TBW Is a Warranty Limit, Not a Failure Threshold

A 16-year-old SSD has survived 25 times its rated TBW capacity while remaining operational, exposing a persistent misconception: TBW exhaustion does not trigger drive failure. Manufacturers set conservative TBW ratings primarily to bound warranty liability. NAND flash degrades probabilistically; the threshold where write endurance becomes unacceptable depends on individual drive health metrics—reallocated sectors, error rates, wear leveling—not on crossing a warranty boundary.