SSDs have a built-in “time of death”

[DelJo63]

The downside of the SSD?

The downside of SSDs with the NAND Flash-based chips is that they have a limited lifespan by default. While normal HDDs can – in theory – last forever (in reality about 10 years max.), SSDs have a built-in “time of death”. To keep it simple: An electric effect results from the fact that data can only be written on a storage cell inside the chips between approximately 3.000 and 100.000 times during its lifetime. After that, the cells “forget” new data. Because of this fact – and to prevent certain cells from getting used all the time while others aren´t – the manufacturers use ‘Wear-Leveling-Algorithms’ to distribute data evenly over all cells by the controller. As with HDDs the user can check the current SSD status by using the S.M.A.R.T. analysis tool, which shows the remaining lifespan of an SSD.

see the details at

SSD Lifespan: How Long do SSDs Really Last?

Recovering data from failed SSDs is still more challenging than HDDs for data recovery service providers. Read more about the SSD lifespan.

www.ontrack.com

 

[Route44]

I am late to the party but, man, this is information I never knew. Thanks much jobeard.

 

[daveteauk]

The downside of the SSD?

The downside of SSDs with the NAND Flash-based chips is that they have a limited lifespan by default. While normal HDDs can – in theory – last forever (in reality about 10 years max.), SSDs have a built-in “time of death”. To keep it simple: An electric effect results from the fact that data can only be written on a storage cell inside the chips between approximately 3.000 and 100.000 times during its lifetime. After that, the cells “forget” new data. Because of this fact – and to prevent certain cells from getting used all the time while others aren´t – the manufacturers use ‘Wear-Leveling-Algorithms’ to distribute data evenly over all cells by the controller. As with HDDs the user can check the current SSD status by using the S.M.A.R.T. analysis tool, which shows the remaining lifespan of an SSD.

see the details at

SSD Lifespan: How Long do SSDs Really Last?

Recovering data from failed SSDs is still more challenging than HDDs for data recovery service providers. Read more about the SSD lifespan.

www.ontrack.com

This is, mainly, true. Yet, all mechanical HDs WILL fail, at some time; maybe tomorrow, or maybe in 5/10 years, but they WILL fail. An SSD on the other hand, is not only massively faster, especially M.2 drives, but more importantly MASSIVELY more reliable and robust with data. In reality, one will never use an SSD's life span up, unless you're using it for a data centre or some other situation where it's being written to/from constantly. In a 'normal' domestic situation you'll never need to worry or even think about SSD lifetime limits, as they're just too big. eg, after using an Intel PCIe NVMe SSD for 4.5 YEARS, it had used only 1% - ONE PERCENT - of it's lifetimes TBW capacity (Terra Bytes Written). My M.2 Samsung is almost a year old, and is still showing 100% lifetime remaining. So stop scaremongering with your headline of a built in time of death - it's nonesense.

 

[DelJo63]

It's interesting to note I have a Win/98se desktop that's still operational as a file server ?

If you would have read, the article is from

SSD Lifespan: How Long do SSDs Really Last?

Recovering data from failed SSDs is still more challenging than HDDs for data recovery service providers. Read more about the SSD lifespan.

www.ontrack.com

 

[CharmsD]

SSD reliability in the enterprise: This survey yields a few surprises

Solid state drives (SSDs) have remade the storage industry in the last decade. They're costly, fast, and power efficient, but just how reliable are they? A new study of almost 1.4 million SSDs offers some surprising answers.

www.zdnet.com

 

[CharmsD]

It's interesting to note I have a Win/98se desktop that's still operational as a file server ?

If you would have read, the article is from

SSD Lifespan: How Long do SSDs Really Last?

Recovering data from failed SSDs is still more challenging than HDDs for data recovery service providers. Read more about the SSD lifespan.

www.ontrack.com

SSD reliability in the enterprise: This survey yields a few surprises

Solid state drives (SSDs) have remade the storage industry in the last decade. They're costly, fast, and power efficient, but just how reliable are they? A new study of almost 1.4 million SSDs offers some surprising answers.

www.zdnet.com

 

[DelJo63]

See HP's latest comments at

Enterprise SSD flaw bricks drives and renders data unrecoverable after 40,000 hours

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has issued a critical warning for some of the solid-state drives it uses in a number of its enterprise server and storage products....

www.techspot.com

 

[bobmilr]

Brings back memories of my career with GE /GEIS. One of our 9-bit byte mainframes supporting a worldwide time-sharing network had been on line for 3+ years when the hardware clock 'rolled over', an event our in-house developed operating system had not been programmed to handle, and the system crashed.