TechFuel HQWorked examples
These are this calculator’s own outputs, computed with the same formula the tool runs in your browser — so you can see a real answer without touching a single input.
The tool’s own shipped default state — a mainstream 1 TB consumer TLC NVMe (600 TBW, 5-year warranty) running a homelab VM / container host, no write amplification
- Inputs: Drive capacity = 1000 GB; Endurance rated as = TBW; Rated TBW = 600; Warranty = 5 years; Workload preset = Homelab VM / container host (80 GB/day); Daily host writes = 80 GB/day; WAF = 1.0
- Result: Estimated lifespan 20.5 yr | Effective endurance 600 TBW | Your write rate 0.080 DWPD (rated for 0.33 DWPD) | Written per year 29.2 TB (4.9% of rating/yr)
A 2 TB consumer TLC NVMe (1,200 TBW, 5-year warranty) as a Proxmox + ZFS boot/VM pool — copy-on-write pushes write amplification to 3x. This is the case the page’s prose calls “the difference between lasts decades and lasts a few years.”
- Inputs: Drive capacity = 2000 GB; Endurance rated as = TBW; Rated TBW = 1200; Warranty = 5 years; Workload preset = Proxmox + ZFS / heavy logging (150 GB/day); Daily host writes = 150 GB/day; WAF = 3
- Result: Estimated lifespan 7.3 yr | Effective endurance 1200 TBW | Your write rate 0.075 DWPD (rated for 0.33 DWPD) | Written per year 164.3 TB (13.7% of rating/yr)
DWPD mode — a used 1.92 TB enterprise/datacenter SSD rated 1 DWPD over a 5-year warranty, the classic homelab eBay buy, carrying the same Proxmox + ZFS load at 2x write amplification
- Inputs: Drive capacity = 1920 GB; Endurance rated as = DWPD; Rated DWPD = 1; Warranty = 5 years; Workload preset = Proxmox + ZFS / heavy logging (150 GB/day); Daily host writes = 150 GB/day; WAF = 2
- Result: Estimated lifespan 32.0 yr | Effective endurance 3504 TBW (from 1 DWPD x 5 yr) | Your write rate 0.078 DWPD (rated for 1.00 DWPD) | Written per year 109.5 TB (3.1% of rating/yr)
How to use this calculator
Enter your drive’s capacity and its endurance rating — either as TBW (terabytes written, common on consumer SSDs) or as DWPD (drive writes per day, common on enterprise drives) plus the warranty period. Then set how much you write per day (pick a workload preset or enter your own) and, optionally, a write amplification factor. The calculator returns the estimated lifespan in years, your effective write rate in DWPD, and how much endurance you burn per year.
The defaults model a 1 TB TLC SSD (600 TBW) on a moderate homelab load. For an accurate result, use your drive’s real rated TBW or DWPD from its spec sheet.
TBW vs. DWPD — same rating, two units
Manufacturers express SSD endurance two ways. TBW is the total terabytes you can write over the warranty; DWPD is how many full-capacity overwrites per day the drive tolerates for the warranty period. They’re interchangeable:
TBW = DWPD × capacity (TB) × 365 × warranty years
So a 1 TB drive at 0.3 DWPD over a 5-year warranty is rated for 0.3 × 1 × 365 × 5 ≈ 548 TBW. Consumer drives usually quote TBW; datacenter drives quote DWPD because they’re built for constant rewriting. This tool accepts either and shows both.
Write amplification — the homelab multiplier
Your endurance is consumed by what the NAND flash actually writes, not what your OS reports. Because flash erases in large blocks, a small logical write can force a larger physical one — that ratio is the write amplification factor (WAF). Plain desktop use sits near 1; copy-on-write filesystems (ZFS, Btrfs), databases, and chatty logging push it to 2–10x. A WAF of 3 burns your TBW three times faster, so set it if you run ZFS or VM workloads on Proxmox — it’s the difference between “lasts decades” and “lasts a few years.”
What this pairs with
If your big write load is video, the Frigate NVR storage calculator estimates the GB/day a camera setup writes — plug that number in here to size an endurance-appropriate drive. And if you’re protecting that data, the Proxmox Backup Server 3-2-1 guide covers doing it right.