The TBW (Terabytes Written) spec of SSD's is interesting. I looked up the spec for Samsung 9100 PRO 2 TB.
It's rated for 1,200 TBW. Meaning the drive is rated for 1,200 terabytes of data being written to it.
I plugged that number into Google AI and it came back with this.
writing 12 terabytes per year would take 100 years to reach 1,200 TBW.
There's 12,000 GB in 12 TB. The SSD stores 2 GB of data.
The drive can be completely filled 6,000 times per year for the next 100 years.
( 12,000 GB ÷ 2 GB = 6,000 )
I find technical specs like this interesting. I personally find these specs hard to believe but Samsung claims to have carried out testing to verify these numbers.
Of course that's only if the SSD doesn't suddenly fail. The specs also claim the SSD can can run for 171 years 24/7, but it only comes with a 5 year warranty.
I'm finding these manufacturer specs harder and harder to believe!
I learned my lesson about backing up important data. The final straw was when my password manager database suddenly became corrupt and I didn't have a backup. There went all my passwords!
I always keep backups now. The 3-2-1 Backup Rule is the gold standard for a backup plan.
Your math is a little out there.
It's a 2TB drive and the endurance is 1200TB, so you can erase the drive at best 600 times before you have reached the endurance level. However taking write amplification into account, even at 1.2 would put it at more like 500 erase cycles.
There is a tremendous amount of grey around this issue, but the testing methodology is kind of off too (the JEDEC testing standard for CONSUMER SSD's). From memory it's something like when the writes are 10 degrees celsius hotter than the storage temperature (40 working/30 storage), how many times you can erase the drive before 3% of the drives lose data after 1 year.
So, what that means to consumers, if you are near the write endurance, what the endurance is telling you is that if you store the drive at 30 degrees for a year there should be about a 3% chance that it will lose data. Most consumers would probably go ??? to that.
I used the word erase because that's actually what causes the degradation, it's not the writes. That's why write amplification is a thing. And a hot write temp and cold storage temp retains data for longer. If you were to take a drive at the endurance level and store it for a year at 30 degrees, it should retain data. I think it was like 10 degrees halves the retention rate, so if you stored it at 40 degrees you'd only expect 6 months...
The enterprise test is even crazier, enterprise drives are only tested to retain data for 3 months.
Zatick_NZ well that's embarrassing. I mixed up 2 TB with 2 GB. Other than that I was doing pretty good!
That model had 2GB of DRAM cache, maybe that's what got you :)
Looked into this a bit more. This seems to be one of the testing methods, seems like they also test under hotter conditions and other forms of stress tests. I would find it quite disturbing if the only test they conducted was a "normal" temperature test before approving devices
Who knows what tests Samsung runs. That's where the greyness comes in, as far as I could find SSD manufacturers were not obligated to test to the JEDEC standard, and they only HAD to test to that standard if they specifically made a claim in their literature that they DID test to that standard. If they didn't test to that standard, I don't know of any other mainstream ones, so what do they test to, the answer is whatever they want...
Samsung generally make a quality product, they have had some really crap firmware on some models that have given issues, but in general if the firmware is good the drives are reliable. The point was more that the endurance rating is probably something very different than most people expect, unless they've read up on how companies arrive at those figures.
Edit: Actually, I did know that Samsung is one of the manufacturers that does test to the JEDEC standard, and their datasheet for this model says as much "documented endurance test results are in compliance with JESD218 Standards.". Lots don't though, and it really blurs things if you're comparing one manufacturer to another.
This was probably my straw, ill look into a more secure long term backup plan after this issue has been resolved. Ill look into the 3-2-1 rule! Thanks
