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At what percentage remaining should you replace an SSD?

Format _C:

Format _C:

Supreme [H]ardness
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I assume I have nothing to worry about yet but as the title states, I have a 2TB SSD that I got pre price apocalypse and according to Crystal Disk Info it has 90% Of life remaining.

It was first used as an OS and data (Windows 11 with two partitions) drive in my old laptop (Dell Latitude 5511) so that is probably the reason for the high write count as well as I accidently deleted the wrong partition (Luckily I had a backup that was still 98% current) when I went to use it as a data drive in my HP EliteDesk 800 G6 Desktop Mini I now have a separate drive dedicated to the OS as that PC has two M.2 NVMe slots!

So when should I start getting concerned that this SSD is going to fail on me?

Crystal Disk Info showing the SSD in question
CDI_SSD_Life.jpg


Pre Price apocalypse Amazon order details
Order-Details_2026-08-27.jpg
 
Does anyone have a 2TB NVMe with DRAM that you can gift me LoL!
 
mwroobel said:
Once it drops below 20% move it to a less active role. Keep in mind that a drive at 0% could last another 10 years, and a drive at 100% can fail the same day. It is simply a best guess by the software based upon your usage.
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+1

I have a 2TB SN770 with 95+ health die on me last week. Bought it used and WD SN check shows "not found contact WD." 🤷‍♂️
 
kyang357 said:
Bought it used and WD SN check shows "not found contact WD."
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Damn that sucks dude! :mad:

Maybe it was already a warranty replacement that was sold to you or perhaps it was an OEM only channel drive?

With those you are supposed to contact the OEM (Dell HP Lenovo Acer ETC) and Western Digital will not warranty the drive or perhaps the Serial Number was typed incorrectly?

I have a barcode scanner so I can scan the barcode on the drive to so no chance of a typo, that is unless I scan the wrong barcode on the drive LoL either way that is a sucky situation! :(
 
Format _C: said:
With those you are supposed to contact the OEM (Dell HP Lenovo Acer ETC) and Western Digital will not warranty the drive or perhaps the Serial Number was typed incorrectly?
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It's correct, I think it's from an system integrator. I might be wrong but I don't think OEM uses retail drives.
 
Format _C: said:
it has 90% Of life remaining.
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It's trash. Send it to me for disposal ;)

Of all the SSDs I've had trouble with, none showed very much info in SMART, certainly the lifetime remaining was never low. I did have one or two that had throughput problems while they were doing reallocation ... they'd probably have been fine if we let them settle down, but it was in managed hosting and they were unusable while it was happening, so we got them swapped for drives that we liked better.
 
I would caution against taking the percentage indicator too literally. It's based on estimates that were made when the drive was new, and that doesn't always align with how long the NAND lasts in practice. And that's assuming that the estimates were made in good faith rather than intentionally inflated just to sell more drives. You definitely can't just assume that you are good to go until it gets down to 0% or whatever. I've had many drives die when they are still in the ~70% range. I'd say that the only thing the percentage indicator is really good for is getting an idea of short-term wear. Like, if it's dropping 1% every week that's obviously bad and you should probably re-evaluate how you are using the drive. It's also useful to check a new drive. If you buy a "new" drive and it's already below 100%, that's a problem obviously.

Also, having an understanding of the drive you are dealing with should help you better understand the risk involved.

Is it using MLC? TLC? QLC? (MLC>TLC>QLC)
Does it have a DRAM cache? (helps endurance)
Does it have an SLC cache? (helps endurance)
How big is the drive? (larger drives have more endurance)

So on one end of the spectrum you could have a large-capacity enterprise drive using MLC with both a DRAM and SLC cache that will pretty much last forever no matter how much you beat up the drive. On the other end of the spectrum you could have a small QLC drive with no DRAM or SLC cache that you could wear out in a week with the wrong workload.

You can often find reasonably good deals on older used enterprise drives. I'd recommend using one as a secondary drive, and offloading write-intensive workloads to that drive when possible. For example, I have a 2TB Samsung enterprise drive that I run my VMs on and use to compile ISOs, etc, so I don't put needless wear on my expensive 4TB Samsung 990 Pro. The enterprise drive is at 116TB writes but still at 98%
 
Format _C: said:
I assume I have nothing to worry about yet but as the title states, I have a 2TB SSD that I got pre price apocalypse and according to Crystal Disk Info it has 90% Of life remaining.
Click to expand...
I would only replace SSD for these reasons:
  • SSD dies
  • SSD shows read/write failures during operation
  • I upgrade to different model and the drive goes to another machine
Arbitrary percentage lifetime indicator is not one of these reasons.
 
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