SSD Endurance & Lifespan Calculator (TBW, DWPD & Years Left)
How long will an SSD last? From its rated terabytes written (TBW) or DWPD, its capacity and your daily writes — with write amplification — get the projected years of life, the drive-writes-per-day equivalent, how much endurance the drive has already used from its SMART data, the wear from heavy workloads like video editing, databases or Chia plotting, and when to plan a replacement.
How it works
years = TBW × 1000 ÷ (daily host GB × write amplification) ÷ 365 · DWPD = TBW × 1000 ÷ capacity GB ÷ (365 × warranty years) · TBW from DWPD = DWPD × capacity ÷ 1000 × 365 × years · % used = host TB written × WAF ÷ TBW
Flash memory wears out a little with every erase, so manufacturers rate a solid-state drive for a total quantity of writes — terabytes written for consumer drives, or drive-writes-per-day over the warranty for enterprise ones — and how long that lasts is simply the rating divided by how much is written each day. The catch is that the drive itself writes more than the host asks, because data is shuffled during garbage collection and small writes occupy whole pages, so a write-amplification factor inflates the daily figure. For ordinary desktop use the answer runs to decades, which is why endurance is rarely the real limit on a drive's life, while scratch disks and databases can consume a rating within the warranty.
Worked example
A 1 TB drive rated 600 TBW over 5 years (0.33 DWPD) writing 40 GB a day with a 1.5 write-amplification factor consumes 60 GB of flash daily — about 27 years of endurance. Having written 18 TB in 1.5 years (≈ 33 GB/day observed) it has used about 4.5% of its rating and has roughly 26 years left; only a workload above about 219 GB/day would exhaust the rating inside the warranty.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find TBW and my host writes?
TBW is on the manufacturer's spec sheet (often per capacity). Host writes and "Percentage Used" are SMART attributes shown by CrystalDiskInfo, smartctl, the vendor's tool (Samsung Magician, WD Dashboard) or macOS/Linux NVMe utilities.
Does reading wear an SSD?
Not meaningfully — reads cause tiny disturb effects the controller manages with occasional rewrites. Writes and erases are what count, so game libraries and media archives that are mostly read last essentially forever on endurance terms.
Related calculators
Game mechanics, hardware figures and platform rates change with patches, firmware and contracts — values here reflect commonly published figures at the time of writing. Check the current game version, your drive's datasheet or your distributor's statement for exact numbers.