[SOLVED] Samsung 970 EVO in laptop died (overheating?) - what's the best substitute generating less heat?

[AleqCZ]

Hi,
apparently my Samsung 970 EVO 2TB NVMe SSD dies after 3 years of service in ThinkPad T580. At about 1-2 years of age there were suddenly few media errors (visible in SMART), few files unreadable, yet surface check showed zero bad sectors (due to remapping)? And then after 3 years, it died completely. Partitions visible, but unable to read anything more out of it. It is out for warranty repair now, but I wonder - was this caused by the heat, being crammed in a laptop without good air circulation? The cooling doesn't reach there I believe.
I'll be upgrading laptop very soon, I plan to make a RAID (Mirror) of two NVMes. Which ones have good performance to heat ratio - ie. which ones perform the best considering the heat generated? I'm aiming for 2TB+ again and generally prefer manufacturing brands, not OEMs reselling reference designs.

Thanks for any tips,
A.

 

[USAFRet]

Why the RAID 1?
There are better ways to protect your data.

The dead 970 may have been heat, it may well have been something else entirely.
Sometimes things do die.

 

[AleqCZ]

Sure, it may have been perfectly just a manufacturing flaw. It would die in well cooled compartment nontheless. Still I believe it's generating more heat than others so I wondered what could I do to minimize the stress caused by unnecessary heat.
Regarding RAID - well, there are two or three slots for M2 (depending on the model, I'm still undecided which one it's going to be). Having 3 NVMe (RAID 5) is an overkill (pricey). RAID 0 is not an option after my recent experience (considering the troubles and financial loss it caused), so if RAID 1 is going to help (and it definitely should!) I was tempted to try it. Of course besides backups etc....

 

[USAFRet]

Sure, it may have been perfectly just a manufacturing flaw. It would die in well cooled compartment nontheless. Still I believe it's generating more heat than others so I wondered what could I do to minimize the stress caused by unnecessary heat.
Regarding RAID - well, there are two or three slots for M2 (depending on the model, I'm still undecided which one it's going to be). Having 3 NVMe (RAID 5) is an overkill (pricey). RAID 0 is not an option after my recent experience (considering the troubles and financial loss it caused), so if RAID 1 is going to help (and it definitely should!) I was tempted to try it. Of course besides backups etc....

With a viable backup routine, a RAID 1 is only good if you really really need 100% uninterrupted uptime.
Otherwise, it is mostly a waste of 50% of your drive space.

 

[AleqCZ]

I need to improve my backup routine, I haven't been running it daily until now. I use restic to have fast incremental backups. Still, backing up whole drive will present a performance hit. I tried once real-time sync using Synology Drive application (most likely not the best thing out there) and had to turn it off.
With RAID, I'd get also double the read speed. But yes, the space get halved, no questions about it...

 

[USAFRet]

I need to improve my backup routine, I haven't been running it daily until now. I use restic to have fast incremental backups. Still, backing up whole drive will present a performance hit. I tried once real-time sync using Synology Drive application (most likely not the best thing out there) and had to turn it off.
With RAID, I'd get also double the read speed. But yes, the space get halved, no questions about it...

My backups, the Incrementals, happen between midnight and 4AM.
There is zero performance hit, and if there were, I wouldn't notice anyway.

Real time sync is a different thing, and that may indeed incur a performance hit.

 

[AleqCZ]

Good point. Just curious, what backup software do you prefer?

Anyway back to the topic, if that 970 EVO's lifetime was impacted by the heat accummulated in closed compartment of laptop, anybody has any recommendation of any 1/2 TB NVMe performing still OK, yet running cooler? SK Hynix looks great, but they don't have 2TB (yet?) and mainly (and strangely) they are not available in EU

 

[USAFRet]

I use Macium Reflect.
Paid version on my main system, Free on all others.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

And yes, I've had to use it to recover from a totally dead drive.



As far as heat killing the 970?
You can't assume that without actual numbers.
Many many of those drives are in laptops all over the world.