Norton Utilities destroying Health of SSD in Windows

Other Norton Products/Services
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Issue abstract:Health of SSD drop’s from Norton Utilities

Detailed description: I had renewed my Norton 360 in December 2024 and I am not sure of how I obtained Norton Utilites maybe due to the renewal.
However, in January I noticed that my SSD software was showing the Health of my 1 1/2 year old SSD was having it’s health drop for unknow reasons. I spent close to 2 months working with Sandisk Memory Support in troubleshooting the problem. They even did a warranty exchange and that brand new SSD had same issue within the first week of use. Previous SSD was purchased in 2016 and was in good health at 88%, however wanted to get a larger version, so the upgrade of the SSD.
The SSD’s are 2.5 inch SATA connection drives.
I then noticed that there was a Norton Utilities Icon on my desktop and since I had not purchased it separately or remember every using it I started checking it’s setting. I turned off any defragmentation it would do on the SSD or other drives (does NOT seem to have issues’ with portable HD that are non-SSD). My original SSD from Sandisk was at 94-96% when noticed and dropped to 82% (in my estimate over 2 1/2 months) by the time I received a replacement from Sandisk (they worked to solve the issue and cannot blame them for not helping, they were wonderful).
After replacing the drive a newer version, the health continued to drop and the drive now sit’s at 92%. Thinking that maybe it’s the brand of drive I purchased a new Crucial BX500 2Gig drive which DID NOT HELP. The Crucial drive now sit’s at 98% health and I concluded that it’s not the drive.
I then decided there has to be some software running to cause the detrioration of the SSD’s health and was very much a concern.
Then saw the Norton Utlities software Icon on the desktop and did some more troubleshooting. Since I had not purchased this piece of software I decided that I will uninstall this program.
Since doing such the health of both SSD drives have remained the same for over 3-4 months, thus the SSD’s health has stablized finally.
I have concluded that the Norton Utilities software (just several weeks after the removal) was the problem with causing my SSD drive to drop in Health and could lead to a drive Failure.
Thus if anyone is having their SSD’s Health start to drop in health every 4-7 days this just maybe the problem!!!
I am very surprised at this problem I have generally had good experiences with Norton/Symantec products having used them for over 30+ years.
I am letting other know of my experience and relaying it on to other who may face the same issue.
Best to All!!

Product & version number:Norton Utilities

OS details: Windows 10

What is the error message you are seeing? Vendor Software and 3rd party software showing health degradition every few days.

If you have any supporting screenshots, please add them:

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@Majeskty My rule of thumb is when using SSD’s never, ever, use any utilities for those drives. Not under any circumstances. No matter who makes those software utilities they are nothing more than snake oil. Defragmentation of an SSD will destroy it, I recommend disabling Norton Utilities and/or removing it entirely. Window does a nice job of keeping drives clean and healthy on its own. It uses TRIM and RETRIM to keep things working the way they should.

SA

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I know this does not help the OP, but I have had Norton 360 and Norton Utilities installed on this laptop for the last 10 years. The Crucial MX 500 512GB SSD has been in the system from the beginning and I just checked the drive’s health and it was only depleted by about 12%.

As SoulAsylum suggests, I would uninstall Norton Utilities to see if that makes any difference to what you are seeing.

If not, it may be some other issue with your computer’s hardware or software.

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