afterwards — those actions could certainly speed up your PC.
Will frequent, small file writes wear out my SSD faster?
Not really. All write operations will “wear out” your SSD, but modern SSD controllers use sophisticated wear-leveling algorithms that distribute write operations evenly across every single memory cell.
The impact of typical desktop usage — including browser caches, temporary files, and document saves — is negligible over the drive’s intended lifespan. Major write operations are more of a concern, but only if you perform them regularly: If you’re constantly transferring terabytes of video files between your SSDs, for example, you might hit the endurance limits a bit earlier.
Should I disable the page file or hibernation to “save” my SSD?
No. This was once good advice: In the early days of SSDs, endurance was much lower. The page file (virtual memory) and hibernation file do generate writes, but not enough to be a concern for a modern SSD.
And disabling these operating system features can significantly hinder your computer’s performance and stability. The bottom line: You really don’t need to worry too much about your SSD’s long-term endurance, and there aren’t any secret hacks that will extend it from 10+ years to 20+ years.
Are SSDs less reliable than HDDs?
Any device can fail, but for most users, SSDs are somewhat more reliable than traditional HDDs.
An SSD doesn’t have moving parts, so there are fewer components that can break due to drops, shocks, and other physical damage. And while HDDs can fail unpredictably due to mechanical breakdown, an SSD’s “wear” is more predictable.
But remember, any SSD or HDD can fail at any time. No storage technology is perfect (and that includes redundant storage schemes like RAID). Back up your data regularly to prevent data loss. For backup advice, read: 6 Data Backup Mistakes That Increase Your Risk of Data Loss.
