Does restoring an image degrade SSD?

[artistpavel]

I use Acronis to restore an image from time to time, does it have an affect on the amount of read/write cycles left?

[lowfat]

It isn't going to be a big deal. NAND's lasts longer than people think.

[JimboToronto]

Originally Posted by lowfat

It isn't going to be a big deal. NAND's lasts longer than people think.

That is so true. Even in high volume enterprise applications with MLC NAND write endurance is measured in years. SLC NAND extends that.

One big consideration is capacity. An SSD which is nearly full has fewer available blocks for wear leveling so the remaining blocks will be subject to more more rewrites and thus write endurance will be reduced. I try to keep all my boot SSDs at less than half capacity although that can be hard in the case of notebooks/netbooks where there's a temptation to fill the SSDs to higher capacity due to the lack of any other internal storage.

Another consideration is the fact that long before the rewrite endurance limits are reached, the SSD will probably be nearly obsolete performance-wise, and thus be retired to archival storage which isn't subject to the constant rewrites of a system SSD. Even my old OCZ Core is barely 3 years old and still has thousands of rewrites left. It hasn't been used as a boot SSD in over 2 years and currently resides in an external enclosure for rugged travel storage.