NVME myths and recommendations

[mrk]

Not sure how reliable it is, SSD life doesn't even detect my NVMe drives

Stick to tried and tested tools, CrystalDiskInfo.

 

[bulldog147]

Yes get a drive like a 2TB Samsung 970 980 or 990 pro.

They have like 1500TBW+.

I don't trust Samsung on 1500TBW+

 

[Raiden85]

I don't trust Samsung on 1500TBW+

Way back in 2014 two drives reached 2PB so as long as the drives don't fail I'd expect them to exceed 1500TBW easily. Really need someone to test modern drives on this and see how long they make it these days.

Two SSDs survive after more than 2 petabytes of write tests

The Tech Report has been abusing six SSDs with constant write tests for more than a year. Two of them are still alive.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Phil2008]

I have had a samsung 840 pro 120gb for 8yrs and the wear level has only dropped to 80% without any speed loss, but I have just upgraded to a 500gb 970 EVO now.. I only use SSD for the boot drive as I only really need windows nice and snappy, but I do have a fairly fast mechanical harddrive for my downloads, games etc though.
But I always either "secure erase" or "sanitize" a ssd, never format before restoring or installing windows

 

[EsaT]

Is there a sweet spot for NVME longevity and on the other end of that, what drives or technologies are the best to lookout for with my use case?

While there's no absolutee guarantee for any single individual SSD, TBW specification is measure of how much writes drive has been calculated to take for certain amount of wear/remaining life.
That's also where manufacturer's warranty ends no matter the age... Warranty term they hide into small print.

Best TBWs in consumer level are 1800TB for 1TB drives and 3600TB for 2TB of some Phison controller based drives like Seagate Firecuda 520 and Team Group Z440.

 

[EsaT]

But MLC NAND has far greater endurance than TLC or QLC.

With its big transistors modern 3D TLC is equal to old planar MLC.
More likely better than the last smallest transistor planar MLCs, which started approaching the edge of cliff.

Way back in 2014 two drives reached 2PB so as long as the drives don't fail I'd expect them to exceed 1500TBW easily. Really need someone to test modern drives on this and see how long they make it these days.

Two SSDs survive after more than 2 petabytes of write tests

The Tech Report has been abusing six SSDs with constant write tests for more than a year. Two of them are still alive.

www.pcgamer.com

Would have been actually usefull test, if they had bothered to power equipment down for say 10 days to two weeks to see that data still stayed on the drive without power...

Even volatile memory holds data endlessly if it isn't powered down, because data is constantly refreshed.
And Flash memory controllers basically do same thing, if they notice raw values of cells approaching some set degradation limits.