Summary
Soldered memory is constantly demonized as something that kills modern laptops and other devices, and most of the time, rightly so. But why doesn’t soldered storage get the same level of hate? RAM forgets everything when you turn the PC off, and doesn’t hold any of your memories, photos, or otherwise. But your actual storage does, and if that’s soldered to the motherboard, it will never be removed. Only one really matters, and it’s the real reason you should be checking every laptop before you buy. Your storage will run out way before your RAM does It’d be fine if you could do something about it When it comes to soldered memory, 16GB can still do the job for most folks. These days, it’s not completely ideal if you’re attempting higher capacity workloads like video editing, local AI, and similar, but otherwise, it works. It’s not something you’ll often consider upgrading. But soldered storage becomes a different problem. It’s not just your system memory that can’t be changed or upgraded; you’re specifically locked into a permanent amount of data you can hold locally. Whatever capacity you pick at checkout is the capacity the laptop keeps for the rest of its life. Obviously, cloud storage is an option. It’s understandably what many will point to. However, given storage prices for laptop models are also increasing for off-the-shelf options, it’s becoming a harder financial ask to hit those higher figures, pushing people to rely on external storage rather than what’s on their device, especially if it can never be upgraded with a hard drive swap. In late 2025, Trend Force reported that some manufacturers were considering smaller SSDs in default configurations to keep prices low, but that means more time spent managing data, especially if there is no chance to upgrade the system. | SSD (storage) | RAM (memory) | | |---|---|---| | What wears it down | Writing data. More data written accelerates wear on the flash cells, so drives spread writes evenly across cells to slow that down. | Failures are almost always early-life faults or voltage damage, not gradual aging. | | Rated lifespan | Rated in terabytes written (TBW). Samsung’s 990 Pro is 600 TBW at 1TB, 1,200 at 2TB, and 2,400 at 4TB, with a five-year warranty or the TBW, whichever comes first. | No write rating. Most memory manufacturers cover their memory modules for the product lifetime, which they define as the industry’s normal time expectancy for product use. | | Typical real-world life | Folks writing 20-40GB a day can get decades, and most people upgrade for more space or speed long before the drive fails. | Typically, your RAM should last as long as you have your system. | | Failure data | | In | | What ends it first | Usually the laptop, or an upgrade you want. | You’ll replace it for a new platform long before it fails from age. | In short, your storage has fewer writes available than RAM, and that means after a while, one will give up before the other. Just consider that storage comes with a maximum terabytes written value (TBW) that signals its lifespan, whereas RAM doesn’t. If your motherboard dies, so do your files Soldered storage kills the lot On a laptop with a regular drive, a dead motherboard is annoying but survivable. You pull the drive, plug it into an enclosure or another computer, and copy your files off. On a laptop with a soldered hard drive, if your motherboard dies, you’re cooked. Soldered storage means the chips that hold your files are attached to the motherboard, with no slot and no way to swap in a bigger drive later. Whatever capacity you pick at checkout is the capacity the laptop keeps for the rest of its life. Getting at the data means a specialist working on the storage chips directly. Now, damaged or dead soldered storage doesn’t automatically mean your files are gone for good, because it depends on what’s causing the problem. But most of the time, unless the motherboard or component can be fixed, they’re as good as gone. Desoldering the chips is typically a non-starter for most folks, too. Soldered memory and storage use ball-grid array soldering to replace the pins, leads, and connectors you’d find with other forms of storage. It’s what helps boost connectivity and deliver better efficiency, and a reason why devices with soldered memory and storage can be manufactured into much slimmer designs. While desoldering BGA chips isn’t impossible, even for home users, it’s a difficult process that also requires you to have another device to solder to so you can access the lost files. Most of the time, you’ll need a specialist data recovery, and that’ll land you with a bill in the thousands. Soldering storage doesn’t have the same benefits as memory It’s not worth the pain for marginal gains As much as soldered RAM is considered anti-consumer (in some camps, anyway), it has clear benefits. Laptops are slimmer without requiring memory sockets. The memory is faster and more efficient, and most of the time, memory rarely breaks down in the same way as storage. When you consider storage in the same light, those benefits aren’t the same. There are some benefits, of course, but it’s not as vital to laptop manufacturing as soldered RAM. For example, Samsung says a soldered storage chip is about five times smaller than a regular storage drive, which is amazing in terms of space savings. But a regular M.2 drive is hardly enormous to begin with, and you lose the option of upgrade, replacement, and customization. Speed is another non-starter where there are clear benefits for soldered memory, and not for storage. That’s because both soldered and socketed storage still uses the same data transfer controller technology, so there aren’t really enormous benefits to switching. All in all, that leaves thinness as the main selling point, and with all things considered, that’s on the weaker end of the scale. We want thin devices, sure, but not at the cost of losing data forever or paying thousands to retrieve it. Most people won’t upgrade their storage, but that’s not the point Like removable memory, the ability to swap your storage out for a larger capacity drive was one way of souping up an older device. You could take matters into your own hands, increase the RAM and storage, and feel like you’d beaten the system a bit. Most folks won’t ever consider upgrading their storage, though. It’s not on the radar, so why should you worry about soldered storage? It’s all about data recovery. Removing a dead drive means you can fix your hardware when something goes wrong without forking out thousands, turning a dead board or a full drive into a fix instead of a replacement. In that, if you have the choice before you buy, check the spec sheets, and make sure you’re buying a laptop with removable drives. Otherwise, it could just cost you a lot more than you’re expecting down the line.