My SSD keeps failing. Are SSD's reliable long term storage?

Question

I bought a Samsung 2TB SSD last year. V-Nand 870 EVo. About once a month it drops off the Windows 11 file explorer and I have to restart so Windows can do a disk fix on startup. My question is basically should I enjoy the speed of SSD's for everyday use but stick to magnetic hard drives for long term storage?

JohnFen · Accepted Answer

I don't use SSDs for anything important, personally, primarily because I've seen so many more failures (often with no warning) than with HDDs. At least when HDDs fail, you usually get warning signs well in advance of the drive ceasing to be functional.But that's just me and my anecdata. Whether SSD or HDD, you need a solid backup process anyway. If you have that, then I'm not sure it makes a lot of actual difference either way.

justsomehnguy · Answer

Define "long term". Aint at the home, but my VERTEX3 is still kicking.And I would repeat it again, you need years of 24/7 writing to hit the claimed DWPD. If your SSD fail in less than 6 months then you got a faulty product in the first place, hard to extrapolate it to the whole tech.

nullindividual · Answer

You can search 'nvme [or ssd] lifetime vs hdd' and get plenty of results to answer your question. [0] TL;DR: SSDs [NVMe] is generally more reliable and/or has a longer lifetime than spinning disk.
With that snark, have you RMA'ed or replaced the SSD? Have you tried the drive in another motherboard or perhaps an external enclosure connected over USB? Have you validated the firmware is up to date? And a brief search for 'samsung 870 bugs' yields a thread on failures of this particular model. [1]
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/five-years-of-data-s...
[1] https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/samsung-870-evo-b...