Tests run by computing website The Tech Report have shown that a modern Solid State Drive (SSD) could conceivably handle one thousand years’ worth of use. Staff from the site forced six SSD drives to repeatedly write and rewrite 10GB of large and small files. Four of the drives malfunctioned after rewriting a petabyte of data, but their SMART systems tried to compensate by moving data from faulty flash sectors.
Two of the drives – the Kingston HyperX 3K and the Samsung’s 840 Pro – managed to write two petabytes of data without showing signs of stress. It is estimated that the average computer user will write approximately two terabytes of data a year, so to reach two petabytes of use would take over one thousand years.
Though an informal test on a small selection of drives, the results support the claim that SSDs are more resilient and reliable than their hard disk counterparts.
Source: Engadget
A thousand years? It’s debatable but I have no doubt they are able to last a very long time. As a system builder these days I’ve installed lots of SSD’s over the years of all makes and sizes and of all the components installed in a system I’ve found SSD’s and RAM to have to lowest failure rates. HDD’s often kick the bucket though, usually having the highest failure rates of all the components.