Smart Tips to Make Your SSD Last Longer

The days of the conventional Hard disk with a platter and a disk, are the days in past. Recently most of the computer manufacturers have switched to SSD or the solid state drives. These drives are trending and are implemented in almost all the modern computers. The reason being its compactness and efficiency with respect to the HDDs. So what can you do if you want to make your SSD last longer?

While the SSD was getting its popularity, there was a section of tech experts that suggested otherwise. According to some, the lifespan of SSDs is very less and the drive is volatile. However, after it has been under use and constant improvement, we can assert that the lifespan of an SSD is way too more than we anticipate. A gradual decline in the operation can be due to improper utilization, overheating or can be a manufacturer’s mistake.

So using an SSD in your device is pretty cool as there is no noise, fast operation, light weight and so on. Let us try to find out some of the ways in which you can make your solid state drive (SSD) last longer.

Life of an SSD

A solid state drive is flash based storage system; it indicates that the drive has no moving parts. Thus it helps in eliminating several movable part issues from the operation. If we want to evaluate the lifetime of SSD, it does not quite depend upon the number of days it has been operational. But the number of reading write cycles decide the lifespan of a solid-state drive.

The new technology has made it possible for us to read/write a significant amount of data on your SSD.

Here is what you should do to safeguard your hard drive and make it last long:

Save from Power Cut/Surge

A sudden power cut or a power outage are the worst nightmares for your SSD. A power outage during operation of your SSD such as write cycle can damage the files to a great extent.

Some of the times, if there is a power outage during the write cycle, a number of bad impacts are imposed on the drive. It may lead to data loss from the files that you are using at that time. A sudden outage can even lead to the corruption of your drive or data loss from the entire drive too.

Due to a power outage, there can be some severe damage to your SSD. It may even lead to some extreme level of file corruption. You are likely to suffer the loss of important files, a whole file system, partition or the entire hard drive. And you might be familiar with the lengthy process of getting back data from lost partition on SSD hard drive.

In order to avoid this, you must make use of an uninterrupted power supply system or a UPS. It is one of the simplest and easy solutions to the power outage problem. A power surge protector is also mandatory to avoid any surge that may damage your solid state drive.

Temperature Tolerance

The SSDs are much more tolerant to high temperature as compared to the conventional hard drives. The overall temperature tolerance limit of the SSDs are much more than that of HDDs. An average solid state drive can tolerate a temperature of around 0 to 80 degree Celsius. However, an HDD can tolerate a temperature range of 5 to 50 degree Celsius on an average.

The solid state drives can tolerate extreme temperatures for a significantly long duration. But that doesn’t mean they are heat resistant, the impact of heat can be severe to your SSD drive. The Large temperature difference can be quite damaging for all the electronic devices.

The impact of heat on the hard drive can be decreased in the data retention ability. It sometimes leads to the complete drive failure in certain cases. Some of the highly damaged SSDs found are due to excessive heating of the drive.

Release the Cells

There is a very negligible effect on the read/write cycle in your solid state drive. They do not affect the life of your solid state drive at any time. But there is one thing you should keep in mind. Always try to keep as much space open as possible. This will be helpful in releasing the cells that hold the data.

This is also termed as wear leveling by some of the technical experts. This process basically involves the release of cells in your solid state drive. It gives a chance to your hard drive to write in most of the part equally. This helps the SSD to avoid wearing of the cells that are not being used for long.

A common propaganda for this should be deleting unused files from your computer. Replace the files that have not been used for a long time. If there are cells that have data which is stored from a long time, try transferring the to an external hard drive to release the space.

To keep your solid state drive intact for a long time, try to avoid any kind of physical damage to the computer or the drive. Whenever you disconnect the drive, be cautious about the connections and the handling.

Smart Tips to Make Your SSD Last Longer was last modified: January 30th, 2017 by John Harris


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