SSD lifespan

We're an AV rental facility using Hyperdeck Studio recorders with 480 GB Kingston SSDs. Do other forum members have views as to the likely lifespan of drives?

It really varies depending on the type of drive and how heavily used it is. Different drives use different types of memory internally that have different endurance characteristics (MLC flash tends to have more endurance than TLC, and both MLC and TLC 3D NAND tend to have more endurance than their 2D equivalents). Most SSDs also include a certain amount of spare blocks that are automatically used once certain memory blocks on the drive start to fail. But the amount of spare blocks varies across different manufacturers and drive models which also affects the overall drive life.

Most SSD manufacturers as part of their drive specifications include a terabytes written (TBW) figure which should give you an idea of how much recording you can expect to do before the drive might fail. Most of these TBW specifications from manufacturers tend to be on the conservative side, with real world testing often significantly exceeding the specified endurance ratings:
https://www.ontrack.com/blog/2018/02/07 ... ally-last/
https://techreport.com/review/27909/the ... e-all-dead

You can also take a look at the drive warranty periods. Drives with better endurance specs tend to have longer warranty periods (5 years rather than 3 years).

One other note: if you connect a drive to a computer and use a tool like CrystalDiskInfo you can read some some of the SMART drive usage information, including things like the total amount of data written to the drive so far and some other drive health status information:
https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo

So if you know the TBW rating for the drive this might give you an idea of how heavily used the drive has been so far and how much life likely remains. Some drives actually report a remaining drive life percentage, but the information varies somewhat depending on the SSD and drive controller manufacturer.