Most people probably don't think about exhausting their SSD's lifespan. The NAND flash used to store data on SSDs has a finite number of write cycles. On most gaming PCs, this isn't a big concern, as you're likely to replace the drive before writing enough terabytes to it to wear it down. That said, some workloads and practices can eat through your SSD's endurance much faster than gaming and browsing. Write-heavy workloads can slash your SSD's lifespan from years to months. Even if you aren't running productivity workloads on your SSD, you might be guilty of a few habits that aren't exactly ideal for your SSD's long life.

Cryptocurrency plotting

Guaranteed to push your drive to an early grave

This might not be a common use case, but some users might be interested in getting into cryptocurrency plotting on their primary PC. Here's why that's a bad idea. Mining proof-of-work cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin requires a ton of processing power, most commonly in the form of ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) miners. These are specialized machines built for the sole purpose of mining Bitcoin. Alternatively, proof-of-stake coins like Ether work by staking a particular amount of the respective cryptocurrency. Lastly, there are proof-of-space coins like Chia that use storage space to write and rewrite huge temporary files to the disk. If you're thinking about Chia plotting on your SSDs, be prepared to chew through multiple drives in a matter of weeks or months, not years.

Manufacturers know this, which is why cryptocurrency plotting is excluded from the warranty coverage of brands like Corsair and Crucial. Even if your drive manufacturer doesn't explicitly exclude mining or plotting from warranty coverage, they can deny claims once you exceed the drive's TBW anyway. If you really want to get into crypto plotting, it's best to put together a dedicated system with a combination of fast SSDs and slower HDDs.

Defragmenting the SSD

A legacy mistake

We've been saying it for years: SSDs don't need defragmenting. Spinning hard drives benefited from defragmentation, which reorganizes related data into contiguous sectors to minimize the read head's movement, effectively improving access times. SSDs don't have mechanical parts to read or write data, hence they don't need to be defragmented. Still, third-party utilities can forcefully reorganize blocks on your SSD, generating unnecessary and harmful write activity. It's harmful because it depletes the drive's limited write cycles. Windows is already adept at optimizing SSDs (and HDDs) automatically, which involves sending TRIM commands to the drive to delete unused data and mark cells as empty. This makes way for newer data to be written to those cells, improving drive performance. You don't need to worry about manual optimization for SSDs anymore.

Leaving no free space on the drive

Let your SSD breathe

It might seem overkill, but leaving some free space on your SSD can actually have real-world benefits in addition to extending its lifespan. SSDs use garbage collection to clear partially filled cells so that new data can be written. Garbage collection works in collaboration with the TRIM function, which happens at the OS level. It also avoids uneven wear across the NAND cells. Without enough free space on the drive, though, garbage collection is forced to occur during write operations instead of idle times, creating a performance overhead. The SSD controller needs to clear cells for incoming data, delaying the actual write operation. This slows down the drive, but the bigger concern is write amplification, since the controller needs to perform significantly more write operations than it would on a less occupied drive.

It's recommended to keep 10-20% of your drive's total free space unused to allow for efficient garbage collection. You can opt for an SSD with DRAM cache for improved garbage collection. The DRAM chip informs the drive about the location of the empty and occupied cells, reducing unnecessary writes and extending the drive's lifespan.

Ignoring overheating

It'll harm your drive eventually

Electronic components don't play well with heat; SSDs are no different. Occasional overheating is not an issue, but if your drive is experiencing alarming thermals for persistent periods, it's bound to cause physical wear. A lack of sufficient cooling inside the tower or heatsink-free operation on high-end Gen5 drives can give rise to high thermals. In the near term, you might only see occasional slowdowns due to thermal throttling as the SSD temperature crosses into the 70℃ range. However, the long-term effects of chronic overheating can be severe, ranging from reduced lifespan to potential failure. You might be used to monitoring your CPU and GPU temperatures and ignoring SSD temperatures. This could be a costly mistake, especially on compact builds where airflow is relatively constrained.

Using the main SSD as a scratch disk

Scratch that idea ASAP

If you frequently run programs like Photoshop and Premiere Pro on your primary SSD, you're probably using it as a scratch disk. What that means is that you're storing a lot of temporary files, cache, and other project data on the main SSD. These write-heavy operations can deplete your SSD's remaining lifespan without you realizing it. The thing is, you can actually change which drive these programs use as the scratch disk. Assigning a second SSD as the storage location for all temporary files and cache relieves your primary drive from the scratch disk responsibilities. It'll still exhaust its limited write cycles eventually, but at a much later stage. Plus, the dedicated scratch disk will also last a long time, since it's dealing with only one kind of data, and not everything else that's happening on your primary SSD instead. This distribution of write activity benefits both your primary and scratch SSDs.

Stop killing your SSD prematurely

Your PC habits might not seem brutal on your SSD, but they could be secretly depleting its lifespan faster than you realize. Write-heavy workloads, overheating, and filling the drive to the brim can exhaust its endurance in the background. You should offload intensive write operations to a secondary SSD, improve cooling inside the PC, and leave sufficient free space for efficient garbage collection.