[SOLVED] Can you damage an ssd by doing this?

[Markimooo]

I have an ssd that has an 89% life remaining, do i damage my ssd by always reformatting and reinstalling windows 10 ? I've done it multiple times now for over a year because i kind of have an ocd for clean drives that have left over registries by applications that had been uninstalled. Should i stop this useless thing that im doing or reformatting and reinstalling windows 10 has minimal impact on it ?

 

[CountMike]

I have an ssd that has an 89% life remaining, do i damage my ssd by always reformatting and reinstalling windows 10 ? I've done it multiple times now for over a year because i kind of have an ocd for clean drives that have left over registries by applications that had been uninstalled. Should i stop this useless thing that im doing or reformatting and reinstalling windows 10 has minimal impact on it ?

Every reinstall of windows uses anywhere from 20 - 30GB of write on disk, ad to that reformatting which makes whole disk capacity capacity of writes and after about 10 times you will reach guaranteed number of writes on older SSDs. This is not very alarming as programs for checking disks take that into account and subsequently lower it's health.
On the other hand, there's no need to reinstall w10 so many times, it has good options to clean disk and many other 3rd party programs too. My favorite is Revo Uninstaller as it cleanly uninstalls programs (even APPs) leaving no traces of those programs to "dirty" disk and also has own very good disk cleaner.
I have several SSDs that overreached guaranteed writes and are still going strong.
If you want to have clean OS files, W10 has ability for "In Place Upgrade" which can leave all your programs and files and only renew system files.
Other option is to do clean install of W10 and make a backup of it with a program like Macrium Reflect free and just restore it to disk, it takes only 15 minutes or so. Alternatively, you can make a backup of W10 with all drivers and your favorite programs installed and restore it when you want to or your ocd kicks in.

 

[Encryption+]

Repeatedly formatting SSD drives will wear them out faster. It won't be instantaneous or anything, but it will shorten the life of your drive.

 

[USAFRet]

I have an ssd that has an 89% life remaining, do i damage my ssd by always reformatting and reinstalling windows 10 ? I've done it multiple times now for over a year because i kind of have an ocd for clean drives that have left over registries by applications that had been uninstalled. Should i stop this useless thing that im doing or reformatting and reinstalling windows 10 has minimal impact on it ?

Make/model/size of this SSD?
How full is it?

Continual reformatting/reinstall just creates unneeded write cycles. Wearing it out faster.
And with Win 10, that is really really not needed. Except for your OCD.

 

[henry.j.kautz]

Yes, each SSD has a limited amount of read/writes and repeatedly reformatting it will use many of them. It won't harm it per se, just shorten it's lifespan.

 

[John553]

Yes unlike HD drives continually overwriting SSD drives the drive will wear it out faster. If you want to continue reinstalling as you have been, you may want to think about using an HD drive instead which won't be affected by it.

 

[CountMike]

Yes unlike HD drives continually overwriting SSD drives the drive will wear it out faster. If you want to continue reinstalling as you have been, you may want to think about using an HD drive instead which won't be affected by it.

Mechanical HDDs are also vulnerable to excessive writing and even reading, maybe even more so. I have a friend that managed to wear out 3 HDDs in a year before I convinced him not to defrag and optimize it every single day and run speed tests on it.