Secure Format and drive longevity.

[mfny]

Hi all,

 

It has come to my attention today that my practice of Secure Formatting before I install/reinstall an OS(and I have hopped OS's and Linux Distros often in the past) might be contributing to shortening the life of my SSDs.

 

On my old system ive used Secure Erase in this way for a number of years and I have recently acquired a new system and have continued the practice there until today.

 

How much of an issue is this going to be ? for the new system for example ive Secure Erased not more then 10 times, so hopefully that has not had to much of an impact ?

[Skipple]

1 minute ago, mfny said:

How much of an issue is this going to be

Almost none. Assuming the low end of an SSD with 10,000 writes per cell, you would have utilized 0.1% of it's lifespan. It's far more likely to be age limited by other factors, not your secure formatting activities. 

[MiszS]

16 minutes ago, Skipple said:

Almost none. Assuming the low end of an SSD with 10,000 writes per cell, you would have utilized 0.1% of it's lifespan. It's far more likely to be age limited by other factors, not your secure formatting activities. 

It's true that 10 writes isn't really going to make a difference, but 10,000 writes per cell is pretty far off. MLC SSDs have around 10K writes per cell as you said, but no modern SSD uses those cells. SSDs today use TLC (3 bits per cell), which usually have at most 1000 writes. Some cheap ones even have QLC which have even less than that, around 300

[Tegneren]

The life span of am SSD is in the number of writes. So every time you do a secure erase you basically writes "empty" data the entire capacity of the SSD just to zero it out.

An WD_BLACK SN850X 1TB for instance has a life expectancy of 600 TBW (terrabyte written), and every time you secure erase it you take away 1 TB of its life, so after 10 times you have lost about 1,6% of life just by doing that.

Its not that much, but I have never had an issue just formatting normally when the need arise.

If you give it away, sells it or just "decommision" it I always recommend doing secure erase, or if you deal in sensitive data. Otherwise I dont really see the need for it as long as its you that are using it.

[kokosnh]

3 hours ago, mfny said:

Secure Erase

It’s actually better for the SSD health, then normal format. 
 

In secure erase you do not write anything to the ssd, you just delete all data and return all nand cells to empty state (so 1, not 0 like in hdd ).

 

at least if it’s normal ssd and have correctly implemented secure erase,  no strange sed ssd encryption key swap. 

[mfny]

This is the result of using CrystalDiskInfo on the drive in the newer system.

 

I assume the "percentage used" shown is the wear on the drive value and that it is zeros means no wear.

 

[kokosnh]

The TBW of the WD SN770 500GB is 300TBW

 

You have only 521GB writtern 

So it's 0% of the rated wear. 

That green blue 100% indicator should be correlated to that value,just reverse going from 100 to 0.