How long should an SSD last?

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Paul1977

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#255983 9-Sep-2019 15:44

A little over a year ago I put an Intel 760P SSD into my PC (which is running 24/7).

It has 9395 power on hours, and is saying it's estimated life remaining is only 229 days.

These drives have a 5 year warranty, so I'm a little confused as to why it looks like it will be dead before it hit the 2 year mark?

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#2313626 9-Sep-2019 15:46

Youve answered it yourself.

(which is running 24/7)

Consumer devices are not designed to be run 24/7. They expect maybe 8 hrs a day etc.

XPD / Gavin

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Paul1977

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#2313629 9-Sep-2019 15:51

xpd:

Youve answered it yourself.

(which is running 24/7)

Consumer devices are not designed to be run 24/7. They expect maybe 8 hrs a day etc.

Sure, but most of that time it's doing very little as far as read/writes go.

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#2313630 9-Sep-2019 15:54

Read/writes are more important for an SSD lifespan than just being "on" - it's not like it has any moving parts to wear down.

This should give you an idea:

https://www.compuram.de/blog/en/the-life-span-of-a-ssd-how-long-does-it-last-and-what-can-be-done-to-take-care/

What is the PC actually doing?

Paul1977

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#2313678 9-Sep-2019 16:02

Item:

What is the PC actually doing?

Very little most of the time. I use it mainly as a media server, with all the media stored on spindle RAID arrays. The SSD houses the OS and apps.

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#2313682 9-Sep-2019 16:07

S.M.A.R.T should be able to tell you the lifetime writes - this would be a better indicator than the total power on time...

Dynamic

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#2313736 9-Sep-2019 16:55

In the Intel SSD Toolbox, clock on the SMART Details button and look for the Host Writes figure. Mine is 17226Gb on my 250Gb Intel 545s, which has 2041 power on hours and a Power Cycle Count of 15, which should tell you that my computer rarely gets turned off. This computer is used for general office work and does not do anything special for me that would contribute to SSD wear and tear.

If I look here https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/125020/intel-ssd-545s-series-256gb-2-5in-sata-6gb-s-3d2-tlc.html I see the Endurance Rating for my SSD is 144 TBW (terabytes written).

17Tb divided by 144Tb = about 12%, which roughly matches with the 88% estimated life remaining in the Intel SSD Toolbox. (I can't see an exact figure on the estimated life remaining bar.) I set this computer up in March, so the drive has gone through 12% of its life in 6 months, and at the current rate I'll use the SSD's life up in 4 years, even through it has a 5 year warranty. I've never looked seriously at these figures, and I'm actually quite surprised that I'm likely to wear the drive out.

So.... perhaps check your equivalent figures and see if the numbers line up. It may well be that your machine is constantly writing to the drive and eating away at its life without you realising it. Or there could be a fault.

Where are you getting your Estimated Life Remaining figure? I can't see that in the Intel SSD Toolbox.

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Jase2985

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#2313739 9-Sep-2019 16:58

go read the PDS for your drive

but a 128GB model has an Endurance Rating (Lifetime Writes) 72 TBW (41gb per day every day for 5 years)

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) 1.6 million hours

where are you gathering your information from?

Paul1977

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#2313742 9-Sep-2019 17:03

Dynamic:

In the Intel SSD Toolbox, clock on the SMART Details button and look for the Host Writes figure. Mine is 17226Gb on my 250Gb Intel 545s, which has 2041 power on hours and a Power Cycle Count of 15, which should tell you that my computer rarely gets turned off. This computer is used for general office work and does not do anything special for me that would contribute to SSD wear and tear.

If I look here https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/125020/intel-ssd-545s-series-256gb-2-5in-sata-6gb-s-3d2-tlc.html I see the Endurance Rating for my SSD is 144 TBW (terabytes written).

17Tb divided by 144Tb = about 12%, which roughly matches with the 88% estimated life remaining in the Intel SSD Toolbox. (I can't see an exact figure on the estimated life remaining bar.) I set this computer up in March, so the drive has gone through 12% of its life in 6 months, and at the current rate I'll use the SSD's life up in 4 years, even through it has a 5 year warranty. I've never looked seriously at these figures, and I'm actually quite surprised that I'm likely to wear the drive out.

So.... perhaps check your equivalent figures and see if the numbers line up. It may well be that your machine is constantly writing to the drive and eating away at its life without you realising it. Or there could be a fault.

Where are you getting your Estimated Life Remaining figure? I can't see that in the Intel SSD Toolbox.

Estimated life remaining is actually coming from HP Smart Storage Administrator which i have installed for my RAID card. For whatever reason SSA reports on the Intel SSD as well, even thoug it isn't connected to the HP RAID card.

Here are the SMART details:

Almost 196,000GB written. Seems a lot.

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#2313747 9-Sep-2019 17:09

FYI my intel 540 SSD has 54TBW on it

djtOtago

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#2313756 9-Sep-2019 17:21

I have a Crucial CT500MX In a Windows 10 machine that runs 24/7

Output from S.M.A.R.T

Power On Hours Count: 26945 Hours
Power Cycle Count: 40 Cycles
Percentage Lifetime Used: 11 %

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#2313757 9-Sep-2019 17:24

Paul1977: Almost 196,000GB written. Seems a lot.

Wow... that does seem high. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, that figure has to be taken at face value. You might need to dive into what is constantly writing to that drive and wearing it out.

Or..... replace it with a spinner! 😂

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#2313764 9-Sep-2019 17:32

Watch your PC for a bit with resmon and see what's active a lot on the SSD. Various things I've seen chew up SSD endurance:

Torrent clients (even when the incomplete & completed files are not on the SSD, other files can be stored in Appdata etc, e.g. Deluge state and fastresume files)
Blockchain clients storing the chain in Appdata
Debug/verbose logging for various things

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#2313769 9-Sep-2019 17:44

With that TBW i'd be looking to either replace or backup ASAP, It's at 135% of it's rated writes. I'm surprised it thinks it can go another 229 days to be honest.

Judging by the fact you said it's in a HP array I'd say you have something logging heavy to disk that's chewed up your writes, You have more writes than reads which would point to something being written then nuked without ever being used. To compare I have a 660p 2tb thats done 3.7tb write and 13.7tb reads

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timmmay

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#2313775 9-Sep-2019 18:06

Quite a long time.

richms

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#2313786 9-Sep-2019 18:41

Friends kids killed their 250 gig in about 3 years in a gaming PC - its always got something downloading to it from steam that will be played for about 10 mins before something else becomes what they want to play. only 250 gig so always deleting and redownloading games. I think it was at about 350TB written to by the time it killed itself with a non booting PC.

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