TBW / SSD Lifespan Calculator
Find out how long your SSD should really last. Enter capacity, rated TBW and daily writes to see the lifespan in years, plus an honest take on real endurance versus marketing numbers.
If unknown, a typical 512 GB drive is rated around 274 TBW (≈0.3 DWPD over 5 years).
Estimated time until rated TBW is reached.
Bar shows how much of the rated TBW you have already written.
Honest note: consumer SSDs usually far outlast their rated TBW. Rated TBW is a conservative warranty figure, not a hard wall. NAND endurance ratings are deliberately cautious, and TRIM plus over-provisioning spread wear evenly. In practice most SSDs fail from controller faults, firmware bugs or power issues, not flash wear. Real endurance often reaches several times the marketing TBW before any cell exhaustion.
What is TBW?
TBW, or Terabytes Written, is the cornerstone of SSD endurance ratings under the JEDEC standard. It tells you how much data the manufacturer guarantees you can write before the warranty ends. It is derived from NAND program/erase cycles, the drive capacity and the workload assumed during testing. Read our TBW and JEDEC analysis.
How long does an SSD really last?
In real life consumer SSDs almost always exceed their rated TBW by a wide margin. Endurance tests have pushed drives to several times the marketing figure before any cell exhaustion. NAND endurance ratings are deliberately conservative, and features like TRIM and over-provisioning spread writes evenly so no single block wears out early. The honest takeaway: wear is rarely what ends an SSD's life. Compare HDD and SSD lifespan with Backblaze data.
Signs of SSD failure
Watch for files that vanish or become corrupt, frequent freezes, drives that turn read-only, or a disk that disappears from the BIOS. These often point to controller faults, firmware bugs or power problems rather than flash wear. If you see them, stop writing and back up at once. When a drive becomes unreadable, professional recovery is the safest path. See our SSD data recovery service.
Frequently asked questions
What is TBW?
TBW (Terabytes Written) is the total amount of data a manufacturer warrants you can write to an SSD over its lifetime. A 1 TB drive rated at 600 TBW is warranted for 600 terabytes of writes.
What TBW value should I look for?
For everyday use, a rating of roughly 0.3 DWPD (drive writes per day) over five years is typical and plenty. Heavy editing, databases or caching benefit from higher TBW or endurance-focused drives.
How long does an SSD last?
Under normal home or office use, a consumer SSD commonly lasts ten years or more, often far beyond its rated TBW. Most drives are replaced for capacity, not because flash wore out.
What happens when the TBW limit is reached?
Reaching rated TBW does not mean instant failure. The warranty ends, but the drive usually keeps working. Over time wear levelling runs out of spare blocks and the drive may switch to read-only or show errors, at which point you should back up immediately.