SSD Life Expectancy

Welcome once again to explain computers.com in many previous videos. I've seen these SSD things, including installing an SSD as a replacement for a hard drive in a desktop or laptop. More recently, I have certainly looked into m.2 SSDs. which plug directly into some modern motherboards, there is now no doubt that SSDs are faster and physically more robust than traditional spinning hard drives; However, I know that many people worry a lot about the

life

expectancy

of an SSD if we really trusted our data. a device like this, so in this video I'm going to address the

life

expectancy

of SSDs today, almost all SSDs store data in nand flash memory cells in case you're wondering, nand is not an acronym , but refers to a logic circuit called no and gate, meanwhile, flash memory is a form of computer memory that retains its contents when power is removed;

However, the key limitation of flash memory is that its cells can only be programmed and erased a limited number of times depending on the SSD and its specific technology. The maximum number of programmer stroke or PE cycles can be as low as 500 and as high as 100,000. All early SSDs were based on SLC or single level cell technology, this stores one bit of information per cell with SSDs Modern SLCs rated between 50,000 and 100,000 PE cycles. However, SLC is very expensive and today SLC SSDs are only manufactured for use in servers and other enterprise applications. After the SLC the multilevel cell or mlc emerged, which stores two bits of data per nand flash cell, storing more data per cell reduces the cost of an SSD but also reduces its writing speed and makes it wear out more quickly today, mlc drives come in two variants enterprise or emlc as well as end user mlc drives, the difference between emlc and mlc drives is not that significant as enterprise drives have a lower correct speed which is gentler on the cells, making them last longer today, EMLC SSDs are typically rated between 10,000 and 30,000 PE cycles, while end-user mlc drives are typically rated between 3,000 and 10,000 cycles.

After mlc we got TLC or triple level cell. which stores three bits of data per cell, while this further reduces the SSD price per bit, again it does so at the cost of resale endurance, as TLC SSDs have typical pu ratings of between 500 and 2000 cycles. in case you are wondering about quad tier cells or qlc SSDs are expected to hit the market fairly soon. In recent years, we have also seen the launch of new technologies including 3D nand and vertical nand or vand ssd, these nanf flash cells stacked on the chip to improve capacity and in the process increase the number of potential PE cycles;

However, it is important to appreciate that 3D Nand and Vand are complementary technological developments, as 3D Nand and Vand SSDs are still produced in SLC MLC or TLC variants. Please note that the PE cycle figures presented earlier in this video took into account the latest mlc and TLC TWD nand and vand drives. All modern SSDs use a process called wear leveling to equalize the PE cycles inflicted on each memory cell in the drive. This is particularly important because flash memory cells must be erased in blocks, meaning data has to constantly move around an SSD into free space.

SSDs inevitably wear out faster the less free space they have available. Imagine, for example, a 120GB SSD that is 90% full and rated at 1000 PE cycles. Manufacturers often work with the assumption that end users write up to 20 GB of data in a day, so if this amount of data were written to and erased from the 12 GB of free space every 24 hours, their cells would reach 1000 cycles. PE in just 600 days, but if the drive were only 80% full it would last 1200 days, so a key takeaway here is that it's good practice to leave enough free space on an SSD to preserve its life expectancy.

Keeping that free space available is known as over-provisioning and some SSDs achieve this. internally by including extra memory cells that cannot be accessed by the user, while other SSDs are supplied with software that allows the user to implement over-provisioning leaving some space on the drive unformatted, for example Samsung's magician software Leave approximately 10% of an SSD's capacity allocated to increase the life expectancy of the drive to allow users to gauge the likely life expectancy. SSD manufacturers provide a rating that indicates the minimum amount of data that can be written before a drive fails for enterprise SSDs and, as shown here, for some SanDisk drives.

Such ratings can be expressed as a minimum number of petabytes written, or PBW, where one petabyte is equal to 10.24 terabytes. Alternatively, enterprise SSDs can have their endurance expressed in drive entitlements per day or dwpd, which is a measure of how many times a drive can be filled. at full capacity and is cleared for each day of its end-user warranty period. SSD endurance ratings are typically expressed in terabytes written, or tbw. Here mlc SSDs generally achieve higher ratings than TLC hardware for the same drive capacity, although Intel's latest 3D TLC technology holds out. That trend, as expected, we also see that the larger the unit, the higher the TBW figure.

If you're concerned about maximizing SSD life expectancy, you should buy the largest drive you can afford and leave it with as much free space as possible. Since most modern SSDs are capable of supporting a good 100 terabytes written or more, it is safe to assume that any modern drive in a reasonable usage scenario will last many years and at least as long as the other component in a typical end. The use of SSDs for PCs is getting better and better, in fact, just a few days ago Intel launched the first drive based on its new 3D XO technology instead of traditional nand flash memory cells as such.

The life expectancy of Acre Innovations SSDs will also continue to improve. This said my ending. The message to you on the subject of SSD life expectancy has to be Don't panic. Now absolutely, the flash memory cells used in all end-user SSDs cannot withstand more than about 10,000 program erase PE cycles and in many consumer drives that drops to maybe only a few thousand PE cycles and that It may sound quite alarming at first, but as we have also seen in this video, most consumer SSDs can still sustain at least 100 terabytes written before failing, which means that for most users in the In most situations your SSD will last many years and potentially more than a decade so should we trust our data to SSDs nowadays, from my point of view yes absolutely, if with the normal provider you should never trust any data to a single drive, any data you really care about and want. to be there when you return it should always be stored on at least two drives and in IDE at least three, but that's all for another video.

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