All your questions answered! An SSD Q&A with the Samsung Electronics DS Division

The world of SSDs (Solid State Drives) can be a confusing one to understand. We recently asked followers of the Samsung Semiconstory official Facebook page to ask us some questions they’ve ‘always had about SSDs, but never asked.’ From the many, many questions we received, we picked out a few we felt were most important. Your questions were answered by our professionals in the Memory Business Division at Samsung Electronics Device Solutions. Keep scrolling for some must-know facts about SSDs. How long does an SSD last? When should I switch mine out?

The SSD in your PC is subject to daily use, just like your smart phone. Ever wonder how long SSDs are designed to last? Many of you asked how long SSDs last, when best to replace them, and about user precautions. The warranty period of an SSD should give you a pretty good idea of the SSDs life. While the official warranty period varies from product to product, it’s usually 3, 5, or 10 years. The exact lifetime of an SSD varies depending on PC usage, so it’s hard to generalize. For Samsung Electronics SSDs, we provide the ‘Magician’ software to allow users to see how much life their SSDs have left. Magician indicates the current state of your SSD as good, average, or critical. A suite of SSD optimization options are also provided to optimize performance, maximize capacity, or improve reliability. Recently newly upgraded, ‘Magician 6’ has features an intuitive user interface for added user convenience and adds a host of features to reset password-locked drives or detect and fix errors preemptively. If you’re looking to move data in your outgoing SSD or HDD to a new SSD drive, Samsung Data Migration is a simple solution for exactly this purpose. The software is available for download by any Samsung SSD user at the Samsung.com website. ▶ Download Samsung Electronics SSD software Samsung Electronics SSD, EVO? PRO? Which do I get?

Samsung Electronics has two lines of SSD: EVO and PRO. Many of our followers wanted to know the difference between the two lines. The most obvious difference is that the PRO and EVO lines target different users. PRO is suitable for experts who need the highest possible performance, while EVO is more suited to general users. Both lineups guarantee best-on-interface performance and high guaranteed TBW (TeraBytes Written). TBW is a numerical value indicating the lifespan of an SSD product, showing how much data the drive can record in a given period of time. For example, if a drive is guaranteed to last 10 years while performing 100GB of writes per day, its TBW would be 365TBW (100GB x 365 days x 10 years). TBW figures and warranty periods for all Samsung Electronics SSDs are available online for your reference in selecting the right drive to suit your PC usage patterns. What should I be looking for in an SSD?

First and foremost, your new SSD needs to have specs compatible with your computer. But there are a number of other important considerations for anyone trying to choose an SSD. The SSD is a medium for data storage, and it’s important to make sure you’re selecting a reliable brand and a product whose performance is suited to your usage patterns. But before that, your new drive needs to have the right ‘interface’ and ‘form factor’. No matter how high performance your drive is, it’s no use if it won’t work with your PC. SSDs communicate with your CPU using a language called PCI. Interfaces that use the PCI language include ‘SATA’ and ‘NVMe’. A laptop supporting NVMe can’t accommodate SATA SSDs, so it would be wise to check that your PC supports the interface of the SSD you’re about to buy. For information on the type of interfaces available on your PC, consult the specifications that accompanied your PC or click Device Manager. Form factor has to do with the external appearance of an SSD. The most common form factors for SSDs are 2.5 inch and M.2. While the 2.5 inch SSD form factor conforms to conventional HDD sizes, M.2 SSDs are lighter and slimmer to allow them to fit in today’s slim and lightweight laptops. The easiest way of determining the form factor you need is to unscrew the drive cover on the bottom of your laptop. That’s it for today’s SSD Q&A from our official Facebook page. We hope we’ve answered some questions you’ve always meant to ask, but never gotten around to. Samsung Semiconstory is committed to making semiconductors more accessible for everyone.