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Door staff@engadget.com (Husain Parvez) - 28 Aug 2026
Each NAND cell supports a limited number of program-and-erase cycles. Storing more bits per cell increases density and lowers cost, but it also narrows the electrical margin between data states. That's one reason QLC NAND typically offers lower endurance and performance than simpler designs.
Modern SSDs get around much of this with some clever housekeeping. Controllers distribute writes across available cells by wear leveling, correct errors, retire unreliable blocks and maintain spare capacity. TRIM and garbage collection also manage another NAND oddity: Data can be written in relatively small pages, but much larger blocks must be erased before they can be reused. This is a lot of housekeeping for "solid-state" storage.
All that work pushes the endurance problem largely into the background for most consumers. Samsung warrants its 1TB 990 Pro for five years or 600TB of writes. That doesn't mean the drive stops working at 600TB, and Samsung doesn't say when a particular SSD will die, but important files still need backups.
And while endurance can be managed, price is less cooperative. Hard drives still offer cheaper bulk storage for backups, large media libraries and other tasks where speed matters less. TrendForce forecast NAND contract prices to rise 70 to 75 percent quarter over quarter in Q2 2026 and expects another 10 to 15 percent increase in Q3, citing tight supply and AI and data-center demand.
Modern SSDs get around much of this with some clever housekeeping. Controllers distribute writes across available cells by wear leveling, correct errors, retire unreliable blocks and maintain spare capacity. TRIM and garbage collection also manage another NAND oddity: Data can be written in relatively small pages, but much larger blocks must be erased before they can be reused. This is a lot of housekeeping for "solid-state" storage.
All that work pushes the endurance problem largely into the background for most consumers. Samsung warrants its 1TB 990 Pro for five years or 600TB of writes. That doesn't mean the drive stops working at 600TB, and Samsung doesn't say when a particular SSD will die, but important files still need backups.
And while endurance can be managed, price is less cooperative. Hard drives still offer cheaper bulk storage for backups, large media libraries and other tasks where speed matters less. TrendForce forecast NAND contract prices to rise 70 to 75 percent quarter over quarter in Q2 2026 and expects another 10 to 15 percent increase in Q3, citing tight supply and AI and data-center demand.