So, I have Crucial MX500 SSD, and on their spec sheet, the SSD Endurance TBW is 180TB

Crystal Disk Info says the health is at 33% Health, despite Total Host Writes being 54039 GB (30% of specified SSD endurance TBW of 180TB)


So is their specified endurance wrong, is the Total Host Writes data in Crystal Disk Info misleading or wrong, or is there more things that go into determining the “health” of an SSD besides Total Bytes Written? Or could it be that I mistreated the SSD causing its health to get worse?

  • @[email protected]
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    63 days ago

    Write endurance is based on the entire drive. If you had the drive mostly full, fully formatted with no overprovisioning, and kept using a small portion of the drive, it matches your expected lifespan. You maybe did a little better than expected.

    • WistfulOP
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      13 days ago

      Yeah, thats pretty much how I used it, it’s almost always almost full haha.
      So what are some things you can do to make sure your SSD lasts longer?

      • @[email protected]
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        2 days ago

        You can leave 10% of the drive unformatted. A good drive will move rarely written cells data to high use locations. You could also reformat every couple years and instal based on the least changing stuff first. Next time you buy an ssd stay away from qlc or plc as they have less lifetime. Tlc is about as good as you can get now.

        For now, I would retire that drive and use it for games you don’t uninstall.

  • Suzune
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    13 days ago

    Can you try to get smartmontools and show the output of smartctl? Health could be a combination of multiple values.

    • WistfulOP
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      23 days ago
      smartctl 7.4 2023-08-01 r5530 [x86_64-w64-mingw32-w10-1809] (sf-7.4-1)
      Copyright (C) 2002-23, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
      
      === START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
      Model Family:     Crucial/Micron Client SSDs
      Device Model:     CT500MX500SSD1
      Serial Number:    1947E228658A
      LU WWN Device Id: 5 00a075 1e228658a
      Firmware Version: M3CR023
      User Capacity:    500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
      Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
      Rotation Rate:    Solid State Device
      Form Factor:      2.5 inches
      TRIM Command:     Available
      Device is:        In smartctl database 7.3/5528
      ATA Version is:   ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 5
      SATA Version is:  SATA 3.3, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
      Local Time is:    Tue Dec 24 19:50:16 2024 CEST
      SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
      SMART support is: Enabled
      
      === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
      SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
      
      General SMART Values:
      Offline data collection status:  (0x80) Offline data collection activity
                                              was never started.
                                              Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
      Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
                                              without error or no self-test has ever
                                              been run.
      Total time to complete Offline
      data collection:                (    0) seconds.
      Offline data collection
      capabilities:                    (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                              Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                                              Suspend Offline collection upon new
                                              command.
                                              Offline surface scan supported.
                                              Self-test supported.
                                              Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                              Selective Self-test supported.
      SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                              power-saving mode.
                                              Supports SMART auto save timer.
      Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                                              General Purpose Logging supported.
      Short self-test routine
      recommended polling time:        (   2) minutes.
      Extended self-test routine
      recommended polling time:        (  30) minutes.
      Conveyance self-test routine
      recommended polling time:        (   2) minutes.
      SCT capabilities:              (0x0031) SCT Status supported.
                                              SCT Feature Control supported.
                                              SCT Data Table supported.
      
      SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
      Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
      ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
        1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   100   100   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       52
        5 Reallocate_NAND_Blk_Cnt 0x0032   100   100   010    Old_age   Always       -       1
        9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       10304
       12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       2050
      171 Program_Fail_Count      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
      172 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
      173 Ave_Block-Erase_Count   0x0032   033   033   000    Old_age   Always       -       1007
      174 Unexpect_Power_Loss_Ct  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       84
      180 Unused_Reserve_NAND_Blk 0x0033   000   000   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       35
      183 SATA_Interfac_Downshift 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
      184 Error_Correction_Count  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
      187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
      194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   060   036   000    Old_age   Always       -       40 (Min/Max 0/64)
      196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
      197 Current_Pending_ECC_Cnt 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
      198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
      199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
      202 Percent_Lifetime_Remain 0x0030   033   033   001    Old_age   Offline      -       67
      206 Write_Error_Rate        0x000e   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
      210 Success_RAIN_Recov_Cnt  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       52
      246 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       113337679297
      247 Host_Program_Page_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1924011672
      248 FTL_Program_Page_Count  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       13464223382
      
      SMART Error Log Version: 1
      No Errors Logged
      
      SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
      No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]
      
      SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
       SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
          1        0        0  Not_testing
          2        0        0  Not_testing
          3        0        0  Not_testing
          4        0        0  Not_testing
          5        0        0  Completed [00% left] (0-65535)
      Selective self-test flags (0x0):
        After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
      If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.
      
      The above only provides legacy SMART information - try 'smartctl -x' for more
      
      • Suzune
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        52 days ago

        Ok. Thanks. The drive looks fine. The 33% health seems to come from the average block erase count. This is the most expensive operation on SSDs.

        Why does it increase faster? Because blocks are written partially. Worst case is that if you write 1 Byte to a block and then 1 Byte into same block, it would need 1 block erase (usually a block is 128 kB, not 4 kB like HDDs have).

        Your SSD is very busy. You should review what is going on on your system.

      • comador
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        2 days ago

        Attribute 202 (Percent Lifetime Remaining) is a good indicator of ssd life remaining. It’s a percentage based system where 100 = 100% ala new and 0 = 0% ala “It’s dead”.

        Keep an eye on that attribute and number as it decreases. Consider making adjustments on writes to this drive so you can prolong its eventual 0 dead result and as always: make backups.