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[Alex Atkin UK]

I know I'm tempting fate, but I honestly can't believe this still works.

Every single Sandforce based SSD I have owned died unexpectedly without warning, just not powering up one day.

This one strangely is still kicking.  Used it to temporarily install Windows on my Linux box to test a GPU.

Code: [Select]

Model Family:     SandForce Driven SSDs
Device Model:     OCZ-AGILITY3
Serial Number:    OCZ-CB122RR7999NGHGQ
LU WWN Device Id: 5 e83a97 e5a8fb2e5
Firmware Version: 2.50
User Capacity:    120,034,123,776 bytes [120 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate:    Solid State Device
TRIM Command:     Available, deterministic
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS, ACS-2 T13/2015-D revision 3
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Tue Oct 19 10:52:23 2021 BST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x0033   095   095   050    Pre-fail  Always       -       0/34171463
  5 Retired_Block_Count     0x0033   100   100   003    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours_and_Msec 0x0032   051   051   000    Old_age   Always       -       43236h+57m+50.720s
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1301
171 Program_Fail_Count      0x000a   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
172 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
174 Unexpect_Power_Loss_Ct  0x0030   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       136
177 Wear_Range_Delta        0x0000   000   000   000    Old_age   Offline      -       3
181 Program_Fail_Count      0x000a   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
182 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   030   030   000    Old_age   Always       -       30 (Min/Max 30/30)
195 ECC_Uncorr_Error_Count  0x001c   120   120   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0/34171463
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0033   100   100   003    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
201 Unc_Soft_Read_Err_Rate  0x001c   120   120   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0/34171463
204 Soft_ECC_Correct_Rate   0x001c   120   120   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0/34171463
230 Life_Curve_Status       0x0013   100   100   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       100
231 SSD_Life_Left           0x0013   094   094   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
233 SandForce_Internal      0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       42499
234 SandForce_Internal      0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       31864
241 Lifetime_Writes_GiB     0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       31864
242 Lifetime_Reads_GiB      0x0032   000   000   000    Old_age   Always       -       36312


[Chrysalis]

Amazing, as that brand of SSD has a horrible history.

I have a sandforce based ssd in my pfsense unit, still going strong, its Kingston branded.

I am not sure if the problem affected all sandforce units, a page I read a while ago said it was an experimental firmware feature OCZ enabled to try and chase a few % of performance.

[j0hn]

I have a 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 from 2013 still working.

I've been fortunate with my SSD's. I've only had 2 completely fail on me.

I had an OCZ ARC100 240GB die after a little over 2 years use.
OCZ were excellent and sent me a 480GB replacement as they had no 240GB left in stock.
That drive is still working.

I had a Crucial BX100 250GB drive fail on me after 13 months.
Crucial replaced it with a slightly newer model of the same size.

I've retired a couple drives that were still working because they had started showing their age a little or their capacity was too small. With limited Sata and M.2 ports on my motherboard having 3 x 120GB drive doesn't cut it.
I've donated a few sata SSD drives to friends and relatives for their laptops.

The 120GB OCZ Vertex is still ticking away. I have it in an enclosure and use it as an external SSD. I can't bring myself to retire it as it's my oldest that still works.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I hadn't checked on the issue in years, it seems the Sandforce issue is a glitch in its power saving mode.  So running it as a boot drive on a device that never hibernates or goes into standby should potentially avoid it dying early.  Although were up to the 10 year NAND expected lifespan now, although I think that mostly is down to data retention so if the content have been refreshed recently, no telling how long it might last.

[Chrysalis]

Ironically there is an issue on Crucial MX500 drives related to uptime.

I noticed the MX500 I put in my laptop in under a year has over 100 erase cycles.  Which is extremely high, did a bit of research and it turns out after a few days uptime the background garbage collection goes crazy and you get rapid erase cycles, the two workarounds discovered are to either keep power cycling every day or two, or to keep it from running background activity by keeping it busy, e.g. running a smart self test in a loop.  The drives I think are rated for 2k or 3k cycles so still will last for warranty period, but another bizarre SSD problem.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Interesting, I have an MX500 in my laptop that's been on 3 days now.

Code: [Select]

  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       7555
173 Ave_Block-Erase_Count   0x0032   096   096   000    Old_age   Always       -       68
180 Unused_Reserve_NAND_Blk 0x0033   000   000   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       91
202 Percent_Lifetime_Remain 0x0030   096   096   001    Old_age   Offline      -       4
That would seem to imply I'm down to 96% health?  That does seem bad considering its mostly used for game storage so not written too THAT heavily.

A drive which gets WAY more hammer is my NAS download/extraction drive:

Code: [Select]

Device Model:     WDC  WDS400T2B0A-00SM50
Serial Number:    2039CY420471
LU WWN Device Id: 5 001b44 4a7bbaf05
Firmware Version: 411040WD
User Capacity:    4,000,787,030,016 bytes [4.00 TB]
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       7773
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       8
165 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       37093644
166 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       1
167 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       205
168 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       25
169 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       1948
170 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
171 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
172 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
173 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       3
174 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       4
184 End-to-End_Error        0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
188 Command_Timeout         0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   071   043   ---    Old_age   Always       -       29 (Min/Max 21/43)
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0
230 Unknown_SSD_Attribute   0x0032   001   001   ---    Old_age   Always       -       227635232821
232 Available_Reservd_Space 0x0033   100   100   004    Pre-fail  Always       -       100
233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       16531
234 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       16808
241 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0030   253   253   ---    Old_age   Offline      -       13163
242 Total_LBAs_Read         0x0030   253   253   ---    Old_age   Offline      -       30045
244 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   000   100   ---    Old_age   Always       -       0

[Chrysalis]

Yeah on one day I had 2 erase cycles, its a 500GIG SSD which would imply 1TB of writes O_o.

Massive write amplification, the last few smart numbers give an idea of the write amplification.

More info here.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/crucial-mx500-500gb-sata-ssd-remaining-life-decreasing-fast-despite-few-bytes-being-written.3571220/

[Alex Atkin UK]

Code: [Select]

246 Total_LBAs_Written      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       197617998502
247 Host_Program_Page_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       3158359112
248 FTL_Program_Page_Count  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1214298659

[banger]

I found a problem with the default install of 11. If you use the default Nvidia drivers supplied it writes about 2TB to disk a day. Subsequently my Corsair NVME MP510 remaining life was rapidly decreasing as so much was being written to disk from the driver. Solution was upgrade the Display Driver from Nvidia site and problem solved, must have been some sort of leak.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Yikes, although Windows Update never has the latest version anyway so I always update manually.