The SSD went from being a rarity available only to the lucky few to becoming the mainstream consumer product it is today present in hundreds of millions of personal computers. It is true that it has not yet succeeded in completely displacing HDDs and that this will not happen in the short or medium term, but its popularity is indisputable and its advantages over traditional hard drives are so significant that they make less and less sense.

Buying an SSD will allow us to use a number of advantages that are not available with an HDD. One of the most important is undoubtedly performance, as these types of drives can achieve read and write speeds that far exceed traditional hard drives. To display the button, PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD can reach up to 7,000 MB/s sequential read and writewhile conventional high performance HDD in both cases it usually does not exceed 200 MB/s.

Speed ​​is one of the biggest advantages that SSDs offer over hard drives, but it’s not the only one. This type of storage solution has no mechanical parts and does not use platters or heads, these are replaced by a controller and NAND Flash memory chips, which means that have minimal latency which reduces access times and have a increased resistance to vibrations and shocksbecause they have no moving parts.

Over time, these types of storage units also improve their main weaknesses, among which we can highlight lifespan and price per gigabyte. The improvement was so great that today we can find SSD disks with a capacity of 1 TB for less than 60 euros and with a 5-year warranty.

However, this does not mean that they are perfect. They still have some important peculiarities that we must take into account in the daily use of this type of unit if we want to maximize their life and avoid inconveniences, and in this article I want to share with you five important keys that we must avoid because they can cause your SSD to “die” sooner than expected.

Things that can shorten the life of your SSD

1.-Remove and install demanding games and applications frequently

Any SSD drive is designed to last without problems given number of read and write cycles. When we perform these types of cycles, the NAND Flash memory wears out, in fact it is possible that there will be minor failures that the unit will be able to repair in a relatively simple way to continue working without us noticing anything strange. , which is several years, in the earliest stage of such drives, can lead directly to a critical failure of the drive.

The number of read and write cycles an SSD can handle before we run the risk of critical failure can vary greatly depending on each drive and its capacity. This is expressed in terabytes “before failure”and of course larger capacity drives usually have higher resistance to erase and write cycles because they have more storage capacity. It wouldn’t make sense for a 1TB SSD to last 400TB and a 4TB drive only 100TB.

If we constantly delete and install heavy games and applications, we will significantly shorten the life of our SSD. I will give a concrete example, 1 TB Kioxia Exceria G2 has resistance to erase and write cycles of 400 TB. This means that we would have to fill and empty it 400 times. so that it is at serious risk of failure if there are no other problems that could affect its lifespan. It is a very high value, which of course translates into a long service life.

Well, we do average erase and write cycles 200 GB per day we will write 6000 GB per month, which is equivalent to 73 TB per year. At this rate, we will exceed the maximum resistance value in just over five years, and it is very likely that we will find significant performance degradation and specific failures that will worsen over time and with the accumulation of erase and write cycles. It may seem like a lot, but imagine that just by installing two heavy games, we could already exceed 200 GB.

2.-Constantly use applications to measure performance

The explanation is directly related to what I told you in the first point. When performing performance tests on storage drives, applications perform a series of read, copy, and write cycles and then clean up the used space to leave no traces. As you might have imagined, it means a number of write and erase cycles are performedand therefore shortens the life of the storage unit.

I can confirm that I have experienced this problem first-hand, and that Due to the degradation that occurs, I have greatly reduced the use of this type of application.s on the test storage drives as well as the ones I use on my personal computers. One of the ones that has the biggest impact in this regard is one of the most popular and reliable, CrystalDiskMark, although you shouldn’t fall for the sensation that appeared a few months ago. It is a safe app and totally recommended if used wisely.

That’s what I mean nothing happens because you download it and use it once. It also won’t have a serious impact on the life of your SSDs if you run it occasionally to measure performance and check that everything is OK. All this is normal and you can do it without any problems, but what you should avoid is falling into the mistake of using it frequentlybecause in this case you would be using the application abnormally and it would greatly shorten the life of your SSD.

I named it CrystalDiskMark because it is one of the most popular and controversial applications, but that goes for all storage performance measurement applications because it eventually resorts to write and read cycles. Of course, they wouldn’t be able to perform performance measurements without them.

3.-High working temperatures

Heat is the great enemy of any electronic component, and SSDs are no exception. These types of storage units are used NAND Flash memory chips which, as you might imagine, are made of silicon and are very sensitive to heat. The same is true for the memory controller which can reach very high working temperatures during intensive reading or writing.

Usually, these types of storage units come with sheets that act as storage systems. passive cooling, although it is normal for high performance models to find small metal blocks to increase the dissipating surface and keep operating temperatures much lower. This will result in excellent performance and keep the SSD at optimal values ​​to maximize its lifespan.

On the contrary, if SSD temperatures shoot above normal, the so-called heat suffocationand the drive will reduce its performance to avoid damage. If this is not enough, this can happen serious degradation it affects the controller and memory chips and that it shortens their lifespan or outright kills the SSD.

SSD temperature issues are common when the cooling system is not sufficientthat’s why motherboards with passive heatsink blocks for PCIe M.2 SSDs are so important, or if the heat accumulated in the chassis is too high and this ends up being carried over to passive scattering elements. These depend on good air flow through the chassis and its temperature.

4.-Power problems and blackouts

SSDs use memory chips and a controller, as we said before, and they are very sensitive to electrical energy they receive from the motherboard. As these types of units began to hit the mainstream consumer market between 2012 and 2013, studies began to emerge that very clearly confirmed their fragility in the face of power supply issues including spikes, sags, and surges.

I know you are wondering what you can do to avoid this problem, because in the end it is something beyond your control, and it depends not only on your electricity provider, but also on everything that surrounds you, on chance and possible natural phenomena. In this case it is ideal have a UPSan uninterruptible power supply that allows you to avoid the consequences of voltage drops, as well as peaks and surges in the electrical network.

Thanks to UPS, you have nothing to worry about if the power goes out, as long as it has a powerful enough battery to keep your device powered at least for a few minutes. This time will give you enough time to close applications and save your work, and to safely shut down your computer. Never underestimate the importance of a UPS, anyone who’s seen a power sag take his PC before him tells you.

SAIs play a very important role as a prevention tool, but they have a limited shelf life. Over time, your batteries deteriorate and there comes a point where they no longer work, so they need to be changed at certain intervals, which depending on the manufacturer can be two to three years (in most cases) . cases). Keep this in mind because if you’ve had a UPS in operation for more than three years, it’s very likely that its battery is already dead and won’t be able to keep your equipment powered up if there’s a power outage.

5.-Problematic applications and processes that abuse the SSD

This last point seems like a bit of a “mix” but it’s very important and makes a lot of sense because there are applications that can end up abusing the SSD with all that entails. On more than one occasion, I’ve had people ask me why their laptop was slow, and when I looked at it, I saw that the app I set the storage drive usage percentage to 100%.

The effect of these types of applications on the lifespan of an SSD drive this can be great for two reasons. The first is that when the drive is subjected to maximum load for long periods of time, abnormal stress is placed on it and operating temperatures skyrocket, and the second is that said load can mean performing erase and write cycles. data and all that entails.

It is ideal for an SSD drive to function properly and prevent this type of problem from occurring keep the operating system and drivers up to date, but we’ll always stick to final versions (avoid beta versions and any unfinished version that might contain bugs). It is also recommended avoid apps of dubious originand those that are not guaranteed good compatibility with our device and with our operating system.

If we encounter this problem, we have to press the Windows key and type “Task Manager”. We go to the processes tab and close the process or processes that are using the SSD at 100%. This will also allow us to identify the responsible apps and we will have to proceed uninstall them.