DWPD & TBW endurance calculator
Convert SSD endurance between drive-writes-per-day and total-bytes-written for any capacity and warranty — and check your real daily write budget before you buy.
TBW = DWPD × capacity × 365 × warranty years. DWPD tells you how many times the whole drive can be overwritten daily for the warranty; TBW is the same endurance as a total. Compare your real daily writes to the budget to choose read-intensive (≈1 DWPD), mixed-use (3 DWPD) or write-intensive (10 DWPD) SSDs.
DWPD and TBW are one rating in two units
Flash wears out as you write to it, so SSDs carry an endurance rating. DWPD says how many full-drive writes per day the warranty allows; TBW says the same as a lifetime total. They convert directly: TBW = DWPD × capacity × 365 × warranty years. A bigger drive at the same DWPD has a proportionally bigger TBW.
Pick endurance to match real writes: read-intensive (~1 DWPD), mixed-use (~3 DWPD) or write-intensive (~10 DWPD). For arrays, remember the RAID write penalty multiplies back-end writes — parity RAID writes more to the SSDs than the host does, so size endurance with that in mind. Browse SSDs & NVMe drives or use the RAID calculator.
Common questions
What is the difference between DWPD and TBW?
They describe the same SSD endurance two ways. DWPD (drive writes per day) is how many times you can overwrite the whole drive every day for its warranty. TBW (terabytes written) is the same endurance expressed as a lifetime total. The link is TBW = DWPD × capacity × 365 × warranty years.
How do I convert DWPD to TBW?
Multiply DWPD by the drive capacity (TB), by 365, and by the warranty years. A 3.84 TB drive rated 1 DWPD over 5 years = 1 × 3.84 × 365 × 5 ≈ 7,008 TBW. The calculator does this both ways and also shows your daily write budget in TB and GB.
Which DWPD class should I buy?
Match it to your workload: read-intensive SSDs (~1 DWPD) for read-heavy apps, boot and bulk; mixed-use (~3 DWPD) for general virtualisation and databases; write-intensive (~10 DWPD) for write-heavy logging, caching and OLTP. Over-buying endurance wastes money; under-buying risks early wear-out — compare your real daily writes to the budget here.