5 Things to Stop Doing If You Have an External SSD

The current memory crisis has driven up the prices of technological components and several gadgets are facing this price increase. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your external SSD, you’ve probably discovered that the prices of these devices have skyrocketed. With this in mind, the best you can do is take extra care of your current external SSD, so that it can last as long as possible. And to do this, you can follow several steps.

Since external SSDs behave differently than traditional hard drives, there are a few different recommendations on how to use and extend the life of your drive. For example, if you want to assess its health and endurance, you will need to use third-party tools, like CrystalDiskInfo for Windows or DriveDx for macOS. These programs can read the SMART attributes of the disk, monitor the total number of bytes written, spare block availability, temperature history, and the overall percentage of disk life remaining. With this data and a few other practices to better manage and maintain your external drive, you may be able to survive the current memory crisis. Here’s what you need to stop doing with your external SSD from now on.

Who has never forgotten to eject the disc correctly before unplugging the cable? Well, probably everyone has done this at least once and everything was fine. Although most people are more likely than not to get into trouble, unplugging an external SSD while it’s in use is one of the quickest ways to corrupt a file system. So even when a progress bar disappears, there’s always the chance that there’s a background operation going on, an abrupt disconnection from which could plague you with half-written data, file fragments, or damaged partition headers. In the worst case, the entire disk may become read-only.

However, if you did not cause the disconnection and the drive disconnected unexpectedly, you should not attempt to write new data to it. Instead, connect it to your computer again and run native file system repair utilities like Windows Check Disk or macOS Disk Utility’s First Aid to scan and repair dirty bit markers or broken directory structures before regular use. On top of that, you still need to trigger the unmount command from the operating system (right-click and press “Safely Remove Hardware” in Windows, or click the eject symbol next to the drive in the macOS Finder). Once the drive is completely gone, you can then remove the physical connector. That said, if you use Windows and frequently swap drives on the go, make sure the device removal policy is explicitly set to “Quick Remove” in Device Manager to disable write caching, although secure eject remains the gold standard for taking care of your external SSD.

If your new SSD already seems slow, it might be because it barely has space for new data. SSDs typically write data in pages of 4 KB to 16 KB, but can only erase data in whole blocks, often 2 MB to 8 MB. When a drive has enough space, it easily adds new data and pre-erased empty blocks. However, when it is near its full limit, it is forced to perform constant “read-modify-write” cycles, which eventually triggers extreme write amplification, degrading sustained transfer speeds and causing NAND flash cells to underperform. That said, you still need to free up space whenever you cross the 85% threshold.

By offloading non-essential data, deleting remaining cache directories, and deleting temporary project files, you will ensure that sustained transfer speeds remain high for longer. Still, if transfer speeds are already bad, you should free up some space and leave the connected drive idle for an hour to allow the internal controller’s background garbage collection to clean up the abandoned pages. You should always leave at least 10% of your external SSD’s total capacity completely unallocated or empty, so that this part can function as a manual reserve. If you regularly transfer large media files or batches of video projects, choose a capacity level higher than your current needs, so that the SSD always has enough working space to efficiently handle these block cleanups.

Disk defragmentation is a tool invented for old-fashioned mechanical hard drives with spinning disks and moving parts to help the hard drive read data faster. SSDs, on the other hand, have no moving parts and access any memory cell with near-instantaneous speeds. With this, defragmentation gives the exact opposite result you expect from this tool on a hard drive, like on an SSD, it moves gigabytes of data back and forth through flash memory, burning limited program/erase cycles and unnecessarily degrading the lifespan of the NAND flash without providing any performance gains, and this could also be one of the reasons why someone might kill their PC’s storage as well.

So, if by any chance you start a defrag routine by mistake, you should cancel it immediately. After all, modern drives track wear with built-in wear-leveling algorithms, meaning the more you write, delete, and rewrite information in the same places, the faster the drive will age. By checking SMART attributes from tools like CrystalDiskInfo or DriveDX, you can assess the remaining life and total bytes written on your SSD.

With this in mind, you should disable all scheduled defragmentation routines targeting external drives in Windows Defrag and Optimize Drives. Instead, you should focus on TRIM-based optimization commands, like Drive Optimization in Windows. This informs the SSD controller which data blocks are no longer considered used, allowing it to clear them during periods of inactivity without unnecessary data movement.

If you have one of the newer NVMe external SSDs, be aware that they generate a lot of heat. They therefore require excellent integrated cooling systems to ensure that the controller chip and power management ICs can maintain sustained read and write tasks at an appropriate speed. However, if you keep the SSD enclosed in tight carrying cases, wrapped in protective silicone sleeves without ventilation, or even buried under desk clutter, heat will remain inside the drive, which could initially decrease read and write speeds when thermal throttling kicks in, but significantly damage your drive in the long run.

If the drive is very hot to the touch and transfer rates start to really slow down during a task, you should immediately pause read/write tasks, disconnect the drive after letting it sit for a few minutes, then remove it from whatever is preventing it from venting: a protective case, sleeve, or even papers on it. Finally, let its aluminum body cool to room temperature before resuming intense tasks.

To avoid newer and similar issues, you should always place the SSD on an open, hard surface when performing intensive tasks like video rendering or transferring multiple gigabytes. You should also avoid stacking running drives on hot laptop power supplies, active hubs, or in places where they cannot be properly ventilated.

NAND flash memory stores data as electrical charges trapped inside. If you use an SSD as an external backup drive that you plug in once every few months, you risk ruining it. During extended periods without power, these electrical chargers may leak, which can be accelerated by higher ambient storage temperatures. In this scenario, an unused SSD could easily lead to data corruption in no time. If this is your case, you should immediately plug the drive into your computer, run a full file integrity check, and transfer critical files out of the drive.

That said, the golden tip for an external SSD is to never treat it like a cold archive. In this case, a hard drive, in addition to being slower, may be a better option for those long periods without using the drive, but the best approach would be to follow the 3-2-1 backup strategy, which involves keeping three copies of your data on two different types of media, with one copy stored offsite or in the cloud. If you must use an SSD for offline backup, plug it into a powered machine at least once every few months to refresh the power chargers on its flash cells.