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3 ways to extend your SSD's lifespan
SSDs are pretty reliable, especially when compared to a spinning HDD, but they still have a finite number of rewrites they can withstand before they start to fail. This is on a cell-by-cell level, not necessarily the entire drive getting bricked after a while. SSDs store data in different ways with several different options: Single-Level Cell (SLC) or Multi-Level Cell (MLC), which can be broken down into Triple-Level Cell (TLC), and Quad-Level Cell (QLC). SLC is known to be the most durable, but also the most expensive, while QLC offers tons of storage with slightly less durability.
Most SSDs can survive for quite a long time and will likely outlast your desire to keep using them. For example, one of the best SSDs, the Crucial T705 SSD supports between 1200TB and 2400TB written (TBW) before needing to be replaced. Still, there are some things you can do to reduce the writes on your drive to better protect your new PC hardware.
Reduce unnecessary SSD writes
Do you really need another copy?
The main way to extend the life of your SSD is to reduce the number of writes you perform on it. That is, saving data has the biggest impact on the overall lifespan of your device. While there is some variability, SSD manufacturers include a TBW figure in the specification to show how many writes the drive should survive while remaining reliable. Some SSDs will be quite low, like 300TBW, but more expensive models could be well over 1000TBW.
As detailed by CNET, one way to reduce the writes on your SSD is to turn off hibernation in Windows. When hibernating, Windows saves your RAM’s contents to the SSD so it can quickly resume when it comes out of hibernation. While this can be convenient for saving power, it requires the computer to write quite a bit of data to your drive. If you’re hibernating your PC multiple times per day, it can really add up.
Similarly, operating systems can use a portion of your drive as virtual memory. If you run out of memory, for example, the operating system can utilize this virtual memory to keep things running smoothly. If you’ve even been trying to clear space from your drive and come across a large file called pagefile.sys, this is the reserved space for virtual memory.
You can manage your virtual memory in Windows using your system settings. By default, Windows will allocate data on your drive or drives to meet the needs of the system, but you can set a custom amount and drive if you want. Naturally, one way around this is to add more RAM to your system, if possible, so it doesn’t need to write to your drive very often. If you’ve got another drive in your system, you could also choose which drive you want to use.
If you're looking to change your virtual memory settings in Windows 11, you're only a few steps away.
Use another drive for applications with a lot of writes
Set up a scratch disk
If you’re a video or image editor, you don’t have much choice besides writing to your drive a lot. In video editing, for example, proxy footage can be created for better performance, and preview footage can be created to show edits without dropping frames. All of this requires rather large writes to your drive. In an application like Adobe Premiere Pro, you can choose where you want this stored by selecting a scratch disk when you start your project.
If you’re manually saving frequently, you could also make sure you’re saving on a drive with high endurance, or one that’s not as valuable.
Keep it cool
Newer SSDs need heatsinks
Some of the best SSDs come with heatsinks, and it's more than just a decoration to attract gamers. SSDs have NAND flash, a controller, and sometimes a DRAM cache. In order to keep the SSD running best, it needs to stay within a certain temperature range. Newer PCIe 5.0 SSDs need heatsinks more than ever and can even experience thermal shutdowns if they get hot enough. While you may not see your NAND fail with these events, you could lose data that hasn’t been saved.
To keep your PC components working the way they should, make sure you’ve got adequate cooling for the type of drive you install. Some older drives don’t need a heatsink, but with many motherboards coming with built-in heatsinks, it’s a good idea to make sure you’ve got it installed correctly with the thermal pads in contact with the SSD and heatsink.
Do not worry about reads
It’s natural to be concerned about the longevity of PC components like SSDs, but when it comes down to it, most people don’t have much to worry about. For one thing, most of what we do with our SSDs, from loading games to watching videos, only uses disk reads, which hardly impacts your drive at all. For most people, a standard SSD should last for years without any significant issues.
That being said, your operating system isn’t asleep at the wheel, and it uses a feature called TRIM to keep your drive running properly. As explained by Crucial, TRIM can help your PC run more efficiently by telling your SSD which data is no longer being used and can be erased. This saves time when you want to write over that portion of the SSD and can work with wear leveling to help keep wear even across the drive, extending the life of the drive.
Thankfully, most modern operating systems will handle TRIM without your input, so if you’ve got Windows 11, for example, you don’t need to worry about it. Overall, SSDs are still the way to go for a PC with better reliability than older spinning hard drives.
