The first SSD units that hit the market did not offer the same durability as traditional HDDs, so they had a hard time becoming a real alternative. As the years went by, technology evolved and currently this type of storage has nothing to do with traditional hard drives, and, like these, they wear out with continued use over time.
If we want to know the performance of our SSD to check both its status and the speed at which it works, on the Internet we can find a large number of applications to know this information and know, at all times, if it is time to think about renew our SSD or if we can still extend its useful life a little more.
It is not advisable to extend its useful life beyond what is recommended since, unlike hard drives, when an SSD stops working, it is practically impossible to recover the information.
How to measure the performance of an SSD
If you want to know which are the best tools to know the status of an SSD, below we show you the best free options.
- CrystalDiskMark. We begin this compilation of the best free programs to measure the performance of an SSD with CrystalDiskMark, a free application translated into Spanish that allows us to know the reading and writing speed of any SSD unit connected to the computer. Its operation is very simple since we only have to click on the All button to carry out the reading and writing tests to offer their results. We can modify the size of the file that will be used, although the default configuration is more than enough. To download CrystalDiskMark this link.
- HD Tune. When we talk about HD Tune, we are talking about an application that offers us all the information we may need about our SSD, both the reading and writing speed and the number of hours we have used it and the useful life it has left. In addition, it also allows us to analyze the unit for errors to solve them, delete files completely safely and much more. The free version of HD Tune is more than enough to know the performance of our PC and we can download it from its website.
- SSD Life. If our computer knowledge is low or practically non-existent and we barely understand what the information collected by the applications that we have shown above means, the application we are looking for in SSD Life. SSD Life is a simple application that allows us to know both the health of our SSD and its expected life based on the use we give it. The free version of this application is more than enough to know this information and we can download it from its website.
- Anvil's Storage Benchmark. An interesting option that we also have at our disposal to check the reading speed of our SSD unit is Avil's Storage Utilities, an application that also allows us to analyze the operation of mechanical hard drives. The information it shows is practically the same as any other, but it represents it in a much simpler way and, in addition, it shows us information about the life expectancy of the unit based on its performance. The application has not been updated for a few years, however, it is not an impediment for it to work without any problems in Windows 11. It is a portable application, so it is not necessary to install it and we can download it from here.
- Hard Disk Sentinel. If we are looking for a guardian to know the status and performance of our SSD, Hard Disk Sentinel is one of the most complete on the market, a completely free application, which is updated periodically and, in addition to being available on Windows, we can also use it on Linux . This application analyzes the status of our SSD to show its health level. We can keep it open in the background so that it analyzes the operation of our SSD unit in real time and repairs any problem it may detect. Hard Disk Sentinel download is available from here.