How do ssd's fail?

[Jeroen.Luteijn]

So i bought myself a nice 4 tb m.2 ssd. A corsair mp600 core xt 4 tb. I was planning to use it as my main (C) drive. But in some reviews they recommend the drive only as a secondary storrage system, due to its qlc memmory. After doing some research i found out that qlc drives last for 3 to 5 years on average. But i couldn't find a clear answer on how the drive will fail after those years. Will it go slow? Will it fail completely and lose al of its data? Do i get a warning before something like data los happens? Should i not use it as my C drive?

[Tetras]

In my experience, you don't get a warning with SSDs, they just disappear and are not detected anymore by the PC.

 

I would not use this drive as a boot drive, no, but I haven't noticed much difference with quality versus low quality, they're all prone to sudden failure.

[johnt]

You should do two things

 

1) Embrace cloud storage for your important files

2) Use the SSD as your C: drive and don't worry about it too much

[kokosnh]

1 hour ago, Jeroen.Luteijn said:

So i bought myself a nice 4 tb m.2 ssd. A corsair mp600 core xt 4 tb

Phison E21T (1-core,4-ch, DRAMless) + 176l QLC micron NAND,  

that’s a garbage tire PCIe 4.0 SSD 

 

and I believe one of the cheapest one 4TB out there right now, so no surprise here.

 

usually with SSD, they controller fails, or some power IC, so just dead without any warning.

but since it’s QLC dramless SSD, you could actually see a warning, when the QLC NAND start to fail, with use, and age.

1 hour ago, Jeroen.Luteijn said:

Will it go slow?

Well yes, since the beginning…

1 hour ago, Jeroen.Luteijn said:

Should i not use it as my C drive?

You can use it, it will just be slow, and you can experience some stutters etc.

just remember to leave some space free on it, so that pSLC can work. 

as the moment you leave pSLC cache, and start using native QLC,  the performance hit is drastic.

 

[Pickles von Brine]

SSDs can fail in a number of ways. I have seen degraded NAND, failed NAND, firmware failures, controller failures, component level failures and everything in between. However, most SSDs die without warning. 

[Mumintroll]

SSDs wear out the more often you write and overwrite to it, it's called write cycles.

SSDs over the years has also started to move the wrong way. Nowadays instead of focusing to make them live longer they're just getting bigger and cheaper. When will we see a cheap consumer SSD with an expected life time of atleast 10 years?

 

Having Windows installed on it will sooner or later make that SSD into a paperweight. Even more so if the user doesn't know how to avoid unnecessary wear on it.

I have my Windows on a HDD, and some larger games that takes a long time to load and that doesn't update too often on a SSD.

[Issac Zachary]

SSD's are lightning fast compared to HDD's. They are also more resistant to shock damage than HDD's (hence better in laptops, tablets, etc.)

 

• SSD's die from writes and rewrites (maybe we should use our electronics less than we do anyway).
• An SSD can spread the writes and rewrites out over the SSD so it won't wear out one part of it, but will need more space. You can do this by not filling it full (don't put Windows on a 64GB SSD if you want it to last!)
• Having cache on the SSD can allow it to do fewer writes and reads to the nand flash by pushing off certain tasks to DRAM.
• Fewer states per nand cell will increase longevity (SLC vs. MLC vs. TLC vs. QLC, SLC has the most longevity but costs the most).
• Backups are important (onto a cloud service or better yet, onto an HDD.)
• Some files don't benefit that much from SSD technology (a reason to put the operating system on the fast SSD and your Word and Excel files, pictures and videos on a slower HDD).

Personally I put everything onto an SSD but have a backup to the cloud (Microsoft 365 and OneDrive) and also another backup (through SyncToy) onto a disconnectable (internally) hard drive.