5 Common SSD Myths That You Should Stop Believing

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Cold booting a device or waking it from sleep used to take anywhere from 30 seconds to over a minute, and moving a terabyte of data meant looking at up to ten hours transfer time. Both these processes are much faster today, and that's largely because of solid-state drives (SSDs). The shift from HDDs to SSDs didn't happen overnight, however, which means many recommendations for HDDs are being applied to SSDs today — despite the two being fundamentally different technologies.

Many of these common SSD myths are relatively harmless; you won't face any issues by protecting your drive against power outages and blackouts. However, some can lead you to make bad purchases, such as paying more for an SSD where a cheaper HDD would work just as well or accidentally getting an M.2 SATA SSD instead of an NVMe.

Some common SSD misconceptions can also seriously harm your drives, such as removing the sticker on an NVMe or repeatedly defragmenting an SSD. We've listed some of the most common SSD myths still floating around today and explained why you shouldn't believe them, where the misconceptions stem from, and what you risk by continuing to follow them.

There are several differences between NVMe SSDs and a typical SATA SSD or HDD. They're faster and perform better, yes, but they also look different. Many assume the small M.2 "gumstick" form factor to be exclusive to NVMe drives, but that's a common misconception with SSDs. An SSD being M.2 doesn't necessarily mean that it's an NVMe.

SATA SSD read speeds max out at about 550 MBps, while a PCIe 5.0 NVMe can reach nearly 15,000 MBps. Furthermore, an NVMe slot on a motherboard may not support a SATA drive. This means that, at best, you're getting just above 3% of the performance — though in most cases, you'll run into compatibility issues and end up with a drive you simply cannot use. This isn't as big of a problem as it used to be, as most major SSD manufacturers have steadily moved away from producing M.2 SATA drives due to low demand. However, they're still on the market, and typically more expensive than NVMe drives of a similar capacity, which makes it important to distinguish one from the other.

Differentiating between an M.2 SATA SSD and an M.2 NVMe SSD is as easy as looking at the specifications or the label on the drive itself. However, if you're unsure, you can also figure out what kind of drive it is by looking at its key notches (the gaps between the golden pins): M.2 SATA SSDs use a B+M key (two notches), while NVMe SSDs use an M key (one notch).

SSDs are a major improvement over HDDs, which is why many assume that they make HDDs an obsolete technology. This isn't an unfair assumption — they're significantly faster, less prone to failure from mechanical shock, and generally more reliable. However, there are several reasons manufacturers continue to produce and sell HDDs, and why they're still a viable way of storing data.

One of the biggest drawbacks to SSDs is that they're significantly more expensive than other methods of storage. For instance, a Seagate 1TB external HDD costs $119, while a 1TB external SSD costs $212 — and you can get an HDD for even cheaper on the secondary market. This difference in price makes sense if you can leverage an SSD's higher speeds for faster loading times, but you get no extra value if all you're doing is storing files long-term.

HDDs also provide better longevity and more reliable storage, as they're better at retaining data even when put in a cupboard or storage for years. With an SSD, data is stored electronically, and electrons slowly lose charge. With time, this can lead to degradation and loss of data in the form of bit rot. HDDs are also vulnerable to mechanical failure and environmental wear, but they're much more likely to keep data for years without active maintenance.

Defragmentation used to be a common way of improving your drive's performance, so it makes sense why people continue to defrag their drives. However, the method only applies to HDDs, and defragging SSDs provides zero benefit. On the contrary, it can end up reducing your SSD's lifespan.

In an HDD, a mechanical read head physically moves to "fetch" data written on specific parts of the disk. As you erase, overwrite, and add new data, program files can become fragmented across different sectors on the drive far away from each other, slowing performance. Defragmentation fixes this by repositioning these fragments next to each other, making files whole again. Data retrieval works differently in an SSD, as it's done electronically. This process doesn't use physical, moving parts, which is how SSDs manage to be so much faster than HDDs.

Fragments of a program near each other and those farther away require the same amount of time to fetch, making defragmentation unnecessary. Additionally, since defragmenting rewrites data, it can shorten an SSD's lifespan by using up large amounts of its TBW (terabytes written) capacity — the total amount of data you can write on an SSD before it dies. As such, avoiding defragmentation can increase your SSD's lifespan.

Cooling is an integral part of any PC setup. GPUs and PSUs come with built-in cooling fans and heatsinks, while a CPU requires a dedicated air cooler or liquid cooling rig. Since an NVMe drive doesn't come with instructions requiring thermal paste or other cooling solutions, many users become concerned over how to manage its heat.

If you've never used an NVMe drive before, your first instinct upon seeing one may be removing the manufacturer label, as stickers typically interfere with passive cooling and trap heat. However, these particular stickers are specifically designed to be non-insulating and aren't meant to be peeled off. Typical stickers are primarily made of paper, plastic, or vinyl, all of which are insulators. However, the label on an NVMe contains a thin metallic layer that's thermally conductive. Instead of trapping heat, it aids the drive's ability to cool itself.

Removing the sticker on your NVMe is a bad idea for various reasons. Not only does it make your drive more prone to heat-related issues instead of solving them, it can also void manufacturer warranties. Furthermore, you risk damaging the fragile semiconductor chips underneath the sticker by forcing it off, which can render the entire drive unusable.

You've likely seen cases of someone powering their PC on after a sudden power outage only to see that their drive has become compromised, all its data has been erased, and the OS is refusing to work as intended. It's natural to worry about your own setup from seeing this happen to others — however, an SSD is much more resilient to wear and less prone to failure from power outages.

When an HDD suddenly loses power, the moving read-and-write head can abruptly stop instead of safely parking, which can make it crash into the platter. This is generally what causes a drive to become damaged and suffer from bad sectors. An SSD has no moving parts, and losing power simply means it shuts down. As such, power outages rarely ever pose a risk of physically damaging an SSD.

There are still ways a power outage can be detrimental, even if it doesn't outright damage your SSD. For instance, if your desktop computer shuts down while the SSD is writing data, the data being written can become corrupted. This can mean anything from losing a document or corrupting app cache to rendering the OS unbootable and in need of a complete reinstall. As such, it's still worth opting for a UPS if you're in a region prone to power outages.