Question Help with Confirming a Suspected (Imminent) SSD Failure?

KingOfComputing

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Mar 17, 2013
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I have a SSD that I have owned for about a year that I suspect may be beginning to fail. The SSD in question is a KingSpec 360GB SSD 2.5 Inch SATA3 drive. The symptoms are that sometimes when I am trying to save to the drive e.g. saving a video or image from the web there will be a long pause (5 seconds+) before the Windows save dialog comes up. It is kind of like the drive is asleep and needs to 'wake up' sort of like what happens if you have a HDD that has spun down and parked the heads and needs to spin back up before it can be used. This tends to happen on average about every 8 to 10 times I go to save something. It doesn't have to be a large file I had it happen on a word document a couple of times and the problem can happen soon after it already has, so I don't think it could be a power management issue e.g. Windows turning it off after xx minutes. Also when I go into "this PC" (formerly "my computer") to view the drives it will very occasionally hang trying to show the drives and temporarily lock up file explorer. Similarly sometimes when I am loading from the drive e.g. uploading images to online storage or making a eBay listing I will sometimes get the same pause while it waits to open file explorer. During this 'waiting' time the whole PC seems to become unresponsive but then carries on like nothing has happened once the explorer window comes back.

The thing is, touch wood, the data still seems to save onto the drive ok and load from it ok despite these issues. Plus to further muddy the waters Crystal Disk Info shows the drive status as "good", the temps are low and relatively speaking it has had virtually no use with just over 1TB of reads and writes to it. In the list of attributes everything gets 100 (presumably out of 100?) except the raw read error rate, which is 99, not sure if that is normal?

Is there anything I can get that will do a lower level diagnostic than Crystal Disk to reveal a impending problem with the SSD, or is there any other way I can determine if it is the SSD or something else in the system at fault here?

Alternatively, could I have gotten it completely wrong and the issue is unrelated to the SSD?, but surely it can't be a coincidence that it only happens when I try to read to or write from the drive?

This is most puzzling, so any responses welcomed!
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
"KingSpec" is a very low quality drive. It may indeed be failing.

But as with any storage device, new, old, seemingly perfect or suspect failing...backups are your friend.
Yours may die next year, or as you're reading this.

Full drive backups, on an automated schedule.
 
Is this problem new?
If so, what might have changed since all was well?

Regardless, anything can fail.
If you have data on the drive that you can not lose, buy a replacement ssd.
Prices for 500gb are now reasonable.
Samsung 860 EVO is about $80.
The ssd migration app will move your drive painlessly.
 

KingOfComputing

Honorable
Mar 17, 2013
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10,630
"
"KingSpec" is a very low quality drive. It may indeed be failing.

But as with any storage device, new, old, seemingly perfect or suspect failing...backups are your friend.
Yours may die next year, or as you're reading this.

Full drive backups, on an automated schedule. "

Sure, I know backups are important and I do take them. However, if I can determine the drive has a problem I would rather send it back while it's still under warranty and get it replaced or (preferably) refunded so I don't have to worry about it anymore but I don't want to send it back if there is no problem, so I am wondering how you know for sure? or you only know when it stops working completely?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
"
"KingSpec" is a very low quality drive. It may indeed be failing.

But as with any storage device, new, old, seemingly perfect or suspect failing...backups are your friend.
Yours may die next year, or as you're reading this.

Full drive backups, on an automated schedule. "

Sure, I know backups are important and I do take them. However, if I can determine the drive has a problem I would rather send it back while it's still under warranty and get it replaced or (preferably) refunded so I don't have to worry about it anymore but I don't want to send it back if there is no problem, so I am wondering how you know for sure? or you only know when it stops working completely?
Does KingSpec have a dedicated testing tool?
If so, use it.

But also, what other drives are in this? Sometimes an issue like this is actually due to a whole other drive.
The Save function does not really know that you're wanting to save to this drive just yet. It reads all existing drives in preparation for you maybe saving to some other location, and may pause if some other drive has an issue.

As for 'dying'...I recently had a SanDisk 960GB die suddenly. Literally, in the act of simply powering the system up. It had worked 100% perfect for 3 years.
Then, poof.
 

KingOfComputing

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Mar 17, 2013
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"What other drives are in this system?
What is the full parts list?"

The PC has:
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
16GB DDR4 as 2 x 8GB (Corsair Dominator LPX 3000MHZ)
Asrock AB350M AM4 Motherboard
ASUS GTX1070 8GB Turbo
Be Quiet 530 Watt PSU
Full Tower Case
Windows 10 Pro

Drives:
Corsair MP510 480GB M.2 SSD
Samsung 850 Evo 1TB SATA SSD
Integral 240 GB SSD P Series 5 SATA SSD
KingSpec 360GB SSD 2.5 Inch SATA SSD (the one in question)

BTW, yes I know that is a lot of SSDs :) I upgraded this year and decided to sell off my conventional HDDs in favour of going all solid state with my storage for best possible performance, though it hasn't been entirely successful thanks to this troublesome Kingspec one.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
"a lot of SSD's "

My current system:
Vd60kOB.png
 
SSD too have S.M.A.R.T. run HDsentinel see what it tells you.

Off brands SSD? if they answer u at all, unless u have a complete failure, they are going to tell you, "is normal."

If HDsentinel comes back green, I would keep using it as long as you have backup ready to take over.
 

KingOfComputing

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Mar 17, 2013
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I have just run HD Sentinel on it and I got this message:
"There are 2 bad sectors on the disk surface. The contents of these sectors were moved to the spare area.
At this point, warranty replacement of the disk is not yet possible, only if the health drops further.
It is recommended to examine the log of the disk regularly. All new problems found will be logged there.
The TRIM feature of the SSD is supported and enabled for optimal performance."

Despite that the performance is rated 100% (excellent) and health 98% (excellent).

Bit disappointing that it has any imperfections on it really since it really hasn't been worked hard at all and has only had occasional use. How serious are two bad sectors though? Should I request a return or just leave it?
 
If HDsentinel says OK that's good, so I re-read your original complaint and I don't like that delay. SSD is about smooth, and if you are getting these speed-bump effect, for that alone, I'd dump that sucker and get me a Samsung/Crucial.

(because I am a cheapskate, I'd look for a firmware update before plunking my $$ for new, although for a off-brand, am really being optimistic.)
 
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