This isn't good is it

[kitfox]

So I was parting out an old system, checking the hard drives and such and happened to notice this on one of my own drives:

The drive isn't very old, I just purchased it in June of last year. I'm hoping this is somehow normal for a SSD but it REALLY doesn't look like it 🙁

 

[Ketchup]

A SMART test should perform the same, not matter if you have a hard drive or SSD. I would back up the data and request an RMA.

 

[inachu]

Not sure if you have to trim that SSD or is set to automatically trim on its own but I would say to trim it by hand if need be. It may influence those benchmarks. But yeah backup your data asap.

It is one of the reasons I disable any and searching on windows. Indexing is hell on any windows pc no matter the type of hard drive.

 

[kitfox]

I was afraid of that. I tried a manual trim, no luck 🙁

I'm kind of irritated with newegg right now. I bought the samsung and 2 wd blacks from them last summer. One of the wd blacks failed after 3 months and now the ssd is on its way out.

 

[sandorski]

Doubt that's Neweggs fault.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I don't see any problems, other than some potentially erroneous SMART readings. I would say, if you aren't getting "pauses" or BSODs, then the SSD is probably fine.

Edit: To elaborate, those SMART values, the normalized "current" values, count down, until they are below the "threshold" value. The "worst" values, being lower than the "threshold" values, but the "current" values being 100, and the "raw" values being zero, makes no sense, other than a bad reading on the "worst" values.

So I would personally ignore the values shown in red, unless of course, you are noticing strangeness with the SSD, freezing, hitching, non-booting, BSODs, etc.

 

[inachu]

I was afraid of that. I tried a manual trim, no luck 🙁

I'm kind of irritated with newegg right now. I bought the samsung and 2 wd blacks from them last summer. One of the wd blacks failed after 3 months and now the ssd is on its way out.

If you are a big video,tv,movie fan and you download and delete and watch on a continuous basis then video files are the #1 reason for short life span on SSD drives.

We have tons of returns on pc equipment that uses SSD drives for advertisements and the failure rate on those drives are very very high. short life span.

So if I am correct in my assumption that you watch tons of videos then this means you need a second drive in your system which is a normal spinning hard drive and not a solid state drive and watch those videos from that HDD and not the SSD.

You can also further lengthen the life of your ssd by putting your swap file onto the secondary spinning drive as well.

 

[Ketchup]

inachu, can you give us a time from on these returns? It would make a difference if these were in the early days of SSD, or if these are on recent drives.

 

[inachu]

inachu, can you give us a time from on these returns? It would make a difference if these were in the early days of SSD, or if these are on recent drives.

These ssd drives are under 2 years old as of this year.

If you had a graph tool to watch data load VS video load and you will see that video load puts a lot more wear and tear on SSD VS normal data access I/O from the OS or from apps like MS OFFICE.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So if I am correct in my assumption that you watch tons of videos then this means you need a second drive in your system which is a normal spinning hard drive and not a solid state drive and watch those videos from that HDD and not the SSD.

You can also further lengthen the life of your ssd by putting your swap file onto the secondary spinning drive as well.

My friend has a 4GB DDR2 / AM2+ mobo / AM3 X4 640 AMD quad-core CPU, and he watches videos constantly. Twitch.tv streams, YouTube, movie watching with DivX plugin in Firefox, which downloads the movie to a temp file on the HDD while watching it.

He had a 30GB OCZ Agility SSD, for three years, and even with that small a size of SSD, and being filled 28GB with Windows 7, and the high write-amplification of those drives, it still only used like 20-25% of its lifespan, according to SSDlife. So a tiny, high write-amplification SSD, with heavy video usage, would have lasted 12 years in that application.

 

[inachu]

My friend has a 4GB DDR2 / AM2+ mobo / AM3 X4 640 AMD quad-core CPU, and he watches videos constantly. Twitch.tv streams, YouTube, movie watching with DivX plugin in Firefox, which downloads the movie to a temp file on the HDD while watching it.

He had a 30GB OCZ Agility SSD, for three years, and even with that small a size of SSD, and being filled 28GB with Windows 7, and the high write-amplification of those drives, it still only used like 20-25% of its lifespan, according to SSDlife. So a tiny, high write-amplification SSD, with heavy video usage, would have lasted 12 years in that application.

Streaming does not count. files must be played from local source which increases the R/W much more so than any streaming.

I do not read the industry news on SSD's but I am pretty close to it(chatting with the engineers who do.) and doing a simple search brings up more news that the life of a SSD really will not match that of a traditional HDD at all:
(which is funny as some even argue on the below site that they do. But SSD's fall victim more to heat than do regular hard drives.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8357089

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8357089

 

[VirtualLarry]

Streaming does not count. files must be played from local source which increases the R/W much more so than any streaming.

But when streaming video online, every byte of the stream gets written to disk at some point. Playing back local video files, are mainly reads. They don't get constantly re-written, like what happens with online streaming.

Are you trying to tell me that reads wear out SSDs faster than writes do?

But SSD's fall victim more to heat than do regular hard drives.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8357089

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8357089

That much is true. SSDs are very temp-sensitive.

 

[imagoon]

If you are a big video,tv,movie fan and you download and delete and watch on a continuous basis then video files are the #1 reason for short life span on SSD drives.

We have tons of returns on pc equipment that uses SSD drives for advertisements and the failure rate on those drives are very very high. short life span.

So if I am correct in my assumption that you watch tons of videos then this means you need a second drive in your system which is a normal spinning hard drive and not a solid state drive and watch those videos from that HDD and not the SSD.

You can also further lengthen the life of your ssd by putting your swap file onto the secondary spinning drive as well.

Do you mind citing your comment and providing a definition of what "very very high" actually means? Otherwise this looks entirely like unsubstantiated opinion. For example there could be something about the design of the advertisement system that results in the failures. You stated a correlation but there is nothing here to show causation.

--edit--

I ask because in the high load, high temp environments I have been working with, the SSDs have generally out lived the HDDs.

 

[kitfox]

Actually it was in my main desktop. I don't watch many movies on it (besides youtube and netflix once in a while). The system has (or had) a SSD (os drive) + a 3tb wd (for games/large apps) + 3tb wd (for backup/installers)

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

If you are a big video,tv,movie fan and you download and delete and watch on a continuous basis then video files are the #1 reason for short life span on SSD drives.

Why do you post stuff that is pretty much common knowledge here and to any PC person? Plus the fact he never said anything about any Video's, derail the thread? FEAR FACTOR, so what you eat lunch with an engineer that make you one?



@OP if you can try another program see if that makes a difference or reload it? Also we assume the SSD was and is fine?

 

[kitfox]

CrystalDiskInfo says its ok, but that app seems to always say that unless the drives on fire or head crashing.

It seems to be working ok right now but I don't want it to fail right after the warranties up and be stuck with it. I might just email samsung and see what they think and if they'll except a rma.

 

[Narse]

Streaming does not count. files must be played from local source which increases the R/W much more so than any streaming.

I do not read the industry news on SSD's but I am pretty close to it(chatting with the engineers who do.) and doing a simple search brings up more news that the life of a SSD really will not match that of a traditional HDD at all:
(which is funny as some even argue on the below site that they do. But SSD's fall victim more to heat than do regular hard drives.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8357089

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8357089

No reading files from an SSD will not shorten it's life span. Doing a lot of deleting and rewriting can in a sense shorten the life but not in any way you would see in a normal workstation setting. I will ask my brother to chime in on this as he works in the industry.

 

[Narse]

The response from my brother.

No reads do not wear out flash.

Program and erase cycles are what deteriorates the floating gate. Failure of the floating gate is what causes a cell failure.

All cells in flash memory are in an off state reading a 0. When a positive voltage is applied (write operation) to the cell electrons will flow from the source to the drain and some will stick on the floating gate. This is how a 1 is read from the cell. When a negative voltage is applied (erase operation) the electrons are repelled back from the drain through the floating gate back to the source clearing the floating gate. The cell will then read a 0.

The process of the electrons passing through the floating gate during program and erase operations is what causes wear on the floating gate and will cause failure of the cell over time. There are many different endurance levels of flash that can be anywhere from 100000+ program erase cycles all the way down to 1000 program erase cycles.

Reads simply read the state of the cell and do not cause electrons to flow over the floating gate so no wear is caused on the cell by a read operation.

 

[Narse]

He also says to use Samsung (SSD) Magician to read the SMART attributes.


He also stated that all of the flash memroy for his company is rated from -25C to 85C. They are tested up 10,000 hours without failure, so heat is not a big as an issue as most think.

 

[Narse]

A SMART test should perform the same, not matter if you have a hard drive or SSD. I would back up the data and request an RMA.

Per my brother thats not always the case, the OEM can have propreitery bits that only thier software will read correctly. He suggests that if you see SMART failures using third party software on a SSD to use the OEM's tools and verify. If they show the same info then you should RMA. In short HD Tune may be incorectly reading the SMART bits incorrectly.