You open a monitoring tool and your SSD says 91% health. A month later it says 84%. That rate of decline would burn through a drive in a couple of years, and it is alarming to watch. But a falling health figure has two very different causes, and the fix is different for each.
Cause One: A Firmware Reporting Bug
The Samsung 990 Pro is the best-known example — drives reported health falling far faster than actual wear justified. Samsung released a firmware update through Samsung Magician that stopped the runaway reporting. The underlying flash was not being consumed at the rate the indicator claimed.
The tell: health drops steadily but the drive performs normally, and Total Bytes Written is modest relative to the drive's rated endurance.
Cause Two: The Drive Is Actually Wearing Out
The tell here is the opposite: high Total Bytes Written, reallocated sectors climbing, occasional stutters or freezes, and sometimes errors in Event Viewer.
What to Check, in Order
- Install CrystalDiskInfo (free) and read Total Host Writes and Percentage Used.
- Compare Total Host Writes against the drive's TBW rating from the manufacturer's spec sheet.
- Check the vendor tool for a firmware update.
- Look in Event Viewer for disk or nvme warnings.
MediaVision Technical Analysis
Whichever cause it turns out to be, do the same thing first: back up now. A health indicator is a hint, not a guarantee, and drives can fail without ever warning you. We have recovered plenty of data from drives reporting 100% health and seen drives at 40% run for years.
If you want a definitive answer, bring it in — we read the raw SMART attributes rather than the simplified percentage, which tells a much more honest story.
