2017 SSD Life Expectancy

[Yeahyeahyeah123]

So I have had my 2017 15"/3.1/1TB for six months now and my SSD reports about 8200 GBs of data written and 6000 GBs of data read.

It is considered normal? How long should the current SSDs last barring accidents? 700+ TBs?

 

[Kingcr]

There isn't really a "normal" and as far as I know, Apple hasn't published any endurance figures for their SSD's.

You only need to worry about writes, not reads, in terms of endurance. Many consumer drives are warrantied up to around 72TB written per 128GB capacity over the lifetime of the device. You're writing around 45GB per day, so *if* your SSD had this endurance rating *and* it scaled linearly with capacity (due to wear levelling), you'd have 576TB to work with over the lifetime of your device. At 45GB per day, it'd take you about 35 years to hit that limit.

And with all that being said, irrespective of rated endurance, it all comes down to the quality of the NAND used in the SSD. You can have a look at the test here from 2015 to see how far some drives go over and above their rated endurance: https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead.

So, how long will your SSD last? No-one really knows for sure. But, assuming that Apple uses NAND of sufficient quality that this is a non-issue for many, many years.

 

[Yeahyeahyeah123]

There isn't really a "normal" and as far as I know, Apple hasn't published any endurance figures for their SSD's.

You only need to worry about writes, not reads, in terms of endurance. Many consumer drives are warrantied up to around 72TB written per 128GB capacity over the lifetime of the device. You're writing around 45GB per day, so *if* your SSD had this endurance rating *and* it scaled linearly with capacity (due to wear levelling), you'd have 576TB to work with over the lifetime of your device. At 45GB per day, it'd take you about 35 years to hit that limit.

And with all that being said, irrespective of rated endurance, it all comes down to the quality of the NAND used in the SSD. You can have a look at the test here from 2015 to see how far some drives go over and above their rated endurance: https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead.

So, how long will your SSD last? No-one really knows for sure. But, assuming that Apple uses NAND of sufficient quality that this is a non-issue for many, many years.

OK thank you. I now understand the huge data writes. I created two sizeable VMs and then tried to create a BootCamp partition twice, plus downloading Logic Pro X, Final Cut Pro X, Microsoft Office, and other big programs (twice). I was naïve and tried to defragment the computer a couple times when it was acting up. So, hopefully, I can drastically reduce my daily writing rate.

 

[ZapNZs]

Locally housed VMs can definitely increase your writes and reads depending on the situation. That said your SSD should have a rated endurance pushing somewhere in the range of .5 to 1 PB (if we go off something like the 960 PRO), and an actual endurance that could be considerably longer.

 

[Yeahyeahyeah123]

Locally housed VMs can definitely increase your writes and reads depending on the situation. That said your SSD should have a rated endurance pushing somewhere in the range of .5 to 1 PB (if we go off something like the 960 PRO), and an actual endurance that could be considerably longer.

That makes a lot of sense. Now I have just settled with a workable Boot Camp partition and deleted the virtual machines. So basically, I should just use a computer for what I need it for and not worry about the endurance.

 

[Yeahyeahyeah123]

Update: upon further research, I think I have something similar to a Samsung 960 Pro (which is rated for 800 TBW).

 

[Yeahyeahyeah123]

Update #2: It turns out that the main culprits are Firefox and Chrome. I just thought it might be useful to somebody else. I was testing it and web browsing for the day easily ate up 30 gigabytes.