Failure of SSD vs HDD
SSDs are widely regarded as being better than mechanical hard drives. They’re faster, more stable and use less power, making them supposedly superior. They are definitely not perfect, and, like everything, will not work forever. Most SSDs have an expected lifespan of 5 to 7 years, but this can sometimes be shorter.
Unlike traditional magnetic storage, SSDs do not contain moving parts, so they are not vulnerable to mechanical failures. The other components can fail, however. Capacitors in SSDs can fail, especially in the event of a power surge. The biggest issue in SSDs is the limited number of write cycles. This is not as big of an issue as it may seem, as you can still read data from an SSD that you can’t write to. It is still useful to know when your drive is failing so you know when you need to upgrade.
No notice before SSD failure?
SSDs, unlike mechanical HDDs, will not make a noise to tell you something is wrong. There are a number of ways to tell, however.
Much like bad sectors on HDDs, SSDs can contain “bad blocks”, typically manifesting in a scenario where the computer attempts to read or save a file, but it takes an unusually long time and ends in failure, so the system eventually gives up with an error message. You may also experience system crashes during boot, “File System in need of repair” messages, or your drive becoming read-only.
If any of these happen, it may be time for you to buy a new SSD. Luckily, it is extremely easy to transfer files off an SSD which has failed in this way, as you can still read from them with no problems.