SSD Reliability: What You Need To Know? Update 12/2024

An SSD can be opened in the same way as a Flash drive. When you have a PCIe or SATA connector for data transfer, you have memory chips on a circuit board that are responsible for supplying power and sending data.

This does not have an actuator arm like a typical hard drive (HDD). SSDs can read and write data more faster because they don’t rely on the actual movement of the user’s arm. SSDs are several times quicker than HDDs, while the exact speed difference is difficult to estimate due to the wide variety of SSD form factors and NAND cell types (see below). SSDs, as opposed to HDDs, create no noise since they lack an actuator arm.

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SSDs are more expensive per GB of storage capacity ($0.25 per GB for SSDs compared to $0.02 for HDDs), but we won’t dive into the specifics of the differences between HDDs and SSDs here.

NAND flash memory cells are used in nearly all modern SSDs. Instead of an abbreviation, NAND is named after its logic gate, which is dubbed “NOT AND” in the computer industry.

NAND flash also includes a non-volatile solid-state memory known as flash, which keeps data even when the power is turned off. There is a limit to the number of times that flash memory cells can be programmed and erased, which is measured in P/E cycles (which stands for programmed and erased).

Based on the technology, a solid-state drive (SSD) can last from 500 to 100,000 P/E cycles.

Different SSD Form Factors

There are now four types of SSDs:

• 2.5”
• mSATA
• M.2
• PCI-E

2.5” SSDs

Because of its wide availability and low cost, 2.5″ SSDs are the most common and most often used. It looks like a typical 3.5″ HDD from the exterior, but it’s much smaller. For power and data transmission, it will need a SATA connector, which is why it is so light.

Parallel write and read speeds of 325 MB/s can be achieved, while sequential write speeds of 600 MB/s can be achieved. When compared to the PCIe SSDs below, this one may appear modest, but it is more than adequate for a responsive user experience.

mSATA SSDs

SSDs of the mSATA (or “Mini-SATA”) form factor are diminutive, hence the moniker “Mini-SATA.” Netbooks, laptops, and compact PCs are the primary use cases for this type of drive. These are almost identical to 2.5″ SSDs in terms of specs, although they are only slightly larger.

M.2 SSDs

However, M.2 SSDs (like mSATA drives) can come in a number of width and length configurations. Unlike mSATA, it can be used in ultrabooks and tablets because of its flexibility.

NVMe, a host controller interface and storage protocol that increases the speed at which data can be transferred between a computer and an SSD, is also supported. “Host controller interface and storage protocol” may have slipped your mind, but we’ll wait for you to catch up. These SSDs are just like PCI-E SSDs, which we’ll discuss about in the next section.

PCI-E SSDs

The fastest SSDs are PCI-E models, however they are also the most expensive. The PCI-E slots are used as the interface for these devices. In order to get the most out of your PCI-E lanes, it’s best to use the fastest available slot, such as an x8 slot, for your SSDs. If you want to know how fast each of your PCI-E slots is, consult the owner’s manual for your motherboard.

In any case, PCI-E SSDs and m.2 SSDs can deliver up to four times the performance of traditional SATA SSDs. Sequential read and write speeds for these SSDs can be as high as 2,500 MB/s (read) and as low as 1,300 MB/s (write). The DDR3 high-speed cache can also be more than 500MB.

Types of NAND Flash

There are four major types of NAND cell technology used in SSDs:

• The SLC (Single Level Cell)
• For more information, contact MLC (Multi-Level Cell)
• Tender Loving Care (Triple Level Cell)
• The QLC (Quad Level Cell)

Types of NAND Flash

In general, these technologies share a common thread. The capacity of each NAND cell increases with each new generation of technology. The faster, more reliable, and more energy-efficient NAND technology gets, the more expensive it is; sometimes disproportionately so. The fewer bits per NAND cell. Because of this (assuming trends continue as they have thus far; QLC is still relatively “new”), the most reliable SSD would be an SLC.

3D NAND vs V-NAND

Intel and Micron were the first to create 3D NAND. V-NAND or vertical-NAND, on the other hand, stacks memory cells in a layer-by-layer fashion, using a total of 48 layers of memory cells.

Technology improvements have made it possible to expand the capacity of drives without affecting production costs, cut down on energy use, while also improving NAND’s life span.

Reliability and Understanding SSD Lifespan

“Can SSDs fail?” The D stands for drives, which is redundant, but it’s okay. Definitely. Everything goes wrong. Instead of asking, “Do SSD drives fail more frequently?” That, on the other hand, is a little more difficult.

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Unlike HDDs, SSDs don’t contain actuator arms or any moving parts, which makes them more reliable in tough conditions. This means that SSDs are better able to endure accidental drops and extreme temperature fluctuations than HDDs.

However, this does not imply that all SSDs are created equal. Fortunately, there are a number of regularly used metrics that can tell us how long-lasting an SSD is. An SSD’s description will commonly include this information. In addition to P/E cycles, there are four other cycles (don’t worry, they’re not too complicated):

1. “Terabytes Written,” or “TBW”
2. GB/day
3. Drive Writes Per Day, or DWPD
4. “Mean Time Between Failures,” or MTBF

On the package, it’s also worth noting that these are utilized as a guarantee of quality (part of the equation uses the warranty, after all). Although they are frequently higher than expected, but also lower than what the SSD can be pushed to, they tend to be in the middle of the range.

Think of it like a tire; it may only be warranted for 50,000 miles or 5 years, but it may last a lot longer than that.

TBW, Terabytes Written

The first few are straightforward and can even be swapped out with a little arithmetic. For example, the term “TBW” refers to the maximum amount of data that an SSD can store before failing. Many times the TBW is a ridiculously high amount that no one can hope to reach before they pass away from old age.

Gigabytes Per Day

The name speaks for itself. The number of gigabytes you save or overwrite each day is represented by this value. Since SSDs are designed with the assumption that you will use several Gigabytes per day, you should be alright unless your computer is a work station.

Drive Writes Per Day

Aside from the deceptive name, this is a straightforward method. How many times a day can you rebuild the entire SSD? You’d think so, but you’d be wrong.

Working It All Out

Look at the Samsung SSD 850 Pro SATA, which includes capacities of 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and up to 1TB and comes with a 10-year warranty. This can write 150 terabytes of data, or 150 TBW, at once. In contrast, according to Samsung, these SSDs can tolerate up to 600 TBW of data transfer.

This SSD can read and write 40 GB of data a day if we do the math and compute its durability over the course of ten years. With an average office user writing between 10 and 35 GB of data each day, the warranty would have expired before you hit 150 TBW.

In order to calculate the DWPD (.041) and GB/d, we can use formulae or an internet tool (41).

MTBF, or Mean Time Between Failures

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is the yardstick by which SSDs and hard drives are judged for their dependability. This is one of the more difficult and obscure ways to gauge a product’s level of reliability. Be sure to know the MTBF and failure rates of solid state drives before making any purchases.

240GB, 2.5in SATA 6Gb/s, 20nm, MLC Intel® SSD 335 Series (240GB, 2.5in SATA 6Gb/s, MLC) and 256GB SATA III MLC SAMSUNG 830 Series 2.5′′ SSDs from Intel and Samsung have MTBF specs of 1.2 million hours and 1.5 million hours, respectively. MTBF, on the other hand, does not operate that way. Just because Samsung has more hours, doesn’t imply it will last longer.

It’s easy to see that MTBF relates to how often a drive fails over the course of its estimated lifespan. However, this doesn’t mean that drives that have 1.5 million MTBF hours (136 to 171 years) will stay that long; rather, it means that drives that have 1.2 million MTBF hours (136 to 171 years) will last that long.

This suggests that for a sample of 1,000 SSDs, a failure rate of one per 150 days, or about twice a year, may be predicted with the Intel 335’s 1.2 million hour MTBF. We can even figure it out mathematically:

Working It All Out

1,000 SSDs multiplied by eight hours each day is 8,000 total daily hours.

1.2 million cumulative hours until the first failure occurred at a rate of 8,000 hours per day x 150 days.

Every 187.5 days, the Samsung 830 is likely to suffer a failure. Not every drive is put to the same rigors of testing, though.

When it comes to HDDs, AFR or Annual Failure Rate is used instead of MTBF as a unit to index defects.

HDDs typically have an AFR of between.55 and.90 percent. But this is a skewed figure because HDD manufacturers do not always mention the cause of failures. Any number of factors, such as excessive heat, dropped objects, or even natural calamities, could be to blame. The percentage of disk drives that fail during regular operations ranges from 0.5 percent to as high as 13.5 percent, depending on the manufacturer.

SSDs Win… Wait, Not So Fast!

SSDs have won the battle. If you haven’t already, it’s time to get rid of your hard drives and invest in solid-state drives. There are a handful of factors to keep in mind before playing dominoes with your hard drives: the average age and number of drive days.

• SSD drives have an average age of 14.2 months, while HDD drives have an average age of 52.4 months.
• At this point, the oldest SSD and HDD disks are around 33 months old, respectively.

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A lot of time has passed between now and the average age of SSDs and hard drives. HDDs have been around for an average of three years longer than SSDs. As a result, each cohort is at a distinct stage of development. Consider delaying your HDD shredding party a little longer if you believe that drives fail more frequently as they age.

We’ll be writing a blog article in a few weeks about how closely drive failure rates fit the bathtub curve; SPOILER ALERT: old drives fail frequently.

We also mentioned drive days, the total number of days each cohort’s drives have been operational without a single failure. Confidence intervals for the two cohorts differ greatly because of the large disparity in driving days.

It’s possible to account for the average age and driving days in our study in order to get a more accurate comparison. As a way to do this, we can look back in our records to check if the HDD cohort has a similar average age and number of driving days to the SDDs from Q2 2021. As a result, we would be able to compare each cohort at the same point in their lifespan.

We were able to make the following comparison utilizing HDD data from Q4 2016 by turning back the clock.

Annualized failure rate differences between SSDs and HDDs are now less pronounced. In fact, the 95 percent confidence intervals for each drive type overlap. Due to the limited amount of driving days, this range is quite large (plus or minus 0.5 percent).

FAQS:

So What Does SSD MTBF Mean for Me?

In most situations, we can only depend on TBW and other company-provided measurements to determine the SSD failure rate by brand. If you’re a typical consumer, you’ll be fine with any MTBF over 1 million hours.

About three failures a year are expected for 1,000 drives that are operated eight hours a day. To put it another way, if you use your SSD for eight hours a day, there’s only a 0.3 percent chance that you’ll experience a write operation failure during the course of the warranty. In other words, when comparing SSD and HDD reliability, the failure rates of SSDs and HDDs aren’t that different, even though they aren’t apples to apples.

Is There A Way for Me to Check My SSD’s Lifespan?

Whatever your current situation, it’s imperative that you keep track of the longevity of your SSD. Counting is the only thing left to do. Obviously, I’m joking when I say this. A number of software options are available to help with this:

• Magician of Samsung
• Tools for Intel’s Solid-State Drive
• Software for managing the storage on your SSD (Kingston)
• Livespan of Solid State Drives
• Ready for the SSD
• Optimize the SSD

Each of these programs has a different method for determining the lifespan of your SSD, but the process is basic and nearly identical across the board. That being said, the software is compatible with any SSD brand. Using Samsung Magician with an Intel SSD is completely safe.

Is an SSD Ideal for You?

Replacement of your HDD with an SSD is a no-brainer. Your computer will start up faster and run more smoothly thanks to these tools. To get the most out of your computer, a solid-state drive (SSD) can be an excellent investment.

For laptops, SSDs are ideal since they are resistant to being knocked around, they require less power, and they take up less space.

If you want to move or clone your information from your HDD to an SSD, you’ll need an SSD with a bigger storage capacity than your HDD. Since SSDs are so much more expensive per GB, if that’s the case, you’ll have to shell out a lot of money.

The finest SSD for gaming may be found in our overview of the best SSDs on the market today. The greatest gaming hard drives may be found in our post on the best mechanical hard drives to use in an SSD/HDD configuration.

What about my PC’s storage space?

There are now high-capacity SSDs available, so you don’t have to sacrifice storage space. It is possible to find 1TB drivers online that will work with a regular machine.

Does SSD cost more?

This is where the issue arises: SSDs are more expensive per gigabyte than HDDs. A 500GB HDD costs about $50, while a 128GB SSD costs about $125. Double the price! However, this price difference is understandable given the additional benefits of an SSD.

How is the SSD more reliable?

Dropping your hard drive isn’t as scary as it sounds. If you try to plug it back into your computer, you’ll likely see an error message. As a result of its many moving elements, HDDs are prone to damage from accidental jolting. This is not a problem for the SSD, as it is a single solid-state disk (SSD). It’s more stable even when jostled because it doesn’t have any moving parts. However, this is only a superficial examination. MTBF is a good indicator of an SSD’s long-term reliability.

Who could best use an SSD?

Because of the price difference between HDD and SSD, not everyone has yet made the conversion. SSD, on the other hand, offers a smoother and faster processing speed than an HDD if you’re in the video or image editing profession. As a result, there is less risk of losing vital data that is too huge to upload online because it is more durable. SSDs are extremely popular with corporations because of their speed.

Those in the information technology industry, as well as those who do field work, favor SSD since it reduces the risk of data loss due to minor accidents. If you’re a gamer, you may wish to install an SSD in order to enjoy a more enjoyable gaming experience.

Conclusion:

Get an SSD and you’ll notice a big difference in how quickly your computer reacts and boots. When using an HDD, the system will likely boot in 8 seconds or less, instead of 30 seconds or more.

As a result, you’ll notice that files load much more quickly and that the noise level is practically non-existant.

As far as the dependability of an SSD is concerned, the more frequently you use it and the more P/E cycles it has, the greater the MTBF or Mean Time Between Failures requirement. However, in my opinion, an SSD is always worth the money spent on it. Since both time and cliches are axioms, they’re a no-brainer.

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