Because SSDs don’t use physical storage, it’s easy to assume that they don’t really suffer from wear and tear. However, you can still digitally run down the lifespan of an SSD if you use certain software utilities with it. If you want to maximize its lifespan, steer clear of these things.
Cryptocurrency plotting is a huge drain
Admittedly, it’s usually only a certain type of people who are doing things involving crypto on their PCs. But if you are, you have to be mindful of cryptocurrency plotting, which is a different beast than crypto mining, which barely touches an SSD. You see, mining primarily puts stress on compute hardware and doesn’t require a lot of disk activity. But cryptocurrency plotting, used by some currencies like Chia, requires the repeated creation of gigantic files that must be written, sorted, and rewritten over and over again.
This puts a ton of strain on your SSD, as the process can ultimately produce several terabytes of file writes in just one day. Most SSDs weren’t built for that: it can take the Terabytes Written (TWB) lifespan of an SSD from years to just months or even weeks.
Exactly how much damage can this do? Well, even many SSD manufacturers, such as Corsair, exclude crypto plotting workloads from their warranty coverage. Even the manufacturers that don’t do this often have endurance clauses in their warranties, ensuring that your warranty will be void if you intentionally exceed the rated TBW lifespan of your SSD.
In short, cryptocurrency plotting is one of the fastest possible ways to run your SSD into the ground, so if longevity is the name of the game, don’t even think of doing it.
Stress testing does exactly what it claims
I’ll preface this by saying that you can definitely run benchmarking tools on your SSD in a small capacity without causing too much trouble. Stress testing and synthetic benchmarks are really only a problem for your SSD if you are running them in endurance modes or a continuous loop. That’s less of a benchmark and more of a full-blown torture test you’d expect to see in a validation lab. Your SSD is not meant to be under that kind of stress 24/7.
You almost certainly have a consumer SSD, which is designed for mixed-use cases. It’s only supposed to be pushed to the limit occasionally, not forced to endure the maximum throughput it can handle at all times. As with most components, pushing them to their max even for a relatively short window of time can have a massive impact on the ultimate lifespan.
Besides, there’s no point in running benchmark tests continuously. After the first few runs, you will have all the information you need. Generally speaking, that information is not going to change, so why burn through SSD lifespan after you already have your benchmark data?
Segment-based download managers can eat a lot of lifespan
Segmented download tools, such as BitTorrent clients, work by downloading files in small fragments, then rewriting segments of those files as their availability changes. It’s a lot of scattered drive writes and frequent metadata updates, which is a lot of non-sequential workloads. SSDs don’t like non-sequential workloads. They often look very light, but they quickly and quietly add up to being a big drain.
This is an even bigger problem for drives with Quad-Level Cells (QLC). QLC drives have even lower P/E endurance than other SSDs, which means they really want as few random writes as possible. Torrenting is pretty much the exact opposite of that preference. It’s not great for any SSD, but if you have a drive with QLC, you’ll want to minimize your use of segment-based download managers as much as possible.
Disk defragmentation utilities can do more damage than you think
Traditional disk defragmentation is a great tool… for traditional hard drives. It’s actually inadvisable to use these utilities on an SSD. SSDs don’t use a mechanical read head, which means defragging one doesn’t really do anything for you. But there are a lot of third-party defrag utilities that still reorganize blocks and generate a lot of disk write activity that you don’t need.
de
Now, most modern operating systems prevent this from happening, but if you have a misconfigured optimizer, you may still be burning a lot of terabytes of disk writing without realizing it. Depending on what third-party utilities you are using, your SSD could be forced to go through defrags it doesn’t need, which means moving a lot of data around, which ultimately shortens your SSD’s lifespan.
So, be sure to make sure this isn’t happening without your intent, and never defrag your SSD on purpose. It offers no benefits at all and only serves to hurt your SSD’s lifespan.
While SSDs are very good and will generally last you a long time, there are plenty of ways you can drastically shorten their lifespan, either intentionally or by accident. It’s not that you can never do these things (short of defragging), but you should know how much they may cost you in the long run before committing. SSDs don’t have to set you back too much if you don’t buy the fastest options, but you still don’t want to replace them often.
