Question My SSD life keeps dropping.

[AnitaPeterson]

Hi folks,
I've just identifyied a worrisome trend in my main PC: The OS SSD life keeps dropping, at a rate of about one percent per month.

CrystalDiskInfo has been regularly notifying me of the life expectancy decrease, and the last change occurred last night, when it moved from 96% to 95%.
This was a brand-new nVME SSD from Silicon Power (bought around Xmas), and CDI shows 18 "power on" counts after 102 days. Never had a temperature alert, it's always running at 38-40 C when I check it.

What could cause this abnormal behaviour and accelerated degradation?

 

[Tech Junky]

Firmware. Check for updates. SS has a similar but more pronounced issue with life degradation.

With my WD drives it's about 5% per year 24/7.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

SP software says no new firmware available.

 

[Billy Tallis]

You haven't mentioned what specific drive or capacity, which makes it hard to give you any specific advice. But 1% per month means you'd expect the drive to last around 100 months, which is over eight years. That's a lot longer than the drive's warranty and is a reasonable lifespan for what is most likely a low-capacity entry-level drive.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Model : SPCC M.2 PCIe SSD
Firmware : EDFM90.1

Disk Size : 256.0 GB
Interface : NVM Express
Standard : NVM Express 1.3
Transfer Mode : PCIe 3.0 x4 | PCIe 3.0 x4
Power On Hours : 2467 hours
Power On Count : 18 count
Host Reads : 1658 GB
Host Writes : 4904 GB
Temperature : 37 C (98 F)
Health Status : Good (95 %)
Features : S.M.A.R.T., TRIM, VolatileWriteCache
Drive Letter : C:​

 

[A///]

Anita remove the serial number.

I can't tell which drive it is you own because there is no specific model number. However for the SPCC drives in the 250-256GB class the TBW is between 140 and 200 TB total.

You've written close to 5 TB already. The TBW on small drives isn't nice but as explained already by another member 1 to 1.5pc wear per month is fine. You'd sooner replace your computer before the drive fully dies from being exhausted and going into read only mode.

 

[A///]

Darn @AnitaPeterson I may given you some wrong info. I was thinking early days SSD's when the belief was your drive would lockout after meeting the TBW. That is not the case. TBW is the minimum guarantee that the cells won't prematurely die or little to no risk of data corruption. You can blow past the TBW and still write to the drive. Only when the drive reaches 0% life will it go into read only mode. I was distracted by watching television when I wrote to you earlier today.

 

[coercitiv]

Silicon Power seems to have all their TBW data bundled in one PDF. I don't know the exact model the OP owns, but I don't think it matters given the values contained in there for 256GB drives.

I assume the rating for the drive of the OP is 200TBW (only one 256GB drivein that list has 150 TBW). Based on the SMART data reported, host writes are just shy of 5TB. That would be 2.5% usage in napkin math speak, but if memory serves me right, the Data Units Written attribute does not account for Write Amplification. If this is indeed the case, then a 5% wear from 5TB written is not out of the ordinary. Maybe Silicon Power is a bit too frank with their "Percentage Used" attribute, which can be a sin in this day an age.

My impression is the OP is safe and the drive is experiencing normal wear. As long as degradation continues at this rate or slower, and is somewhat linearly linked to Data Units Written, the disk will do just fine considering the capacity and price category.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Thank you all for your replies, everyone made some great points. I've also discovered similar discussions elsewhere on the 'net, which tend to support this as a normal "wear and tear" behaviour for this type of storage.

Though I can't help but wonder... I don't remember "regular" SATA SSDs showing such fast life decline numbers in CrystalDiskInfo. My previous HTPC used the same 120GB Patriot SSD for about four years, and it was still "Good" by the time I changed the architecture completely. Is the m2 transfer protocol too demanding? Is running through PCIe more data-intensive?

 

[igor_kavinski]

Yeah. You will write more if you can write faster. Also, maybe your RAM is getting pushed into 80% to 95% usage, causing a lot of pagefile swapping. If not, some application or even Windows may be writing stuff when the PC is supposed to be idle (Windows 10/11 do that a lot).

 

[coercitiv]

Thank you all for your replies, everyone made some great points. I've also discovered similar discussions elsewhere on the 'net, which tend to support this as a normal "wear and tear" behaviour for this type of storage.

Though I can't help but wonder... I don't remember "regular" SATA SSDs showing such fast life decline numbers in CrystalDiskInfo. My previous HTPC used the same 120GB Patriot SSD for about four years, and it was still "Good" by the time I changed the architecture completely. Is the m2 transfer protocol too demanding? Is running through PCIe more data-intensive?

I doubt it's the interface. I think it has more to do with the expected lifetime of the NAND, as opposed to the TBW rating. My assumption is the Percentage Used attribute can reflect a higher endurance than TBW rating, since the first acts as an estimate while the other is more of a guarantee. So "older" drives used more conservative TBW ratings because they were enough, especially when we got the jump in endurance from 3D NAND. As we moved to TLC drives with SLC caching, endurance dropped more and more in favor of capacity and speed. By this time manufacturers probably began to quote more accurate, less conservative TBW ratings.

Case in point, I have an old 256GB Samsung 850 Pro. Back when this drive was produced, all capacities were given the same 150 TBW rating. Sometimes later they nuanced this info, with higher capacities getting bigger ratings, although not on a linear scale. My drive has ~16TB host writes and 98% life. The Percentage Used attribute is clearly not in line with the TBW rating, otherise it would be closer to 90%. We know why that is, as this is a 40nm MLC V-NAND drive. It can take a lot more than 150TB in writes.

The second example is the 1TB 980 Pro, 600 TBW rating. This disk has 21.5TB host writes and 96% life, that's quite a match with the TBW rating. Less endurance, and we know why: TLC drive. In fact this drive is very close to yours if you take into account I have 4 times the writes and 4 times the capacity. I might as well have a 256GB drive with 5.4TB written and 96% life.