SMART Status Bad, backup and replace for SSD

[LeanMan82]

I got this message (but if you follow my original thread you can see I was messing around a lot with the motherboard and the SATA connections:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3443051/windows-boot-moving-sata-cables.html#19826489).

But in any case, I got this message for my Kingston 120 GB SSD. Does it make sense to see a hard drive failure message for an SSD? Typically SSDs are less prone to failure or so I thought. Any ideas?

Error message

SATA Port 1: Kingston SNV425S2128GB
S.M.A.R.T Status Bad, Backup and Replace.
Press F1 to Run SETUP[\Quote]

 

[Rookie_MIB]

You would actually need to see what the status is that kicked off that warning. There are many levels of degrading which could be happening quickly, or slowly. What I would do:

Pull the drive out, put it in a working computer as a secondary drive, and load a toolbox program which will show you the exact smart code which triggered the fault. You could have had a program/erase failure, a sector remapping from a die going bad, a whole slew of things which could have randomly happened which may have indicated a single random failure instead of a cascading failure which is going to kill your drive.

 

[LeanMan82]

You would actually need to see what the status is that kicked off that warning. There are many levels of degrading which could be happening quickly, or slowly. What I would do:

Pull the drive out, put it in a working computer as a secondary drive, and load a toolbox program which will show you the exact smart code which triggered the fault. You could have had a program/erase failure, a sector remapping from a die going bad, a whole slew of things which could have randomly happened which may have indicated a single random failure instead of a cascading failure which is going to kill your drive.

I got the drive to boot and I'm in it. What can I use to decipher SMART codes? Please let me know and thank you for your suggestion!

 

[dudeman509]

You would actually need to see what the status is that kicked off that warning. There are many levels of degrading which could be happening quickly, or slowly. What I would do:

Pull the drive out, put it in a working computer as a secondary drive, and load a toolbox program which will show you the exact smart code which triggered the fault. You could have had a program/erase failure, a sector remapping from a die going bad, a whole slew of things which could have randomly happened which may have indicated a single random failure instead of a cascading failure which is going to kill your drive.

I got the drive to boot and I'm in it. What can I use to decipher SMART codes? Please let me know and thank you for your suggestion!

Download a utility like Hard Disk Sentinel or HDTune.

 

[Rookie_MIB]

I use Acronis Drive monitor (freeware) although there are several out there which are also free which will show you, here's another one:

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/disk_smart_view.html

There are several critical parameters, some SSD specific, some HDD specific. Important ones for SSDs:

Program fail count, erase fail count, wear leveling count. Program and Erase failures indicate that it couldn't write data to a block or clear a block of NAND and could indicate a bad block, or pending failure. Wear leveling count means that you could be getting close to the maximum usage of your SSD. Every time a block is erased it actually has to be hit with some pretty hard voltage and there are only so many writes that NAND can sustain. This is on the order of a few thousand times, which is why there's a wear leveling algorithm to spread it all out. Normally you can get many years out of a SSD even under some pretty heavy loads (10-20GB writes a day)...

So - get the codes and tell us what it says...

 

[LeanMan82]

This is what HD Sentinel said - I think I'm fine and it was just my booting issues caused by the MBR being corrupted.

    S.M.A.R.T.
   ------------
No.  Attribute                Thre.. Value  Worst  Data                Status                   Flags                                                  
1    Read Error Rate          50     100    100    000000000000        OK                       Error-Rate, Statistical, Critical                      
2    Throughput Performance   50     100    100    000000000000        OK                       Performance, Critical                                  
3    Spin Up Time             50     100    100    000000000000        OK                       Performance, Statistical, Critical                     
5    Reallocated Sectors Co.. 50     100    100    000000000000        OK                       Event Count, Statistical, Critical                     
7    Seek Error Rate          50     100    100    000000000000        OK                       Error-Rate, Statistical, Critical                      
8    Seek Time Performance    50     100    100    000000000000        OK                       Performance, Critical                                  
9    Power On Time Count      0      100    100    000000002CC1        OK (Always passing)      Event Count, Statistical                               
10   Spin Retry Count         50     100    100    000000000000        OK                       Event Count, Statistical, Critical                     
12   Drive Power Cycle Count  0      100    100    000000001739        OK (Always passing)      Event Count, Statistical                               
168  SATA PHY Error Count     0      100    100    000000000000        OK (Always passing)      Event Count, Statistical                               
175  Bad Cluster Table Coun.. 10     100    100    000000000000        OK                       Statistical, Critical                                  
192  Unexpected Power Loss .. 0      100    100    000000000000        OK (Always passing)      Event Count, Statistical                               
194  Disk Temperature         20     40     100    0029001C0028        OK                       Self Preserving, Statistical                           
197  Current Pending Sector.. 0      100    100    000000000000        OK (Always passing)      Event Count, Statistical                               
240  Vendor-specific          50     100    100    000000000000        OK                       Event Count, Statistical, Critical                     
170  Bad Block Count          10     100    100    000000E2002C        OK                       Statistical, Critical                                  
173  Erase Count              0      100    100    1D4E2931215C        OK (Always passing)      Event Count, Statistical

 

[dudeman509]

Looks fine from here.

 

[Rookie_MIB]

Read error rate, pending sector reallocation, and reallocated sectors all show zero so I agree - you're fine. It's pretty hard to kill a drive once it's up and running. Most times a failure either happens right off the bat which is a manufacturer defect or issue, or it'll last near forever. I have some 64GB Crucial drives in my webserver which have been in use for years with zero issues.

Here's the data from mine:
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 48073
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 81
170 Grown_Failing_Block_Ct 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
171 Program_Fail_Count 0x0032 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 0
172 Erase_Fail_Count 0x0032 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 0
173 Wear_Levelling_Count 0x0033 099 099 010 Pre-fail Always - 49
174 Unexpect_Power_Loss_Ct 0x0032 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 0
181 Non4k_Aligned_Access 0x0022 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 29 25 3
183 SATA_Iface_Downshift 0x0032 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 0
184 End-to-End_Error 0x0033 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0032 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 0
188 Command_Timeout 0x0032 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 0
189 Factory_Bad_Block_Ct 0x000e 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 48
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x003a 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 100 001 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 1
202 Perc_Rated_Life_Used 0x0018 099 099 001 Old_age Offline - 1
206 Write_Error_Rate 0x000e 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 0

48,000 hours of use (5.5 years), and I've had zero program or erase fails, zero read errors, it's got a wear level count of 49 and it hasn't moved the indicator from 99 to 98. At this rate I think it'll live longer than I will. Everyone always worries about 'wearing out the SSD' and it truth, with a good MLC drive you won't ever wear it out unless you have a stupidly high load on it.

 

[attila.darvassy]

Hello !

I hope it is OK to resurrect this thread

I have the same problem as the original OP and have already downloaded HD Sentinel (without taking my ssd out and putting it in another PC). What it says is that the smart error is because of the SSD Life. It says I have 231 left.

1. What does 231 mean ? Days ? Then I have plenty of time. Specific use cycles ? Then I don't

2. I bought this SSD in June of 2015 and according to HD Sentinel it has been in use for 448 days and 13 hours. Starts / Stops were 3.353. I use my PC daily, but never leave it on for more then 12 hours or so.

Is it realistic that my SSD is already at the end of its life ? I don't consider myself a real hardcore user and thought that SSDs realistically have a long life span. Bought my HDD a week after the SSD and it is still going strong

3. I use my SSD as the windows partition and have only installed some competitive online games on it during its lifetime. No more than 3 though. Should i immediately proceed to move them over to the HDD ?

4. I watch A LOT of online videos and browse the web a whole bunch. Both my browsers are installed on the SSD. Should I move them over to the HDD ? Does that effect the lifespan so much ? I imagine it is a lot of reading and writing. Still...

5. The SSD in question is an ADATA SP900 and I currently have NO data on it, that is super crucial. Only browser data which I backup via Firerfox Sync. Is it ok to use the SSD as long as I can ?

Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance !