Solid-state drives have become the default storage choice for modern PCs for their lightning-fast performance, but despite their speed and resilience, they're not invincible. Even the most reliable SSDs still rely on delicate flash memory cells that gradually wear out with use, making longevity a real concern for anyone running read and write intensive software.
The endurance of NAND or RAM-based SSDs still hinges on a finite number of program/erase cycles, and certain types of software can burn through them faster than most users expect. From high-churn data tools to ostensibly harmless utilities, these four software categories and workflows are the biggest, most consistently overlookedSSD lifespan killers.
Disk defragmentation utilities
Great for HDDs, bad for SSDs
Traditionaldisk defragmentation is one of the clearest examples of software that can shorten SSD lifespan. Because SSDs have no mechanical read head, defrag provides no performance benefit, yet third-party tools that forcibly reorganize blocks still generate massive, unnecessary write activity. While modern operating systems avoid this, misconfigured optimizers can burn TBW (Terabytes Written) quietly in the background.
Early third-party utilities, including some Norton versions, had some issues where defragmentation was triggered, causing issues on Windows,according to community forums. Because defragmentation moves large volumes of data, it generates heavy write activity, which is harmful for SSD health.
It is advised to never defragment an SSD, as the process offers no speed benefit and can shorten the drive's lifespan considerably by generating large amounts of unnecessary write activity.
Segment-based download managers
Silent SSD killers
Segmented download utilities, especially BitTorrent clients, grab files in small pieces and rewrite segments as availability changes. All of this shuffling creates a stream of small, scattered drive writes and metadata updates, which can ramp up amplification and feed the exact kind of non-sequential workloads that consumer SSDs dislike. It is a workload that looks light on the surface, but quietly adds up over long sessions.
As QLC (Quad-Level Cell) and other high-density NAND drives become more commonplace, this behavior becomes even tougher on drives.Renee Lab's 2025 NAND management update has noted that QLC drives have lower P/E endurance and really benefit from fewer random writes, which is something torrenting workloads break almost by design.
Synthetic benchmarks and stress testing
SSDs don't take kindly to these if done excessively
While benchmarking tools like CrystalDiskMark and ATTO are totally fine to run in small doses, it can potentially mean trouble for your SSD when you let them run in endless loop or endurance modes. At that point, you're essentially putting your SSD through the kind of torture tests meant for enterprise validation labs, and certainly not for everyday consumer hardware.
Consumer SSDs are engineered for mixed use cases, such as booting, loading games, and file transfers, and not for hours of non-stop, max-throughput read and write processes. Pushing them into extremes can chew a surprisingly large chunk of their lifetime write budget in a short amount of time. Worse still, there's virtually no practical upside to doing this; thebenchmark results don't tell you anything new after the first few runs, while the wear it causes lingers for the rest of the drive's life.
Cryptocurrency plotting
Including Chia and similar workloads
Crypto mining barely touches an SSD, but it is not to be confused with cryptocurrency plotting. Mining, whether done on GPUs or ASICs, mostly stresses compute hardware and generates only minimal disk activity. Crypto plotting, on the other hand, is a completely different workflow used by proof-of-space cryptocurrencies likeChia.Instead of crunching numbers, plotting creates enormous temporary files that must be written, sorted, and rewritten repeatedly, turning the SSD into a workhorse. This kind of workload can produce multiple terabytes of writes per day, pushing a drive through its entire TBW and DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day) ratings for months or weeks rather than years.
SSD manufacturers take this so seriously that several (includingCorsair and Crucial) explicitly exclude crypto-mining and high-write plotting workloads fromwarranty coverage. Others don't disclaim this outright but rely on endurance clauses, meaning once you exceed the rated TBW, the warranty no longer applies. Crypto plotting is one of the fastest ways to wear out a consumer SSDs, and one of the few workloads where even manufacturers won't back if the drive fails.
It's important to understand your drive's endurance for longevity
SSDs deliver incredible speed, but their longevity ultimately comes down to how much data you write to them, and how frequently it's done. The two core metrics that explain it include the Terabytes Written (TBW) and Drive Writes Per Day (DWPD), which measure the total amount of data a drive is rated to handle and how many full-drive writes it can sustain daily, respectively. Seemingly routine tools, such as defragmenters, torrent clients, and looping benchmarks can quietly burn through these limits fast. The good news is that, with a little awareness, most of that wear is entirely preventable.
