2

Does a SMART long test do a lot of writes to SSDs and wear them out faster? I think on HDDs it includes write tests that one would like to avoid on SSDs.

For mechanical hard drives there is an answer here but for the long test the answer cites:

Long/extended A longer and more thorough version of the short self-test, scanning the entire disk surface with no time limit. This test usually takes several hours, depending on the read/write speed of the drive and its size.

That does not answer the question for SSDs, as it does not state if there is a write test for each sector involved or not. And the summary

Yes, albeit marginally. Any action that results in mechanical motion is an action that is helping the system die.

Might be different for SSDs, as there is no mechanical load on the SSD, but writing it leads to more wear than writing a HDD.

Giacomo1968
  • 58,727
allo
  • 1,248

1 Answers1

2

Long or extended SMART test reads the 'surface' of a drive (regardless of HDD or SSD) which would not result in any significant wear.

SSDs wear during write operations. Furthermore, if we'd assume the drive is already partially used, say 80% at the FTL layer, such a read / write scan would result in substantial write amplification (resulting in even more wear).