Windows 10: SSD Life Left Question

I have an older Mushkin MKNSSDCR120GB-7 and noticed running CrystalDiskInfoPortable that it was at 81% life. I ran HD Sentinel and it says the SSD has 128 days left. However I ran SSD-Life and it says it has 8 years left. I also ran SsdReady and it says Approx ssd life: 7.9 years.

This SSD has been in use since Oct 2013 and on 24/7 for about 95% of the time. Here are the Crystal Disk stats:





I am hoping the two latter tests are more accurate than HD Sentinel by a long margin. What do you guys think? *Confused

:)

 

Windows 10 Reset and SSD Life

Hi,

I suppose Windows 10 Reset won't affect much the life of your SSD. However, as you might probably know SSDs in comparison to hard drives are more
sensitive, they die quicker because of the cells that actually lose their strength with
each rewriting action. So... make a decision I personally still prefer using SSDs as you can always find out

how much life is left on your SSD (for example, with the help of TBW measurement) and be ready for necessary actions.

 

BitLocker: turn on auto-unlock without encrypting OS Drive (SSD)

Thank you.

This is my first experience with a SSD; is it not disadvantageous to encrypt the SSD (performance impact, affect life of SSD)?

 

At 81%, drive is showing serious degradation, and failure rate is very likely to accelerate. The 8 years is only a linear extrapolation and will be way out (as time moves on, less to fail, and what is left is worked harder). Equally the other is probably overstating case but who knows by how much, as it depends very much on how you use drive.

Frankly, I would image backup ssd now, buy a new one NOW, and only use old one for non critical backup data or bin it.

 

Since there has been absolutely NO errors on the drive, it's safe to use.

81% Health is just a life expectancy counter coming from the S.M.A.R.T. algorithms. Most probably from amount of writes done.

I have seen worse numbers than that on devices running for many years since.

 

There is no way of telling real life expectancy. In reality, ssd drives fail these days more often due to the interface electronics dying as drive gets old than the actual read/write life.

In simple terms drive is getting old.

Expect it to fail, and plan for that failure - best plan of course being the Tenforum mantra "regular image backups".

 

So are you saying my SSD with similar numbers as the OPs, is getting old and will fail soon? I only have 2TB of total writes, which is way lower than OPs. *Smile

It's only 6months old and still performs as good as a brand new SSD.

I'd say, once the drive starts to get a few fail and error, then one should replace the drive (since this can escalate really fast), not just because the overall health status % is lower than 100%.

 

Something the OP can try is a Secure Erase.
See if your motherboard BIOS has the option, or, is the software for your SSD has that option.

If not do a search for a 3rd party utility like Parted Magic(you will need to switch BIOS from UEFI safe boot, to CSM to boot into the bootable USB probably).

 

Hold on, OP said his drive was old - who was talking about your drives?

I was just talking generally - ALL drives (ssd or hdd) fail eventually, and failure rates accelerate as they get older and NOBODY can predict when.

Planning for failure is sound advice even if drive is 1 day old.

Many older drives just fail suddenly with NO warning. That is totally unpredictable, but one thing is for sure, the probability increases as drive gets older.

The decision to replace is a purely a personal decision. If OP chooses to carry on, that is his choice but OP should plan for failure.

 

@cereberus

A 4-5 years old SSD is not old. Far from it. I still run storage and other hardware from the 80's without any issues. NOW THAT IS OLD!

 

What is this going to accomplish regarding life expectancy? Care to elaborate a bit further? Is the purpose to make sure the OP does a full bit by bit write and makes sure the S.M.A.R.T. stats are updated to accurate numbers?

 

Old is a relative term. In modern manufacturing, manufacturers use planned obsocelence i.e. they use components with an average planned life expectancy. This cuts down the cost of components, and overall costs.

In fact, the vendors want devices to last long enough that they do not get a bad reputation for early failure, but not so long that they shoot themselves in the foot for future sales.

I actually do a fair bit of risk anaylsis for offshore, and a general trend in ANY device is as follows.

Failure rates are low in initial life but always increase a bit (after initial warrant expires of course), then failure rates are fairly steady in mid life, but then start to increase significantly continually upwards towards end of life.

No one can say I have this device that has lasted years, so all will. A person can say I have had one hundred of these and they have been statistically proven to have a good life expectancy.

IMO 4 to 5 years is really towards the end of mid life for most modern electronics, and failure rates are very likely to increase for drives over five years old.

 

It resets the disk back to a "new" state(notice quotes), and then he can see what Crystal disk says about life span.

I have seen differences between crystal disk and Magician, for example.
I trust Magician more though, as it was created just for Samsung SSDs.
If Mushkin has its own software, they should go by that.

 

Silicon power, 240GB, V700, 3 year old - 22TB written, heath excellent, 98%.
Kingston V300, 120GB, 5+ years old, 37TB written, shape excellent, no errors but Hard Disk Sentinel reports only 80% health ??? and life expectancy in minus !!!! Working as first day although according to sentinel it should be dead.
Samsung 960 Evo, 250GB, few month old, Sentinel grades as 98% health, maybe because 14.6TB written to it already ?
Those algorithms Sentinel uses are more of a guess than anything else.

 

I C! Makes sense.

Hahhah, those Sentinel numbers make absolutely no sense to me.

CrystalDiskInfo reports 100% health on my EVO 850 that is a bit over 2 years old and has about 20TB writes and has been online 99.9% of the time.