Older SSD almost dead

[syntax1993]

Hello guys!
I've got an issue regarding my Samsung PM800 SSD. This SSD was bought along with a Dell laptop a few years ago (I believe its more than 2).
Since a few months, the SSD has been acting strange. Installing software took a long while the computer froze. The SSD couldn't handle Skyrim's disk usage.

So I have put the PM800 to the test against a 6 months old Samsung 830 series SSD (both are 256GB).
Using AS SSD, I have benchmarked both and this is the result:

Installing a game gave me this in the Windows task manager

Is the SSD just too old and has his time come or could something be wrong?
The PM800 has only been used to run Windows (in a laptop first, in a desktop now) and hasn't been defragmented. It has been formatted using the NTFS partition table about 3 or 4 times. It has been used to boot Windows, store the most-used programs and games.


EDIT:
SSDLife tells me this:

Thanks

 

[Dereck47]

You need to Secure Erase the drive to restore it to fresh-out-of-the-box condition.

1.) Backup any needed data on the PM800 and connect it as a secondary drive on your system that has the 830.
2.) Download Samsung Magician software to your 830 and benchmark your PM800. http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/samsungssd/downloads.html
3.) Save your benchmark results and Secure Erase your PM800.
4.) Reboot your system after the Secure Erase and benchmark your PM800 again.
5.) Compare your "before" and "after" benchmark results and see if the Secure Erase worked.
6.) If the SE worked then you can put the PM800 back into its system and do a fresh install of Windows.

Your AS-SSD results for your 830 show storahci which means that you are using Microsoft's AHCI drivers.
If your system is using an Intel CPU then installing Intel's latest AHCI drivers should get you better performance. https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?lang=eng&DwnldID=22271

If your system is using an AMD CPU then installing AMD's latest AHCI drivers should get you better performance. http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx

 

[syntax1993]

You need to Secure Erase the drive to restore it to fresh-out-of-the-box condition.

1.) Backup any needed data on the PM800 and connect it as a secondary drive on your system that has the 830.
2.) Download Samsung Magician software to your 830 and benchmark your PM800. http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/samsungssd/downloads.html
3.) Save your benchmark results and Secure Erase your PM800.
4.) Reboot your system after the Secure Erase and benchmark your PM800 again.
5.) Compare your "before" and "after" benchmark results and see if the Secure Erase worked.
6.) If the SE worked then you can put the PM800 back into its system and do a fresh install of Windows.

Your AS-SSD results for your 830 show storahci which means that you are using Microsoft's AHCI drivers.
If your system is using an Intel CPU then installing Intel's latest AHCI drivers should get you better performance. https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?lang=eng&DwnldID=22271

If your system is using an AMD CPU then installing AMD's latest AHCI drivers should get you better performance. http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/raid_windows.aspx

1.) Backup any needed data on the PM800 and connect it as a secondary drive on your system that has the 830.

Could I just benchmark and SE the PM800 on my desktop using a normal HDD with Windows on it?
The 830 series is inside my ultrabook which makes it tricky. It doesn't have room to connect a second HDD/SSD. I suppose doing those things while running on a HDD shouldn't be a problem.


Thanks a lot for your help. I will start making a backup very soon. I will post back when I've followed these steps.

 

[Dereck47]

Could I just benchmark and SE the PM800 on my desktop using a normal HDD with Windows on it?

Yes you can, I didn't know that your 830 was in an ultrabook, I thought it was in your desktop.

 

[syntax1993]

Could I just benchmark and SE the PM800 on my desktop using a normal HDD with Windows on it?

Yes you can, I didn't know that your 830 was in an ultrabook, I thought it was in your desktop.

Allright. I've had some issues along the way. So I had this 1TB Samsung HDD lying around and installed Windows 8 on it. I ran the Magician software, that for some reason doesn't recognise the SSD as a real Samsung device, and ran the benchmark. This is the result:

This is a terrible result. I tried secure ereasing the SSD but as the PM800 wasn't supported in Magician, I did it using diskpart in Windows, this was the advice I found online.
It was then I noticed AHCI just wasn't enabled in my BIOS settings. I enabled it and re-installed Windows because the IDE-installed Windows didn't boot anymore.
After doing this, the AS SSD tool still didn't show the SSD was on AHCI, even though the Samsung HDD (103SJ) was on AHCI. So after some attempts, I gave up on trying to activate AHCI, the Intel drivers could not install because of the wrong platform as shown below, even though their website states it also works on Windows 8 x64. I'm running Windows 8 Pro x64 by the way, legitimate version.

Anyways, even without being able to get the AHCI to work for the SSD, I ran the Samsung Magician benchmark again and I'm quite happy. Especially if you look at the time it took to run this. almost an hour compared to less than 10 minutes:

If you've got any idea how it would be possible to get the AHCI to work, please let me know.



Thanks a lot for your help so far!
Dieter

 

[Dereck47]

The Samsung PM800 is a SATA 2 (3Gb/s) SSD with advertised Read speeds up to 220MB/s and advertised Write speeds up to 185MB/s.

Your new benchmark results indicate that you are getting 111% of advertised Reads and 91.8% of advertised Writes.

Follow the instructions on this link to edit your Windows Registry File. After you've edited the file you can then go into BIOS and change your SATA mode to AHCI.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/content.php?286-Change-from-IDE-to-AHCI-after-Installation