Solid state drives are common in desktops and laptops across all performance levels.
These drives are popular due to their superior read and write speeds, and physical durability, compared to hard disk drives.
However, using NAND flash memory as a storage solution does have disadvantages.
Every time you write data to an SSD, its lifespan decreases slightly.
While most modern SSDs will last relatively long, you should avoid certain tasks and unnecessary writes to storage.
Below are several ways to extend the lifespan of your SSD.
Don’t Defrag
Defragmenting a hard disk drive is a good way to improve storage performance, but this does not apply to SSDs.
You never need to defragment an SSD and the defragmentation process will rapidly write to the drive, unnecessarily reducing its lifespan.
Ensure you have scheduled defragmentation disabled for your SSD.
Disable SuperFetch
SuperFetch is a Windows service which preloads frequently-accessed files into memory for better performance.
However, this increased storage access speed is not necessary when using an SSD and only reduces the drive’s lifespan by constantly performing write operations.
To disable SuperFetch:
- Run Command Prompt
- Execute “services.msc”
- Find SuperFetch and disable the service
Disable Hibernation
If you are using Windows 7 or earlier operating system, ensure the Hibernation function is disabled.
This is different to sleep mode, which keeps hardware powered but saves energy.
Hibernation shuts down hardware and writes the content of your RAM to the system storage drive, which could mean it is unnecessarily writing to your SSD.
Hibernation is disabled by default in Windows 8 and Windows 10.
No Benchmarking
While you may run an initial benchmark test on your new SSD, avoid running benchmark tests unnecessarily – as it is a read/write-intensive process.
Virtual Memory
Virtual Memory or a page file refers to an amount of storage space allocated for use as virtual RAM.
This dedicated storage can suffer a lot of writing and overwriting, which wears out an SSD.
If you have under 8GB of RAM or use a lot of memory-intensive programs, it is recommended you change your page file under Advanced System Settings in Windows.
