How long are SSD's supposed to last?

Feliks · Sep 21, 2015

I'm not talking about warranties or even just TBW.. I mean realistically, how long are SSDs supposed to last, provided you take good care of them? I've had HDDs last me 7+ years... surely a SSD which is supposedly more durable can do the same?

SSD I have: OCZ Arc 100

USAFRet · Sep 21, 2015

Decades, as long as they are not abused.
It will become obsolete due to space before it 'dies' due to age.

Of course, any piece of electronics can fail.

dudeman509 · Sep 21, 2015

7-8 years with normal use, maybe less with heavy R/W thrown at it every day. Some drives (like Intel's) have a built-in countdown timer of sorts.

http://techreport.com/review/27436/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-two-freaking-petabytes

lamborghini392 · Sep 21, 2015

SSDs have no moving parts and since mechanical failures are the #1 killer of HDDs, I'd assume longer. SSDs have an extremely low annual failure rate compared to HDDs, might be a result of no moving parts.

Feliks · Sep 21, 2015

That being said, hard drives seem to give off tell-tale signs when they're starting to fail and I haven't really heard the same about SSDs. Are you able to retreive the data off of a SSD like you could (sometimes) an HDD?

USAFRet · Sep 21, 2015

Feliks :

Sometimes. The fail mode may just be "can't write, but can read".

However...if you are depending on that to retrieve data from a dead/dying drive, you're doing it wrong.
This is what backups are for.

Feliks · Sep 21, 2015

Okay, so next question: how much space of a 240 GB SSD is actually usable?

Traciatim · Sep 21, 2015

Feliks :

My first one lasted about 2 years and on to my second one now. Every single hard drive (owned tons, over decades) I've owned, except DOAs, has lasted longer than my SSD.

The main problem is that their failure modes generally are either two sates: possibly your data might be readable... and not functional at all. There is really no middle ground. SSDs are not a safe place to store important data.

thor220 · Sep 21, 2015

OCZ Arc isn't a high endurance drive but it should still last at least 6 years with normal use.

USAFRet · Sep 21, 2015

Feliks :

Don't go over 200GB.

Feliks · Sep 21, 2015

USAFRet :

I know but what I mean is how much of that space can I actually use? like I know hard drive manufacturers sometimes false advertise their hard drive capacities; a 240 gb somehow is actually 232 gb, etc.

dudeman509 · Sep 21, 2015

Feliks :

Short of the controller dying, most will start throwing SMART or bad sector errors well before they flat out die.

USAFRet · Sep 21, 2015

Feliks :

It's not false advertising, it is the difference between decimal and binary.
A 1TB drive reads as a 931GB drive.
250GB drive reads as 232GB
240GB drive reads as 233GB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte
Calculator here: http://wintelguy.com/gb2gib.html

In any case, for a 240-250GB drive, don't go over about 200GB.

Traciatim · Sep 21, 2015

Feliks :

It's not false because of a technicality. They advertise 240GB as 240,000,000,000 bytes, where 240GB is actually 257,698,037,760 bytes. Since computers display your actual space and not what marketers dream up to lie to you then the 240,000,000,000 will show up as about 223.5GB.

thor220 · Sep 21, 2015

dudeman509 :

The problem is that every controller handles SMART differently. It was a problem with HDD too, it's just not as pronounced because there are really only two big players in the HDD market.

It's about time SMART was revised and made more standard.

A_Martin · Oct 12, 2015

dudeman509 :

That would be nice! Crucial M550 died so suddenly with health of 98% no Log, no Alerts and no SMART error (Use Harddisk sentinel to observe all my drives) while I was working (it was the boot drive) and win7 froze. Shutdown through Power button 4 sec and result headcrash = loss of ALL data. After reboot BIOS did not recognize the ssd. The ssd 240 GB was 9 months old!!!
Referring to crucial website this is not an uncommon problem for most of their models, they have a solution that works for some and not for others.

Brad_53 · Dec 18, 2018

I know this is an old post, but it still shows up in search results, so here I go. I just had an OCZ Vertex 3, that was used as an OS drive, die on me just short of 7 years of use (bought in Feb 2012, died Dec 2018). The PC that it was in was powered on 24/7 (no sleep/hibernate, etc.). I even tried it in an external drive enclosure on a different PC, but it was a no go.

How long are SSD's supposed to last?

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