Many people think SSDs are more reliable and will last forever. However, an SSD can fail. For a fuller comparison of the two, you can see our article about HDD vs SSD<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this article, we’ll show you eight signs your SSD could be failing and show you what to do about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are two general causes of SSD: wear and physical damage. Both of them affect how long an SSD lasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wear is a way of talking about how much data has been written to the SSD over its lifetime. All SSDs have a limited amount of data, called terabytes written (TBW), that they can process during their lifetime. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is calculated by multiplying the size of the drive by the number of program and erase cycles the drive can undergo before failure. <\/mark><\/strong>If we use simple numbers, then a 10GB drive that can withstand 100 cycles would have a 1000GB (or one terabyte) TBW. It gets a little more complicated than that, but you understand the basic idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Physical damage covers a pretty broad set of issues. The drive could overheat, suffer power surges, or be damaged due to being dropped or handled roughly. Water and dust are common environmental threats to SSDs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With these two things in mind, let’s turn to the eight things you might see before your SSD fails<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Computers occasionally have problems during startup, or boot. However, these can be intermittent and go away after a quick restart. If you have to reboot your computer more than once to get it to start up, then this is a sign your SSD could be failing. The probable cause is a buildup of bad sectors that affects the files your computer needs during startup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the strongest signs of the existence of bad sectors or bad blocks on your drive is a long delay in saving files. Bad blocks are sectors of the drive that have suffered physical or logical damage and can no longer be accessed. Sometimes these are on the drive from manufacture. They can occur due to the wear and physical damage we already mentioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n File system corruption results in corrupt files that you cannot access. When you try, you receive an error message. This might occur a couple of times without indicating any specific problems. But if there are frequent errors, then this is a sign your storage device is failing. You should start some data protection and failure prevention measures immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n There may be several reasons for restarting your computer. You might want to refresh the caches or the system’s operating memory. But frequent restarts should be a question mark. You should check the health of your hard drive. If the drive is slowly being corrupted or accumulating bad blocks, then the sooner you know, the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you’ve ever seen the blue screen of death that says your system needs repair, this is a bad sign for your disc drives. The next step for most Windows users is to start the automatic repair process. However, this is one of the strongest warning signs. The best step to take is to use a proper disk utility to ascertain the health of your drive. Then, you can take steps to back up your data to avoid loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bad blocks don’t always show up as errors. Windows will try to rewrite data from bad blocks into unused ones. But if there are too many bad blocks, then the computer will eventually give up. Then, you’ll see error messages. Your drive has too many bad blocks and a potential SSD failure is imminent.<\/p>\n\n\n Overheating is one of the oldest computer problems. An SSD should be less prone to overheating than an older HDD, but the newest SSDs are seeing the heat problem come back. NVME SSDs can run very hot, especially when performing intense reads\/writes and processes. This isn’t exactly a sign of a failing hard drive, but it can be a precursor to one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Firmware is the set of instructions from the manufacturer that tells your SSD how to operate. A software misconfiguration can cause a drive failure. For example, Hewlett Packard needed to issue a message about its update HPD8. Without a critical fix, all the affected SSDs would lose their data after 32,768 hours of use. These kinds of errors don’t occur on a regular basis and they can be fixed with software update tools from the manufacturer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The only way to properly check the health of your SSD is with the correct diagnostic tools. There is a wide range of tools and software that claim to tell you the state of your hard drive. These generally fall into two categories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, Hard Disk Sentinel is how to check the health of your hard drive<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/hdsentinel.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/hdd-vs-ssd-blog-featured-1-1024x385.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhat Causes SSD Failure?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Eight of the Most Common Failing SSD Symptoms<\/h2>\n\n\n\nYou Encounter Crashes During Startup<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Very Long Time to Save Files<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
You are Unable to Read or Access Specific Files<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"You](\"https:\/\/hdsentinel.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/you-are-unable-to-read-or-access-specific-files.png\")
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Frequent Restarts are Required<\/h3>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/hdsentinel.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/10-data-recovery-blog-featured-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nAn Error Shows the File System Needs Repair<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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The System Shows You Errors Involving Bad Blocks<\/h3>\n\n\n\n![\"Hard](\"https:\/\/hdsentinel.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/free-trial-hds-banner-1500-1024x302.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\nYour Disk Drive Overheats<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Firmware Errors and Failures<\/h3>\n\n\n\n![\"Firmware](\"https:\/\/hdsentinel.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/firmware-errors-and-failures-1024x636.png\")
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How to Check the Health of Your SSD<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n
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