Hard drives are fundamentally different from SSDs. SSDs can die in one of two ways. In this article, we will explain the difference about how SSDs can die and how you can check if yours still have plenty of life.
The major difference between SSDs and hard drives is this: The area of a hard drive that can hold data can can be rewritten as many times as is needed, and will always be usable as long as the drive is functioning (bad sectors aside). This is not the case with SSDs: Each cell that holds data can only be written to, or programmed, a finite number of times before it is effectively dead. That’s because every time a write operation needs to be performed, any data in the cell has to be erased before it’s used. This process of writing/erasing/rewriting essentially causes wear and tear on the cells and erosion of the insulator between cells. Eventually individual cells can no longer hold a charge.
