Playstation 5 soldered 825 GB SSD puts a hard limit on the lifespan of each retail unit

[John kern]

So just a thought here if can take your example here of the 1tb has a life span of 600tb, and I going to guess the life years of a ps5 is 5 years but we all know it will be longer, let's do the same of will the ps5 sad we can assume 5gb for saved data cause every game has to use save data, but I filled my 2 TB hard drive well within the first year of owning a PS4, I can not only thing the hard drive to be it's major flaw cause well after one normally fills a hard drive we just make enough room for the next game so I see the SSD failing quick once year one is up unless you can get a usb harddrive and can deal with the slow loadspeeds

[Rusty9000]

This is nonsense hysteria. I have several 120GB intel SSDs that are still going strong that are over 10 years old.
They've been reformatted and filled and emptied more times than I can count. Only SSDs I've ever seen fail where the gen1 OCZs that had serious controller faults and general instability. Any name brand SSD made in the last year will outlive you unless it's being used in a data center for heavy database usage. It's more likely the CPU or motherboard will fail prior to the SSD. No one is going to empty and refill an 800GB SSD a thousand plus times even over the course of 10 years on a PS5.

[Rusty9000]

The way the test ssds gives a very inaccurate perception of their longevity. There isn't currently a better way, but most ssds far out-live their expected write count.

They tend to test them by repeatedly writing until they fail. That's an inaccurate representation of actual useage. You're not going to continually write and rewrite 600tb of data on an ssd in a single sitting. This tends to produce excess heat which is typically what kills electronics in general. Worst case data at least tends to be useful though.

The spacing of the memory modules and controller is far greater than you'd tend to see on a typical m.2. This should allow for more stable thermals even under periods of extended writing.

As someone who uses liquid metal, I'd be far more worried about its long term application. Typically you'll see a galvanic reaction with copper and nickel. You'll see the hard metal seeming to absorb the liquid and leave behind a stain and crusty residue the first couple of applications. Which means the liquid metal can have a very short life span of a few months to a year initially. I'm a fan of how they decided to prevent it from bleeding, but nothing was said about what was done to extend its usefullness past a year, let alone 6-7 years. And few people are comfortable applying it themselves, for a good reason.

Finally, someone who actually knows what they hell they are talking about. People don't understand that MTTF means that, the mean time between failure in the most extreme cases. People also forget that the controllers on even old SSDs do a lot of magic in the background to make certain that the NAND modules age evenly. In the event that an individual module fails or goes bad/sees heavy errors, the SSD controller can mark that unit unusable and avoid writing to it so it will continue to function normally. The DDR memory will likely fail before the SSD does on the PS5 even in extreme cases.

[Phil Gibson]

It seems people don't know much about SSDs.  The 600 TBW figure assumes the drive is EMPTY.  The methods used to keep SSD sector usage evenly only works on unused parts of the storage.  As you fill up the drive with data the TBW drops.  If you only leave 10 Gb free on this drive you end up with roughly 7.5 TBW.  That can go by really fast since the OS is constantly writing temporary data to the drive for paging.  Since most console owners have never used anything with an SSD they won't know you should always leave at least 10% free.  With this drive already being small now you need to subtract 82.5 Gb from max capacity in order to keep the irreplaceable SSD healthy.

[Mikeallo]

Here are my pet peeves:
1. Replaceability - let's just hope that Sony didn't pull a RED with storage and default SSD has no proprietary code on the chip. In RED mini mag storage, in the enclosure you have regular SSD, but with code of their own making, which makes it impossible to replace the storage outside of buying new mini mag. If that may be the case here ("protection of customers from low quality replacements"), then it may be a bad experience for users.
2. Whole trim, over provisioning, and MTBF - it's an issue as soon as you start recording video. Which in this case a lot will do. This may wear out SSD rather quickly. As an example, 825GB SSD with 600TBW, after first game installed leaves you with ~400GB and 300TBW for free part. Another game will shave free storage to ~100GB and ~75TBW. Assumed 50MBps capture (avg of what smartphones record at 4K) results in 22GB per hour. This means up to 5h of recording will fit at once, and such single session will shave the TBW by said 100GB (about 1/1000th of original value). It's 3 years for avid gamer to averaged failure time.
3. Performance drop at near-full capacity. Including read speeds(which are crucial now for PS5). From my limited tests and literal few benchmark I could find, you can expect about or even less than 20% of original speed at near-full capacity (TLC drives). Hope this will be enough to load assets quickly enough for uninterrupted gameplay.

[Mike M.]

The article fails to mention that the PS5 and Xbox Series X both have soldered SSDs. If one has the problem both have the problem. The writers must be Xbox fan boys trying to put out negative info on the PS5 since their article forgets to mention Xbox Series X will have the same problem if there's a problem at all.

[Nicolae]

SSDs never die, this will never be an issue. The first SSDs, long time ago, had a shorter life, but the modern ones last decades with normal usage! The CPU in PS5, and especially its liquid metal paste are more likely to fail earlier than the SSD.

The regular HDs don't last long on the other hand. Almost every portable USB HD I've ever owned (started from 20 GB to 2 TB) have died eventually, with below average usage.

Ssd's never die? HD's die????? The heck have you been smoking on? It's the complete opposite you twat

[xboxengineer]

The article fails to mention that the PS5 and Xbox Series X both have soldered SSDs. If one has the problem both have the problem. The writers must be Xbox fan boys trying to put out negative info on the PS5 since their article forgets to mention Xbox Series X will have the same problem if there's a problem at all.

Actually, the Xbox Series X internal SSD is not soldered directly to the motherboard. It uses a proprietary size and it does have specific mounting hardware, but it can be removed/replaced if it fails.

[DAVOD]

INTERNAL SSD = TH58TEG0T24BGA4C = 3D TLC  BICS 4 "MAYBE 96LAYER"

TOSHIBA BICS MUCH SAFER THAN OTHER

MICRON  INTEL B16,B17,B27,B27B.B48 .VERY BAD LIFE. USE HIGHT ECC. MUCH HIGHT RISK
ALSO HYNIX 3D TLC IS LOW LIFE
SAMSUNG IS GOOD BUT EXPENSIVE


WE MUST SEE .BUT KNOW THIS TLC P/E IS LOW
AFTER 4 YEARS OF WRITE AND READ FAIL RATE TELL US TRUE

[NikoB]

I wonder why everyone is surprised by planned aging? After all, they themselves agreed to this by purchasing such a product. And everything was clear from the beginning.