SSD Life Expectancy

[Nikkor Shooter]

SSDs have limited program/erase or P/E cycles. In this video I discuss
the life expectancy of SLC, eMLC, MLC and TLC drives, as well as co-
vering wear levelling, over provisioning, and TBW, PWB and DWPD en-
durance ratings.


https://youtu.be/-XZNr7mS0iw

[ColinM]

So most consumers can expect their SSDs to last.....many years, and potentially over a decade.

[Birna Rørslett]

Most SSD vendors have a utility tool that allows you to see how much data have been written to the drive. Plus a raft of other measurements (SMART etc.).

I usually swap the SSD drive for another (bigger size) one every third year or when the drive is up to 70-80% of nominal capacity. The replaced drive is stored and labelled as a long-term archive clone. In the very fledgling stage of SSD availability, I experienced unexpected disk deaths once in a while, but the last 5-6 years that issue has not occurred regardless of SSD brand.

[Akira]

Thank you for the illustrative explanation!

I've been using Sandisk SSD as "C" drive in my main machine for three years, and about half of its capacity is used.  The dedicated utility software says that its remaining life is 90%, which seems to be normal.