Signs that Suggest your SSD is Near the End of its Life

An SSD or Solid State Drive is a disc that is much faster, more stable, and consumes less power than a traditional hard drive disc (HDD). But SSDs are not without flaws and can “fall apart” in certain situations, while their lifespan is estimated at 5 to 7 years with some normal use.

So it’s best to be prepared for a situation where an SSD can come to an end in its lifetime and you could potentially run out of your data. Therefor we’ll show you what the common signs are telling you your SSD is “done” and that it’s high time to replace it with a new and better one.

How do SSDs become unusable?

Unlike the mentioned HDDs, or traditional disks, SSDs do not have parts that are physically moving when you write or read something from them. On that side, SSD is more durable and can withstand more “shocks” and vibrations than an HDD. On the other hand, SSDs require stable electricity, so if there are any “emergency” situations such as an increase in electricity or its disappearance, there is a chance that the SSD will be damaged. There are many cases, where in the event of a power outage, there has been data corruption on the SSD. Especially if the user was doing any data transfer at that time or the computer was reading / writing to disk.

Another problem with SSDs is that they have a limited number of writing and reading cycles from disk. That’s the problem with the all flash memories.

How to check the health of an SSD?

When you hear that the HDD produces strange sounds and starts to “skip”, you will know that it has started to have certain problems. But unlike HDDs, SSDs don’t make sounds and you can’t conclude from that that something is wrong. The best and most reliable way to make sure your drive is still working well is to install software that will monitor its “health”. Windows users could try CrystalDiskMark, while MacOS users will be able to use Smart Reporter Lite. But other than that, there are some warning signs that you shouldn’t ignore. Below we bring you some of them.

Errors involving “bad blocks”

Just as HDDs can have “bad sectors”, so SSDs can have “bad blocks”. Then a typical scenario can occur in which a computer will try to write or read data, but it will take a very long time and in the end it will fail to do that. You will receive an error or warning that there is a problem. Common problems when you have bad blocks are:

The file cannot be written to disk or cannot be read

Your PC / file system needs to be repaired

Active applications often freeze and crash

Frequent errors when transferring data from one location to another

Generally, the disk runs slowly, especially when working with larger files

If you have one of these problems, then it is a good idea to run Crystal Disk Mark or Smart Reporter Lite or Hard Disk Sentinel… to see if there are any physical problems on the disk. If so, it’s time to back up your data right away, shut down your PC, and start buying a new one.

2. Files cannot be written or read

There are two ways that “bad blocks” can affect your files:

The system will detect a bad block before writing the file, will warn you and stop copying

The system will burn the disc, and then it will detect a bad block, after that you will not be able to read that file again.

In the first case, the file was not written to the new location, so it could not be corrupted. Often, the system itself will be able to solve this problem by “removing” the bad block and possibly writing the file to another location. If the computer doesn’t figure it out on its own, try writing the file to another location. Everything will probably go well.

In the second case, the file will be written to a bad block, and will be corrupted and will no longer be readable. There are some methods you can use to try to “repair the damage,” but there is no guarantee that you will succeed. If something is written in a bad block, it is usually permanently lost.

3. The file system needs a “repair” process

Have you ever seen a popup message of this type? Or just this screen? No matter if you use Windows or MacOS. Sometimes a message for a system “repair” will appear because the computer is not turned off properly. It will sometimes occur due to certain problems with connectors and ports. But unfortunately sometimes will occur when the SSD starts to develop the described problems.

Fortunately, often the solution to this problem is very simple. Windows, MacOS, and Linux come with a built-in system repair tool for corrupted file systems. When an error occurs, the OS will ask you to run the tool, follow the instructions, and resolve the issue. There is a chance that you will lose some data in the process, but on the other hand, the OS will work and you will not have to format the entire disk. And that’s why it’s important to back up your data periodically.

4. Frequent “crashing” of the OS during booting

If your computer often crashes during boot session, but then works normally after you press the “restart” button a few times, you can blame the disc. It is either a bad block on the disk or the disk is “tired”. So it’s best to back up your data right away and start looking for a new drive.

But before you buy a new drive, download the diagnostic tool and check if there are really any problems or not. If the tool shows that the disk is working normally and that there are no problems, it may be best to reformat everything and reinstall the OS. If that solves the problems, then the problem was of a software nature, not hardware. Learn more

Harper Harrison

Harper Harrison is a reporter for The Hear UP. Harper got an internship at the NPR and worked as a reporter and producer. harper has also worked as a reporter for the Medium. Harper covers health and science for The Hear UP.