How long do SSDs last on average?

[Haruspex]

My Samsung 970 EVO 1 TB NVME drive died recently. It was the main boot drive in my desktop. I've had it for years, and it just got unstable to the point where things wouldn't even boot reliably anymore. The thermal pad on the heatspreader was discolored and brown like it had cooked. I just replaced it with a newer 2 TB Crucial drive with heatsink, and things are back up and running smoothly.

But I got to thinking, what kind of lifespan are we really looking at in these drives? I have old mechanical IDE drives from the 90s that still spin and read fine, but these newer SSDs I'm just not sure about. I suppose it's fine as long as I keep good backups. Anyone have any experience with this? I think these solid state drives just haven't been around long enough to know for sure.

[Omega]

Your SSD was defective. The average SSD will outlive the average HDD by at least a decade.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

I have plenty of SSDs that are reaching 10 years old, still perform like new.

You simply had a defective drive, it happens. Any drive can die at any time.

[Haruspex]

Omega の投稿を引用：

Your SSD was defective. The average SSD will outlive the average HDD by at least a decade.

This is my first instinct. No moving parts should equal more reliability. I've had plenty of mechanical drives that experienced the "click of death".

Bad 💀 Motha の投稿を引用：

I have plenty of SSDs that are reaching 10 years old, still perform like new.

You simply had a defective drive, it happens. Any drive can die at any time.

Yeah, seems like it. A search for "Samsung SSD failure" suggests there were a rash of Samsung drives crapping out before a few years use, particularly 900 series drives.

[DasWulf]

There are a few ways to kill a SSD. Two stand out the most. Heat & MTTF/TBW. Its unlikely to max out the latter, especially for boot drives but there are some practices that lower the lifespan of a SSD, for example running "disk defragmenter".

Its likely your issue is heat. Its why good airflow, heat sinks on SSDs and location are important.

I had my main OS SSD die on me after playing New World at launch, which had some controversy for overheating GPUs. The SSD was too close to the GPU and the heat just killed it.

The only thing I can recommend is make sure you keep your SSDs cool, use heat sinks for them if you can.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Disk Defrag does not hurt SDDs unless you are purposefully using a 3rd party Defrag app and using the file Defrag, organizer, or clean free space options. MS Disk Defrag knows the difference between SSD vs HDD and will only perform a TRIM Optimize on SDDs

[Haruspex]

DasWulf の投稿を引用：

The only thing I can recommend is make sure you keep your SSDs cool, use heat sinks for them if you can.

My motherboard came with these heat spreaders for the SSDs with attached thermal pads. My new SSD has it's own heatsink already attached, so I've left off the heat spreader. It's all in a new Fractal North case with 2x 140mm Noctua fans blowing in from the front, and one 120mm Noctua fan blowing out through the top rear.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Harusp3x の投稿を引用：

DasWulf の投稿を引用：

The only thing I can recommend is make sure you keep your SSDs cool, use heat sinks for them if you can.

My motherboard came with these heat spreaders for the SSDs with attached thermal pads. My new SSD has it's own heatsink already attached, so I've left off the heat spreader. It's all in a new Fractal North case with 2x 140mm Noctua fans blowing in from the front, and one 120mm Noctua fan blowing out through the top rear.

3 case fans... that's it???

[Haruspex]

Bad 💀 Motha の投稿を引用：

3 case fans... that's it???

It's plenty, really. I'm not overclocking or anything, and the Fractal North is like, 60% mesh.

[plat]

Does anyone think SATA ssd/s can last longer than NVM-e? I'm inclined to think so but am relying on my own experiences (had a 980 Pro die after like not even 2 years, etc). I looked it up: some say the lifespan is about the same. Hmmm.

I mean, you can't really say: ssd/s last 10 years b/c not everyone's uses are the same and not all ssd/s are created equal.

In general: ssd/s tend to last longer than hdd/s. But that's about it to say with confidence.

NVM-e is rated to 70 degrees--above that for any extended time is gonna shorten its lifespan as you've prob. already noticed. If it had some defect out of the box, it's not difficult to understand why it dies "early."

[Omega]

plat の投稿を引用：

Does anyone think SATA ssd/s can last longer than NVM-e? I'm inclined to think so but am relying on my own experiences (had a 980 Pro die after like not even 2 years, etc). I looked it up: some say the lifespan is about the same. Hmmm.

I mean, you can't really say: ssd/s last 10 years b/c not everyone's uses are the same and not all ssd/s are created equal.

In general: ssd/s tend to last longer than hdd/s. But that's about it to say with confidence.

NVM-e is rated to 70 degrees--above that for any extended time is gonna shorten its lifespan as you've prob. already noticed. If it had some defect out of the box, it's not difficult to understand why it dies "early."

You just got unlucky. The interface the drives use has no direct impact in the SSDs lifetime.

Regarding the lifetime, I meant to say they that they "tend to", there are exceptions of course depending on the running conditions and quality of the drive among other factors. Yet 10-15 years is realistic for an SSD, while for a HDD that would be 5-10 years under normal usage.

[Illusion of Progress]

Harusp3x の投稿を引用：

I have old mechanical IDE drives from the 90s that still spin and read fine, but these newer SSDs I'm just not sure about.

Survivorship bias.

While the NAND in SSDs have a finite write durability, they lack all of the mechanical failures points that HDDs have.

I don't think there's a strict study that has ever compared them. The closest we've gotten is some of the data put out by data centers, which isn't really the same thing, and I believe Backblaze has even commented that the data shouldn't necessarily be strictly taken at some of the face values people attribute to them (but IF you were going to, it paints a picture that SSDs would be just slightly less failure prone).

Yours didn't die of NAND wear out either, so it just failed. Sometimes it happens.

Harusp3x の投稿を引用：

I suppose it's fine as long as I keep good backups.

You should have backups for ALL data you care about, regardless of what media it is on. If it exists once, it is not backed up. Data that exists once, doesn't exist. Data that exists twice, exists once. Data that exist three times... etc.

A common fallacy people have is to "back up" things on an external drive, and it still only exists once. Ergo, it's not backed up.

Harusp3x の投稿を引用：

I think these solid state drives just haven't been around long enough to know for sure.

They've been around for a good decade and a half in the consumer space. If they had seriously reduced average lifespans compared to HDDs, it'd be rather apparent by now. So whether it's a little more or a little less than HDDs, either way, they're not markedly unreliable comparatively.

[Corona Scurrae]

honestly in my experience ssd's will last much longer and are more reliable than hdd's.

I've tested several hdd's from brands like western digital etc. and all of them had a lifespan between 3-5 years, while my cheap cache-less ssd's from 2013, still hold on.

but here is here is the caveat and why you should take what I claim with a massive grain of salt. I usually don't copy huge files. my drive from 2013 has only 2TB written on it and the new ones... well let's say they are going to be safe for long time to come.

btw I suggest you don't add the motherboard heatsink on top of the ssd's. in my experience - from exchanging mine with a bigger drive - I saw that the thermal pads were dissolving.

[AmaiAmai]

I had a sandisk SATA drive that I still use today from 2014 (?), meanwhile my NVME from Micron died in less than a year.

Really, it depends on your use of them. That Micron drive was next to a Ryzen running at 105C 24/7 in a laptop, so it's not surprising it died.

[MancSoulja]

AmaiAmai の投稿を引用：

I had a sandisk SATA drive that I still use today from 2014 (?), meanwhile my NVME from Micron died in less than a year.

Really, it depends on your use of them. That Micron drive was next to a Ryzen running at 105C 24/7 in a laptop, so it's not surprising it died.

Same here, I've got an 128GB SanDisk SATA SSD in my office PC that's been in there since 2010. SSD lifespans are based on writes not age.

[HypersleepyNaputunia]

stack of hdds from 2009 that never die they became obsolete before they died. hdd better