Systems and methods for adapting garbage collection (GC) operations in a memory device to an estimated device age are discussed. An exemplary memory device includes a memory controller to track an actual device age, determine a device wear metric using a physical write count and total writes over an expected lifetime of the memory device, estimate a wear-indicated device age, and adjust an amount of memory space to be freed by a GC operation according to the wear-indicated device age relative to the actual device age. The memory controller can also dynamically reallocate a portion of the memory cells between a single level cell (SLC) cache and a multi-level cell (MLC) storage according to the wear-indicated device age relative to the actual device age.