Wear Leveling Count

[Brovane]

Yesterday I got a immemient disk failure alert on my computer for my Crucial M4 SSD. I installed HD sentinel and got the smart error, Wear Leveling Count has a value of 10 and the threshold is 10. Does this mean that the threshold for wear leveling count was set at 10%? This Crucial SSD is less a little over 2 years old and is the primary OS drive for my computer.

 

[Phynaz]

It means whatever Crucial says it means. SMART attribute data isn't standardized, so you should ask Crucial.

 

[BrightCandle]

I have a wear level count and a percentage life time used and both read 99 (as in 99% of the life of the disk remains). Wear level count is basically a count of how many times the entire disk has been erased, but then CrystalDiskInfo will convert it to a percentage counting down from 100, so 10 means 10% of those remain. My wear level actual count is 2F, that is I have effectively erased the entire disk (2x16 + 15) 47 times. The rated lifetime of MLC NAND in the M4 is 3000 so 47/3000 = 1.5% usage which matches the 99 it reports. In CrystalDiskInfo you should be able to read the hexadecimal numbers on the right as well and determine how many writes you have done.

Its likely to tell you a number somewhere around 2700. That tells you there is about 300 remaining complete erase cycles to the disk left, giving you 300 x the disk size writes left before the drive can't be written to anymore and you'll need a new one. You must have really been hammering that disk!

 

[Soulkeeper]

I wouldn't worry about that.
It's up to whatever app how they interpret the smart data
more often then not they just set standard alerts of like 10 for everything

My wear leveling count on my M4 is 49
the most important one is
Reallocated_Sector_Ct
and a few with "Fail" "Error" or "Uncorrect" in the names are likely worth watching

 

[VirtualLarry]

Its likely to tell you a number somewhere around 2700. That tells you there is about 300 remaining complete erase cycles to the disk left, giving you 300 x the disk size writes left before the drive can't be written to anymore and you'll need a new one. You must have really been hammering that disk!

Makes me wonder if the partitions are mis-aligned.

OP, is this install cloned from an HDD, or is this XP OS?

 

[Brovane]

I have a wear level count and a percentage life time used and both read 99 (as in 99% of the life of the disk remains). Wear level count is basically a count of how many times the entire disk has been erased, but then CrystalDiskInfo will convert it to a percentage counting down from 100, so 10 means 10% of those remain. My wear level actual count is 2F, that is I have effectively erased the entire disk (2x16 + 15) 47 times. The rated lifetime of MLC NAND in the M4 is 3000 so 47/3000 = 1.5% usage which matches the 99 it reports. In CrystalDiskInfo you should be able to read the hexadecimal numbers on the right as well and determine how many writes you have done.

Its likely to tell you a number somewhere around 2700. That tells you there is about 300 remaining complete erase cycles to the disk left, giving you 300 x the disk size writes left before the drive can't be written to anymore and you'll need a new one. You must have really been hammering that disk!

The Hexadecimal number in Crystal is 5A for the Raw Value. However in Hard Disk Sentinel it shows 2703 which make more sense. I have really no idea what was hammering the disk that hard on this machine. It is the just the OS disk on my computer. Looks like I need to look for a new SSD!!

 

[Brovane]

Makes me wonder if the partitions are mis-aligned.

OP, is this install cloned from an HDD, or is this XP OS?

I loaded Windows 7 on this computer from scratch.

 

[BrightCandle]

At least unlike a hard drive the disk has told you its about to stop working with time to buy a new one and plan an upgrade. How cool is that?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have really no idea what was hammering the disk that hard on this machine. It is the just the OS disk on my computer.

Were you running any Distributed-Computing applications, especially BIONC? They "checkpoint" regularly (and frequently, unless you change the settings), and that can wear out an SSD really quickly.

Using SSDLife, my OCZ Agility 30GB SSD, installed fairly fresh, went down to 75% life after a month or two running BOINC. Granted, those SSDs are small, and dont have the greatest write-amplification optimizations like newer drives. But it had nearly 10TB written in two months.

 

[Brovane]

Were you running any Distributed-Computing applications, especially BIONC? They "checkpoint" regularly (and frequently, unless you change the settings), and that can wear out an SSD really quickly.

Using SSDLife, my OCZ Agility 30GB SSD, installed fairly fresh, went down to 75% life after a month or two running BOINC. Granted, those SSDs are small, and dont have the greatest write-amplification optimizations like newer drives. But it had nearly 10TB written in two months.

I didn't have BIONC but I had another one installed. That is a good point about Distributed-Computing applications.

I am contacting Crucial and seeing if I can get a RMA for this SSD since it is within 3-years. I read online that other people with excessive wear within 3-years could get Crucial to RMA it. If not no big deal I get to do some SSD shopping. However I might as well try to see if I can get a RMA. I know in the future I am doing to have installed a utility like Disk Sentinel to keep track of some of the SMART metrics so I am not caught off-guard again.

 

[tweakboy]

Smack the SSD cuople times it brings back to life. In my case.

 

[Brovane]

Crucial is going to replace the SSD under warranty. Should have the replacement here by Friday.

 

[Phynaz]

That's good news

 

[Brovane]

That's good news

Yes it is. They originally wanted me to send the current SSD back first and then they would ship me a replacement. I called them and explained to the rep on the phone the SSD was still working (Just the wear issue) and I wanted to image it to the new one. So if I gave them a CC# would they ship me the replacement first and then once they received the bad SSD they could reverse the charge. Very pleasant to work with at Crucial and where more than willing to work with me.