Technical > PC Hardware Discussion/Reviews > How long will my (your) SSD last?

How long will my (your) SSD last?

Interesting--I just bought an 840 500GB (non-Pro), so I am curious how long it takes to kill it.

Me too. I have the 250 GB version of it, the same one that they are testing in the article.

reply to Krisnatharok
Yea, I've got the Samsung 840 500GB non-Pro too. Installed Windows 8 Pro on it in January,....no HDD in the system,..

reply to trparky

According to CrystalDiskInfo, my SSD has been online for 693 hours and has written 556 GBs.

reply to trparky
I use my work laptop pretty heavily and I'm only up to 1.94 TB after about 14 months.

Intel's documentation for the Intel 320 says it is rated for 20GB per day for the full 5 year warranty. That's about 36TB.

That's probably conservative too, 25nm NAND is supposedly good for 3,000 write cycles. Assuming a write amplification of 1.1 that seems to be about 320TB for my 120GB drive. If it was the 480GB unit that number would be over a PB!

It's not even close to a concern yet unless you are moving crazy amounts of data. Someone who does heavy HD video editing might be able to comment on how long it would take them to write something like 100TB of data.

I did some fuzzy math here.

My SSD has been online for 694 hours.
694 hours / 24 hours = 28.9166 days

I have written so far 556 GBs to the drive in those 694 hours.

So for the sake of this math, I'm going to say that in the average month I'm going to write about 700 GBs per month.

100 TB = 102,400 GB

102400 GB / 700 GB per month = 146.2857142857143 months (or 146.29 months)

146.29 months / 12 months (1 year) = 12.19 years

So, if an SSD can sustain 100 TB according to the test so far, which we can't say is the limit since the SSD hasn't died yet under TweakTown's test, we can therefore say that an average Samsung 840 Series 250 GB SSD will last anywhere from 10 to 12 years with a sustained write of an average of 700 GBs per month.

Or, if you do an average of 800 GBs per month... that's going to be the following math.

102400 GB / 800 GB per month = 128 months = 10.66 years.

So that means... an average of 9 to 10 years of life.
--
Tom
Boycott AT&T uVerse! | Tom's Android Blog | AOKP (The Android Open Kang Project)

I've had my Vertex2 powered on for 13,328 hours (555 days) and done 18.69 TB of reads and 5.00 TB of writes.

reply to trparky
It doesn't need to last forever, just long enough.

How many people are still using a computer, much less a hard drive from 2001-2003?

Even my extreme technophobe grandmother (Who barley uses a computer at all) shed her 1999 HP win98 machine almost 6 years ago.

What I'm trying to make with my post, and granted, I am probably preaching to the choir here, is that the fears that TLC and cheaper NAND flash in SSDs is really nothing to worry about.

Most SSDs, even the lowly Samsung 840 Series (non-Pro) is going to last the average consumer, even us geeks, longer than we will ever want to keep that SSD around. Chances are, that SSD will end up in the recycling pile in exchange for a higher capacity SSD long before it's dead.
--
Tom
Boycott AT&T uVerse! | Tom's Android Blog | AOKP (The Android Open Kang Project)

Note, this is based upon the life of the NAND flash memory itself. This observation does not take into account possible firmware issues that may cause premature SSD death. This is something that can't be predicted.
--
Tom
Boycott AT&T uVerse! | Tom's Android Blog | AOKP (The Android Open Kang Project)

reply to trparky
Corsair Force GT 240.
Firmware 5.02

Power On Hours - 5404
Power On Counts - 53
2.11 TB Read
917 Write.

reply to trparky
Will it just die one day, or what will happen? Symptoms?

The SSDs I wrecked accumulated bad sectors, so in a real life usage that could've meant some data loss, the exact amount depending on the number of bad sectors and on their location.

In those cases, once the SSDs reached a certain limit, they wouldn't boot any more, Win8 would enter into an infinite repair cycle, etc.
--
Wacky Races 2012!

reply to Krisnatharok

reply to pnjunction
I do some video archiving in my personal time and so far my Ocz vertex 4 has done 4.48 TB in the 93 days ive owned which comes out to around 48 GB/day. So it would take me around 5.7 years to get to the 100 TB mark.

reply to DrModem

reply to ImpldConsent

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Intel 320 Series SSDs
Device Model:     INTEL SSDSA2CW080G3
...
241 Host_Writes_32MiB       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       42034
242 Host_Reads_32MiB        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       4560
 

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Intel 510 Series SSDs
Device Model:     INTEL SSDSC2MH120A2
...
225 Host_Writes_32MiB       0x0030   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       109412
 

reply to trparky
If it's used in a server, it sounds like the life will be dramatically reduced, is that correct?