Did this ever happen to you?
You wake up, boot your computer, go grab a cup of coffee— only to return to your computer
stating that it can’t find an OS?
It looks like the SSD just died.
Why? Why? Why?
Could you have been ignoring your SSD’s health?
Well, since it's time to buy a new one, here are some tips on how to maintain your SSD
health and keep that baby lasting a long time.
This is DIY in 5!
Hello everyone, my name is Trisha Hershberger and you are watching DIY in 5, the show where
we break down tech into easily digestible bites so that you feel comfortable DIY-ing your own stuff.
Today we are talking SSDs and how to keep ’em going as long as possible.
If today’s video helps you, please consider liking this video, subbing to this channel
and ringing that bell so you don’t miss out on any future tech tips.
SSDs - or solid-state drives - are more reliable and durable than mechanical HDDs
because they don’t have any moving parts.
Unfortunately, when people hear this and the fact that they can withstand accidental drops,
they assume that they will last forever.
That is not the case.
The architecture of the NAND cells that store data in SSDs does put a limit on write endurance.
The flash memory cells can only be programmed and erased a limited number of times.
This will vary based on the quality of the drive you’ve purchased
and how you take care of it,
so let’s go over some of the things that we can do to maximize our drive’s life expectancy.
For starters, as with anything in a PC, heat is the enemy of performance,
so it’s best to avoid extreme temperatures, especially over extended periods.
Leaving an SSD in a storage unit all summer long in Arizona will not be good for the the drive.
The winter in Minnesota will not do it any favors either.
In addition to temperature, power outages can wreak havoc
with just about any piece of computer equipment, and SSDs are no exception.
If the power to a drive cuts out during a write cycle,
you could lose the data you're writing, at best, or lose the drive altogether, at worst.
Researchers published a study in 2013 showing that major data corruption could happen after a power outage,
and there have been more than a few other examples of SSD data loss following a power outage since then.
So, how can you prevent power cuts to your solid-state drive?
An uninterruptible power supply, or UPS, is the simplest and easiest solution.
A UPS is like a surge protector with a big battery that you plug your devices into.
If the power goes out, the battery will provide enough power for you to finish your write cycle
and properly shut down your computer to avoid corruption.
Power surges could potentially damage your drive too,
and while some UPSs also have surge protecting benefits,
having a surge protector between your computer and the wall outlet is never a bad idea.
Now that we’ve got our SSD protected, what about maintenance?
It's a good idea to keep as much free space available on your SSD as possible.
And the reason for this has to do with a technology called wear leveling.
This basically causes your SSD to write equally to all of its available space
which keeps storage cells in NAND from wearing out faster than other cells.
There's just one problem: wear leveling can only be used on cells that are free.
If a cell in your drive is being used for long-term storage,
the drive is forced to reuse other cells when it needs more space,
which increases the read-write cycles on those cells wearing them out faster.
By deleting unused files on your computer or moving them to an external hard drive for long-term storage,
you open up as much of the storage on your drive as possible for wear leveling.
Ok, protection check, maintenance check - what about monitoring just to be extra cautious?
SMART stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology.
It is a system built into most modern hard drives and SSDs
and is designed to monitor the status of your drive and identify issues that need to be fixed.
SMART is extremely useful for monitoring the health of your SSD,
and for reporting on a variety of attributes, such as
drive life-remaining, temperature, lifetime host reads/writes, power-on hours,
and even how many unexpected power losses have been recorded by the SSD.
For SATA SSDs, SMART reporting isn’t standardized.
Drive manufacturers take their own approach to SMART monitoring,
but generally, they measure similar health and status attributes.
SMART reporting is standardized for NVMe SSDs.
However, there is minimal data defined so manufactures may augment the data
by implementing vendor unique log pages containing extra proprietary data.
Kingston Technology SSDs can be monitored using the Kingston SSD Manager (KSM).
KSM offers the ability to do things like monitor your drive’s health, status and disk usage,
view drive identification data, and export detailed drive health and status reports,
update firmware, securely erase data and more.
Other tips? Don’t ignore updates.
Use KSM to update drive firmware and be sure to keep device drivers and the system BIOS up to date as well.
Remember to shut down your computer properly whenever possible and never force a shutdown.
Hopefully, your next morning cup of joe at home
is not followed by you screaming, “oh no!!!”
Remember: protect, maintain, monitor.
SMART, right?
As always, my name is Trisha Hershberger and
I’ll see you next time with more DIY in 5.