WD SSD Dashboard is Broken Garbage: Return Drive?

[PeterScott]

I bought a 1TB WD Blue SSD, a couple of days ago and should still be able to get a full cash refund (I haven't read the fine print yet).

I dual boot on Windows 7/10. WD SSD Dashboard crashes instantly on Windows 7, and can't detect the drive on Windows 10. So the SSD management software is totally useless.

Searching community forums it seems like this "unable to detect the drives" problem has been ongoing with any 2.x version:

https://community.wd.com/t/dashboar...ible-bug-version-1-1-4-5-finds-drive/209181/6
https://community.wd.com/t/wd-ssd-dashboard-2-2-0-1-not-detecting-wd-ssd/214951/5

Reverting to an older 1.x version is reported to work.

I tried this older version. It works and detects the driver on both Windows 7 and 10.

But, it doesn't have any typical SSD features, no reading of proprietary SMART values, no remaining life indicators. So it is also useless.

My old Intel drive had working SSD software from day one, that includes drive health, remaining life, SSD optimization, etc...

So the question : Is non working SSD software a significant issue? Should I return the drive for an alternative that should have working SSD software? Cruxial MX300 drives are in the same price range around here (not much else is).

 

[Elixer]

Not really, since you can use 3rd party software like CrystalDiskInfo to monitor the SMART data from a SSD (and whatever else is in your system).

Most all the software they ship is just bloatware. Crucial's software is crappy as well, the only useful feature from that is the PSID reset.

The "optimization" is mostly worthless as well.

Bottom line is, if you got the SSD at a good price, but don't like (or it doesn't have) extra software, I wouldn't sweat it.

 

[PeterScott]

You are right, Crucials SW looks pretty bad too.

The thing I want most is remaining life indicator, but it looks like WD SSD doesn't use standard SMART attributes to track this, so even third part tools can't report it. I tried SSDLife and it works fine on my Intel SSD, but doesn't work with WD SSD:

 

[Elixer]

That is just a SMART attribute and it is shown in CrystalDiskInfo, though, it might be one of those Vendor specific ones.

 

[PeterScott]

That is just a SMART attribute and it is shown in CrystalDiskInfo, though, it might be one of those Vendor specific ones.

Crystal Disk info just spews a bunch of Vendor Specific fields, no "Media Wearout" indicator like it shows for my Intel drive.

I am beginning to think WD just doesn't have the field since they report "Life Remaining" as "Not Supported" even in their own SW.

I am probably going to skip the hassle of trying to return this, and then looking for something else, but WD needs to get it's act together if it wants to be taken seriously with SSDs. I will be warning my friends to avoid them.

 

[ao_ika_red]

I gave up on WD SSD Dashboard few days after I purchased a WD Green SSD. It crashed almost every time I opened it. No luck on its updates either (what's the point of sw update if you don't fix anything?)

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

Crystal Disk info just spews a bunch of Vendor Specific fields, no "Media Wearout" indicator like it shows for my Intel drive.

I am beginning to think WD just doesn't have the field since they report "Life Remaining" as "Not Supported" even in their own SW.

I am probably going to skip the hassle of trying to return this, and then looking for something else, but WD needs to get it's act together if it wants to be taken seriously with SSDs. I will be warning my friends to avoid them.

Think that that was something SanDisk used to do with their SSDs, that is go by number of reallocated sectors rather than wear to determine the drive's health and I guess that has been carried over to WD SSDs.
So I believe WD Blue has SMART attributes related to wear but just don't tie them to life expectancy which is likely why you do not get an estimate in SSDLife.
Because WD Blue and WD Blue 3D likely have similar attributes and the latter has eight attributes related to wear (Total Erase Count, Min/Max/Avg P/E Cycles, MWI, TLC/SLC Writes, and Host Writes).
But despite having so many attributes related to wear the WD Blue 3D has its life expectancy tied to the amount of spare sectors left (if I understand things correctly).

Comparing the SMART of WD Blue and WD Blue 3D I'd say that E6 or 230 is the attribute for Media Wearout Indicator and AD or 173 is the attribute for Average P/E Cycles.
Now the latter attribute the CrystalDiskInfo can display without issue but the former will likely not make sense.
What you can do to have the MWI reported correctly is checking out SMART in Hard Disk Sentinel after setting it to either HIGH word or LOW word (bottom right corner) and you should have MWI displayed with quite the accuracy in the raw numbers (MWI increases in increments of 0,01%, not 1%, meaning that a value of 100 is 1% wear)
As long as SMART is similar between WD Blue and WD Blue 3D of course.

Would understand if all this sounds like a hassle however and you would likely not be able to get the life expectancy reported in the way you want with any application either.

 

[PeterScott]

Unfortunately different tools report different interpretations on what the SMART values mean, which is why decent Vendor tools are important.

I have a snapshot now and I can check them over time to see how they move, but I am very disappointing in how WD handles this, and how bad (crashing, not recognizing their own drive) their software is.

 

[ao_ika_red]

Think that that was something SanDisk used to do with their SSDs, that is go by number of reallocated sectors rather than wear to determine the drive's health and I guess that has been carried over to WD SSDs.

Unfortunately different tools report different interpretations on what the SMART values mean, which is why decent Vendor tools are important.

IIRC, all of WD SSD portfolio are SanDisk rebrands. So, it's no brainer move if WD also rebrand Sandisk's software. But I imagine that SanDisk and WD are well known company and have large resources. So, the way they handle this software glitch is just unacceptable.

 

[PeterScott]

IIRC, all of WD SSD portfolio are SanDisk rebrands. So, it's no brainer move if WD also rebrand Sandisk's software. But I imagine that SanDisk and WD are well known company and have large resources. So, the way they handle this software glitch is just unacceptable.

Yes, WD purchased SanDisk. I blame WD far more than Sandisk for the software Mess.

I am vastly disappointed in the quality of WD software. If anything it seems to have only gotten worse since WD took over.

I have opened a ticket at WD to see if anything comes of it, but I doubt it, there are major show stopper bugs in this software that have been there for multiple versions, and they were introduced by newer versions and never fixed.

I have seen multiple complaints about various versions since 2.x.x.x Not being able to detect drives in Windows 10. This is the case for me as well. I wonder if this SW works for anyone. No mention was made anywhere on the packaging that SSD management SW even exists, so I expect most users probably are just using the drive without SW.

I have managed to find version: 1.4.4.5 on the Internet, and get version 2.2.0.1 and 2.2.0.5 from WD web page. I could find no other versions.

Windows 7:
1.4.4.5: Launches, Detects drives, but reporting Drive Life is "Not Supported", and no SMART values are visible to user in SW, so you have no real indication other than Pass/Fail. So not very useful, but at least semi-functional, I expect this version is from closer to the original Sandisk version.
2.2.0.1: Crashes on startup.
2.2.0.5: Crashes on startup.

Windows 10:
1.4.4.5: Launches, Detects drives, but reporting Drive Life is "Not Supported", and no SMART values are visible to user in SW, so you have no real indication other than Pass/Fail. So not very useful, but at least semi-functional.
2.2.0.1: Software Starts, but does not detect drive, so totally useless.
2.2.0.5: Software Starts, but does not detect drive, so totally useless.

The Windows 10 problem seems widespread, in fact I haven't seen anyone contradict the stories that it fails to detect drives, just a bunch of "me too" and telling people to revert to 1.x.x.x.

So WD took working SW, broke it for most (everyone?) and have released multiple broken versions, and don't have the competence to figure out the bug they introduced. This is damning. It should be trivial to figure out which update introduced the bug and fix it.

This points to a lack of proper QA, lack of developer competence, and ultimately lack of management competence.

 

[ao_ika_red]

No mention was made anywhere on the packaging that SSD management SW even exists, so I expect most users probably are just using the drive without SW.

God, just by reading your post I can feel your frustation.
I recommended the green version to my friends as a proper upgrade from 2.5" HDD and it's cheaper than anything at the time so it's no brainer for them to buy it. When I brought up discussion about this monitoring tool, they had no idea because they though that it would run just like normal HDD do.
That maybe also the reason why WD is extremely slowly in correcting its software. There's not enough pressure to do so.

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

So, it's no brainer move if WD also rebrand Sandisk's software.

Well, I mean they did change the name and the color scheme.
What more could you ask for really?

Unfortunately different tools report different interpretations on what the SMART values mean, which is why decent Vendor tools are important.

HD Sentinel and WD SSD Dashboard does look to display SMART largely the same however.
Checked that when I tested the compression WD Blue 3D uses.

I have a snapshot now and I can check them over time to see how they move, but I am very disappointing in how WD handles this, and how bad (crashing, not recognizing their own drive) their software is.

Can understand that, it's frustrating when bugs are never really fixed.

Just recently checked if WD SSD Dashboard would detect my drive in a computer running W10 and it did.
However WD SSD Dashboard reported that it was in poor shape despite the fact that it is perfectly healthy.
Though that may be because the drive is connected by USB rather than SATA, which can sometimes cause issues.

 

[PeterScott]

Just recently checked if WD SSD Dashboard would detect my drive in a computer running W10 and it did.
However WD SSD Dashboard reported that it was in poor shape despite the fact that it is perfectly healthy.

It may detect some drive models and not others... My Win10 install is a clean dual boot, pretty much just for testing, so it probably doesn't like some aspect of my HW, and I have seen MANY complaints about the drive detection issue in Win10.

What kind of info do you get out of current versions of WD Dashboard when it works? Screenshots?

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

What kind of info do you get out of current versions of WD Dashboard when it works? Screenshots?

Some screenshots coming up:

Now this is my pet peeve with WD SSD Dashboard; that you have to scroll in order to see all of the SMART-values.
Also means you have to take several screenshots if you want to keep track of all the values.

There are a few attributes there that are "WD Internal" but here's what they mean according to HD Sentinel.
166 is minimum P/E cycles, 167 Maximum bad blocks per die and 168 maximum P/E cycles, 173 average P/E cycles and 184 is End-to-End error count.
And I believe 165 is Total Erase Count even though neither software reports what it is for.

You probably didn't notice it but can you see that to the right of Available Reserve Space there is a small green dot instead of the N/A that the rest of them have?
Think that is there to indicate which attribute life expectancy is based on.

 

[PeterScott]

Thanks. Much appreciated.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I probably agree with much said here -- that the optimization software features are not that helpful across the board; that it's bloatware. I always tweak the drive for Win 7 through the OS. Maybe do as much for whatever needs to be done in Win 10. I always install the software and keep it installed if it offers a TBW odometer for the drive. At least with Magician, you get a built-in performance benchmark for any drive of any manufacture in the system. So I now lean toward bigger storage, because I have a tolerance for bloatware . . .

 

[ao_ika_red]

Some screenshots coming up:

Now this is my pet peeve with WD SSD Dashboard; that you have to scroll in order to see all of the SMART-values.
Also means you have to take several screenshots if you want to keep track of all the values.

There are a few attributes there that are "WD Internal" but here's what they mean according to HD Sentinel.
166 is minimum P/E cycles, 167 Maximum bad blocks per die and 168 maximum P/E cycles, 173 average P/E cycles and 184 is End-to-End error count.
And I believe 165 is Total Erase Count even though neither software reports what it is for.

You probably didn't notice it but can you see that to the right of Available Reserve Space there is a small green dot instead of the N/A that the rest of them have?
Think that is there to indicate which attribute life expectancy is based on.

By looking at your first picture, its sensor shows 45 C. Is that a bit on the higher side? Or is it normal SSD temperature? Because tbh this is my first experience in SSD and I never have such high temperature on HDD.
Thank you for your brief explanation, btw.

 

[PeterScott]

By looking at your first picture, its sensor shows 45 C. Is that a bit on the higher side? Or is it normal SSD temperature? Because tbh this is my first experience in SSD and I never have such high temperature on HDD.
Thank you for your brief explanation, btw.

Mine usually runs fairly cool, but when I first copied over hundred GB onto mine it did heat up to over 40C when that was happening. Though mine is inside my case with airflow, his might be in an external enclosure with none. I wouldn't blink as long as it stays below 50C, I think normal operating range may be up to 60C. M.2 drives on MBs often get hot enough to throttle.

I found some pretty good open source SMART software that lines up pretty good with WD values. It usually reports values under 30C:

 

[ao_ika_red]

Mine usually runs fairly cool, but when I first copied over hundred GB onto mine it did heat up to over 40C when that was happening. Though mine is inside my case with airflow, his might be in an external enclosure with none. I wouldn't blink as long as it stays below 50C, I think normal operating range may be up to 60C. M.2 drives on MBs often get hot enough to throttle.

I found some pretty good open source SMART software that lines up pretty good with WD values. It usually reports values under 30C:

I've used Speecy, HWMonitor, SpeedFan, and WD Dashboard. All of them have same temp, which is in 40ish range. I think this is the only one that have different value. I'll try it soon, thanks PeterScott.

Edit: Nope, same value listed with other monitoring software. I think there should be fw update to the green (SiliconMotion) controller. Because if you touch it directly, it's pretty cool, tbh.

 

[PeterScott]

I've used Speecy, HWMonitor, SpeedFan, and WD Dashboard. All of them have same temp, which is in 40ish range. I think this is the only one that have different value. I'll try it soon, thanks PeterScott.

Edit: Nope, same value listed with other monitoring software. I think there should be fw update to the green (SiliconMotion) controller. Because if you touch it directly, it's pretty cool, tbh.

OK, it was not clear from your first post that you were also reading high. I didn't really expect this software to read different. I was Just point out that mine is usually under 30C unless I am loading it significantly.

What is your cooling like near it. Does it get any airflow?

 

[ao_ika_red]

OK, it was not clear from your first post that you were also reading high. I didn't really expect this software to read different. I was Just point out that mine is usually under 30C unless I am loading it significantly.

What is your cooling like near it. Does it get any airflow?

It sits vertically near front panel fans, so it gets plenty of air. I reckon it has usual IC problem, some post their value right, others don't.

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

By looking at your first picture, its sensor shows 45 C. Is that a bit on the higher side? Or is it normal SSD temperature? Because tbh this is my first experience in SSD and I never have such high temperature on HDD.
Thank you for your brief explanation, btw.

Depends on the conditions, really.
It was installed in something similar to this:

The small fans on the back are turned off so drives installed there can get fairly warm just idling.
And then I ran some benchmarks which would have heated it up further.

So some of my drives can idle at around 40-45 degrees and reach 60-70 degrees if they have to read or write large amounts of data so 45 degrees is not that high to me.
There is also some variation between, for example the Adata SP550 can heat up pretty quickly since it lacks a thermal pad for the controller.
My Crucial MX200 also tends to run hot.
If we're looking at mSATA and M.2 (all SATA) they may also heat up a bit faster than your average 2.5 inch SATA drive though again there is some variation; my 850 EVO M.2 has yet to reach 60 degrees but my MX300 M.2 has gone past 70 degrees a couple of times.

Conventional wisdom is that SSDs should be warm when powered on and cold when powered off (that it is better in terms of wear and data retention).
If I remember correctly however then according to JEDEC it is a bit more complicated since there's both positive and negative factors to what the temperature is which means that it may vary which has the greater impact.
However as long as the drive fulfills JEDECs specifications this should be of little concern to pretty much all consumers.
Have seen some drives that can have an aversion to heat when in use but that is more of an issue with the controller/firmware rather than the NAND which is what JEDEC talks about.

Anyway, you're far from a temperature which would cause throttling let alone pose a danger to the drive itself.

I found some pretty good open source SMART software that lines up pretty good with WD values. It usually reports values under 30C:

Think several attributes are not reported accurately though.

165 I believe is the Total Erase Count which is basically a counter of every time it writes something and is why the value is fairly high.
And then 166 is probably Minimum P/E Cycles and 168 Maximum P/E Cycles so that 166 is still at 0 while 168 has reached 1 seeing as you don't look to have written 500GB to it quite yet.
That the SSD Protect Mode (167) has a value of 32 does not make much sense to me since that is for when it enters a read-only state and should therefore probably not change until it has entered said read-only state. I think it instead is supposed to be Maximum Bad Blocks Per Die.
Also think that 173 (or AD) should be Average Erase Count since that is what AD usually stands for.
Then 230 (Life Curve Status) is probably Media Wear Out Indicator while 233 (Media Wear Out Indicator) is TLC Writes because MWI should be reported like in 230 and 233 should be the number of GB written to the TLC NAND.
Finally I'd guess that 244 is Temperature Throttle Status.

Otherwise I can't detect any serious errors however.
I mean if we're picky 170 (Reserved Block Count) should likely be Grown Bad Blocks (which works in the opposite way) since there's already a similar attribute in 232 but that is not such a big issue.

You might want to check out the SATA-cables however since Command Timeout has increased and they may be the cause (though not necessarily).

 

[PeterScott]

I probably agree with much said here -- that the optimization software features are not that helpful across the board; that it's bloatware. I always tweak the drive for Win 7 through the OS. Maybe do as much for whatever needs to be done in Win 10. I always install the software and keep it installed if it offers a TBW odometer for the drive. At least with Magician, you get a built-in performance benchmark for any drive of any manufacture in the system. So I now lean toward bigger storage, because I have a tolerance for bloatware . . .

It's not bloatware because you only run it as needed, and it should work. It should be better at interpreting wear/lifespan.

It's also the only way to update firmware AFAIK.

Very disappointing that it is such a steaming pile of garbage.

 

[PeterScott]

Think several attributes are not reported accurately though.

Yeah, I am using your posted images as a conversion(thanks again). Though it is the closest open source tool. I can read it mostly without conversion.

As far as the timeout. I had bumped the sata cable half off the drive while it was running. I reseated it right aways, so I will keep an eye out to see if the values increase.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

It's not bloatware because you only run it as needed, and it should work. It should be better at interpreting wear/lifespan.

It's also the only way to update firmware AFAIK.

Very disappointing that it is such a steaming pile of garbage.

Yeah! Interesting point! I always find it annoying that the drives often need at least one firmware upgrade, and the software in {Magician, Executive, SSD-Toolbox,,, . . . . . } usually makes it happen.