Will Overprovisioning Help My Quickly Degrading SSD?

[Renton577]

My current SSD which is a Micron 2210 and is 512GB has only 6TB of total writes and has degraded to 97% health which in my experience is a lot faster than it should degrade. Will setting OP help it degrade slower or is this just how fast my SSD degrades?

[Eigenvektor]

Overprovisioning should help prolong its live, but 97% isn't really anything to worry about.

[Renton577]

Just now, Eigenvektor said:

Overprovisioning should help prolong its live, but 97% isn't really anything to worry about.

I guess you have a point, but its dropped from 100 to 97 in a few months with such little total writes.

[Eigenvektor]

8 minutes ago, Renton577 said:

I guess you have a point, but its dropped from 100 to 97 in a few months with such little total writes.

It's fairly normal for devices to quickly drop down to 90-something and then stay there for a long time.

[Renton577]

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

It's fairly normal for devices to quickly drop down to 90-something and then stay there for a long time.

That's good to know, thanks for the info, was just a bit concerned because I've never had that happen before. This is my first QLC SSD though so I'll just keep it like it has been and not worry about it.

[L583]

I don‘t know where this number is originated, but the expected lifespans that you get at S.M.A.R.T. Tests for example are often far from the end in my experience.

[L583]

A rule of thumb I heard was that the least you should expect is 150 TBW per 250 GB of SSD capacity. And during a test of the russians news site 3D news, almsot every SSD tested beat that TBW and even up to 20 times with the top ones. 
So either it dies after a long time due to decay, it dies after hundreds of TB written or anything in between.

[Lorca]

On 3/6/2022 at 6:38 AM, Eigenvektor said:

It's fairly normal for devices to quickly drop down to 90-something and then stay there for a long time.

Is that right? I posted here and elsewhere last year how my SSD (NVMe) suddenly dropped to 99% after about 5 months use and minimal writes (less than 4TB) and now it dropped again after one year to 98% with 5.5TB. It's all very concerning and no real explaination anywhere.

[Lorca]

On 3/6/2022 at 6:26 AM, Eigenvektor said:

Overprovisioning should help prolong its live, but 97% isn't really anything to worry about.

How would you overprovision?

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, Lorca said:

Is that right? I posted here and elsewhere last year how my SSD (NVMe) suddenly dropped to 99% after about 5 months use and minimal writes (less than 4TB) and now it dropped again after one year to 98% with 5.5TB. It's all very concerning and no real explaination anywhere.

So if it keeps going at the current rate, it will die in 75 to 100 years... I think you're ok. 

[Eigenvektor]

3 hours ago, Lorca said:

How would you overprovision?

Some SSDs have management software where you can configure this. It essentially reduces the available space on the SSD to keep more cells in reserve, to replace those that stop working. As was pointed out above, SSDs are typically overprovisioned by default, you can simply increase the amount of overprovisioning.

[cmndr]

If you're worried about it... yeah sure, shrink your partition a bit.

Also consider moving page file(easiest and matters most) and maybe even temp files and program caches (matters less) off of the drive if you're hitting it a lot. A 16GB optane stick costs like $10 and fits into an nvme m.2 slot.

The last bit is probably overkill though

[Lorca]

On 3/7/2022 at 8:39 PM, Blue4130 said:

So if it keeps going at the current rate, it will die in 75 to 100 years... I think you're ok. 

Ha. Good to know. What is the formula then, is it based on TB written, percentage health, or both?

[Blue4130]

4 hours ago, Lorca said:

Ha. Good to know. What is the formula then, is it based on TB written, percentage health, or both?

There is no formula. I was basing it on the fact that it dropped 2% in roughly a year and a half.

[Lorca]

18 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

There is no formula. I was basing it on the fact that it dropped 2% in roughly a year and a half.

Hmm. After looking more into this. I discovered many who have had their SSD/NVMe drives for many, many years and with dozens of TB written and not had the percentage drop at all. BTW, it's only a year. Next week is my 12-month anniversary with this laptop.

 

One source says to get ready to replace the drive at around 60%. 

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, Lorca said:

Hmm. After looking more into this. I discovered many who have had their SSD/NVMe drives for many, many years and with dozens of TB written and not had the percentage drop at all. BTW, it's only a year. Next week is my 12-month anniversary with this laptop.

 

One source says to get ready to replace the drive at around 60%. 

You will also find mountains of people who have had drives steadily drop % as well. My Samsung evo 750 is at 77% and still going strong after 1429 power on days with 23tb written.