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CrystalDiskInfo tells me that my SSD has experienced 400+ "unsafe shutdowns". I am not surprised, since I have had to cut power after OS freezes several times.

I wonder if this can cause damage to my SSD in the long term (it is reported as 100% healthy by CDI for now). Can power loss cause hardware failures in my SSD, or only data corruption?

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  • I'm having a large count of those too (0x1A), with only 0x40 power cycles. PC has not been power cycled by me more than a hundred times(probably not even 30x as it is a year old work PC). Some people on the web mention it is an driver issue. Disk is 970 EVO, OS is Win10
    – Spikolynn
    Oct 21, 2020 at 12:23

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No, unsafe shutdowns do not physically damage an SSD.

When you cut power, power stops going into the SSD. There is no power surge, and it is a power surge that would damage a component. All it can do is corrupt data on the SSD, but that is not considered physical damage.

But why does CrystalDiskInfo tells you this info?

Because this is something you want to know if you are troubleshooting a problem. If you are not aware of any power failures on your part, and S.M.A.R.T. is, then you can see that the disk is somehow having a hardware defect. If you can explain the powerfailures yourself, then you know this is not a hardware defect.

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    Is that true even if the SSD is in the middle of a write? I've heard of many SSDs having a large cap inside to hold enough power for an emergency power off, is that mostly for protecting the data rather than the medium? Oct 21, 2019 at 11:33
  • @grawity that capasitor is indeed to protect the medium, due to the nature of volatile storage. Because of that, a powerloss will not damage the drive. But a powersurge could.
    – LPChip
    Oct 21, 2019 at 11:48
  • So what do I do? I have Ubuntu 22.04, my laptop is an ASUS TUF DASH F15 and the damn Ubuntu keeps freezing on my everyday, in the middle of my work. I am left staring at the screen waiting for it to resolve itself so I have to hard reset it each day by presssing the power button to get it to work. Is there a way I can flush the bad write operations or something? Mar 28, 2023 at 6:11
  • I just got a SMART warning error, I ran a commmand call smartctl and here is what I got. imgur.com/a/qunKRgH Mar 28, 2023 at 6:13

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