Warning signs that tell if your SSD is failing in Windows 10

The IT world is slowly but surely moving away from hard drives (HDD) to Solid-State Drives (SSDs), and there’s a good chance that Xbox One Series X and PlayStation 5 can cause a huge change.

How to know if SSD fails in Windows 10

These consoles make SSDs an integral part of the gaming experience, which means that PC gamers will want to get into the action.

Now, although we like the speed advantage that SSDs bring to the table, they have a lower life expectancy compared to hard drives. You see, an SSD should continue to work for five to seven years, but things could go wrong before that, so be prepared for the worst.

In this article, we will cover the following topics:

1. What Makes an SSD Fail
2. How to check if your SSD is healthy
3. Computer crashes regularly
4. Unable to read or write files
5. The reader becomes read-only
6. Possible need to repair the file system
7. Errors caused by bad blocks

Let’s see this from a more detailed point of view.

1]What Makes an SSD Fail

It should be noted that SSDs do not fail in the same way as HDDs, that is to say that they are not mechanical, that is to say without moving parts. However, we must point out that SSDs all tend to depend a lot on power supplies and capacitors, so these things are vulnerable to malfunctions.

For example, in the event of a power failure or power surge in the home, the SSD may stop working properly. Additionally, if an SSD fails, users may need to check for file corruption, even if the device has not failed 100%.

In addition, SSDs have limited read / write cycles, then there will come a time when they will fail out of nowhere. Now the new SSDs have longer read / write cycles, making them perfect for newcomers.

If you are unable to purchase a new SSD, we do not recommend that you purchase one unless you know its full history.

2]How to check if your SSD is healthy

Knowing if an SSD is going bad is not as easy as compared to a conventional mechanical drive. You see, when a mechanical drive comes to an end, the device makes a lot of noise. You will not get it from an SSD because of the lack of moving parts, as shown above.

So what are the options? Well, we’d like to recommend CrystalDiskMark, a free tool that silently monitors your SSD in the background.

3]Computer crashes regularly

Do you experience frequent crashes? That doesn’t always mean a problem with Windows 10, but rather the SSD. If you can’t buy a new drive immediately, back up your data and reinstall Windows.

Lily: Windows has detected a hard drive problem.

4]Unable to read or write files

Another sign that your SSD is preparing to abandon the ghost is that it is having trouble reading or writing files. If the system detects a bad block while trying to write a file, the reader can refuse to write the data. The same applies if there is a bad block when reading a file. The system will simply refuse to read.

5]The reader becomes read-only

At some point, your SSD may refuse to allow you to initiate operations that write data to the disk. This is not a common phenomenon, but it does happen. When this happens, the drive becomes read-only and that’s a good thing because you will be able to recover your data.

After recovering your data, erase the SSD and destroy it before throwing it in the trash.

6]Possible need to repair the file system

If you do not shut down your computer properly, it is likely that you will encounter an error stating that your PC needs to be repaired. This could be a sure sign that your SSD is suffering from some faulty crashes and could be coming to an end.

Again, it may not be properly connected, so open your desktop or laptop computer to see if everything is aligned properly.

Now, in most cases, the operating system will offer an option to repair the drive. When the error appears in Windows 10, the system will display a prompt asking the owner to run a scan to repair, among other things, bad sectors.

Keep in mind that you may lose some data during the repair process. This doesn’t happen often enough, but you should still be aware.

7]Errors caused by bad blocks

There are times when your SSD does not work due to bad blocks. This is similar to bad sectors on hard drives. Bad blocks tend to occur when the computer tries to save or read files, but in the process it takes a long time to do so.

In the end, the computer gives up and displays an error message. One way to resolve this problem is to use the hard drive integrity tool to check for physical problems. If things went wrong, just save your content and go out and find a replacement drive.