Question SSD is at very low health, what to do now ?

Jun 22, 2022
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My SSD's health is at 4% and it is decreasing every day.

What happens when it reaches 0%?

What should I do now to prevent data loss? Should I re-install my OS in other drive and get rid of the current one? Or there is something to be done to fix the current one?

SSDTranscend 120GB TS12GSSD220S
SOFTWARE USED TO DEBUGHard Disk Sentinel
SSD POWER ON TIME772 days 6hrs
SSD LIFETIME WRITES26.24TB
OSWindows 10
 
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KananX

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Question is how the software is measuring health, is it by official numbers of the manufacturer or by real health checking the SSD? Probably the former. So I would just use it and start worrying if the pc starts to act up. Also if the health is at zero, it means you can’t copy or move data on it anymore, as if it were turned to stone.

Official duration numbers are just a guaranteed minimum btw, it can and will most cases work way past that data cycle.
 

Ralston18

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Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Make and model SSD? Capacity, how full? How old is the SSD? Source: original to host computer, added later, external drive? How connected?

More information needed.

What app, utility, etc. is indicating 4% health? 0 % health would likely be a dead/non-functional SSD. However a dead drive of any sort generally happens with little or no warning.

Data loss may occur at anytime no matter what you do.

Back up all data on that SSD as soon as possible (hopefully not too late already). Verify that the backups are recoverable and readable.

Then you can see what, if anything, can be done with the suspect SSD. You may not be able to ever trust it again.
 

Ralston18

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Question is how the software is measuring health, is it by official numbers of the manufacturer or by real health checking the SSD? Probably the former. So I would just use it and start worrying if the pc starts to act up. Also if the health is at zero, it means you can’t copy or move data on it anymore, as if it were turned to stone.

Official duration numbers are just a guaranteed minimum btw, it can and will most cases work way past that data cycle.


I would not advise "So I would just use it and start worrying if the pc starts to act up. "

Two points:

1) The reason that the SSD is at 4% is unknown. Something else could be going on with the host computer. Already "acting up" as I see things.

2) Yes, continuing use of the drive is an option but risks data loss, corrupted files that, in turn, could cause other problems, etc..

Again: the immediate requirement is to get all important data backed up if at all possible.
 

KananX

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I would not advise "So I would just use it and start worrying if the pc starts to act up. "

Two points:

1) The reason that the SSD is at 4% is unknown. Something else could be going on with the host computer. Already "acting up" as I see things.

2) Yes, continuing use of the drive is an option but risks data loss, corrupted files that, in turn, could cause other problems, etc..

Again: the immediate requirement is to get all important data backed up if at all possible.
Yes after thinking a bit more about it I agree. I would only use it as a secondary device if at all, and back up everything and use a different drive instead.
 
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Jun 22, 2022
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Question is how the software is measuring health, is it by official numbers of the manufacturer or by real health checking the SSD? Probably the former. So I would just use it and start worrying if the pc starts to act up. Also if the health is at zero, it means you can’t copy or move data on it anymore, as if it were turned to stone.

Official duration numbers are just a guaranteed minimum btw, it can and will most cases work way past that data cycle.

I'm using a software called Hard Disk Sentinel
 

KananX

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Yes.

The drive is 772 days 6hrs old

A lot of data was shuffled on it, yes. Lifetime writes 26.24TB
It’s not very old, I have a way older ssd that is still at 100% health.
Everything checks out, in the end it means the measurement is correct and you just (ab)used it a lot. Two solutions: either don’t use it much anymore, don’t shuffle around data anymore, change temporary data files to use another drive, in windows settings, stuff like this. Or you have to backup the data and replace it. What I said is only a short term solution, but as I said earlier, the health measurement is probably just based on the base guarantee of the manufacturer about how much data flow it can “survive” before it’s basically unusable. It could very well be still usable even after it reached “0%”. In long term data tests SSDs have usually lived way past the guaranteed minimum of the manufacturer, but this is a risk, you have to decide to take or not. As SSDs aren’t expensive anymore, I would personally not do it and just replace the device.
 
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TOSHIBA DT01ACA100

when I look for the device I see a HDD not a SDD
health of a hdd can drop very fast if you drop the drive and its heads servos do not seek to the sector markers on disk correctly.
Toshiba DT01ACA100 1TB 7200RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6GB/s 3.5-inch Hard Drive
 
Last edited:
Jun 22, 2022
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TOSHIBA DT01ACA100

when I look for the device I see a HDD not a SDD
health of a hdd can drop very fast if you drop the drive and its heads servos do not seek to the sector markers on disk correctly.
Toshiba DT01ACA100 1TB 7200RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6GB/s 3.5-inch Hard Drive

Sorry, there was a mistake. I have updated my post.

The correct drive is: Transcend 120GB SSD TS12GSSD220S
 
lFSAJphzTPS_2AoF6_5Eng.png
Please show screenshot from SMART section instead.
 
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Karadjgne

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Hard Disk Sentinel is reading health wrong.
You have 4% of SSD life used up. This means 96% life left.
Don't think so.
Re-read. "The Health is determined by SSD specific SMART attribute(s): #169 Remain life %"
Op has 4% left.

It's a Transcend, so bottom barrel silicon, controller.
It's a 120Gb, so was never high on the list anyway for life read/write cycles.
Power On time: 722 days, 12 hours. That's actual time running, not how old it is. If it was running 24/7 it'd be 2 years old. If it was run 3hrs a day, it would have been bought 15.8 years ago.

Back up the data, buy a new ssd, toss that Transcend in the recycle bin.
 
The Average Erase Count is 0x5A2. That corresponds to 198TB.

https://ipv4.google.com/search?q=0x5a2+x+128GiB+in+TB

The Total Data Written attribute has a value of 0xD1FE3. If each unit really does correspond to 32MiB, then the data written is 29TB.

https://ipv4.google.com/search?q=0xd1fe3+x+32+MiB+in+TB

That corresponds to a write amplification factor of about 7:1. This seems much too high.

It does seem to me that the SSD is near the end of its rated life. However, I would question whether 32MB is indeed the correct unit for attribute 241. One way to test this would be to write a 1GB file to the drive and compare the value of attribute 241 before and after.
 
When your ssd fails due to write endurance it will become a read only drive.
Each block of memory on the ssd has limited write endurance when one bit becomes frozen the entire block will be marked as bad and the data will be read from the block, copied to a new block and the old block marked as bad. You will see the drive shrink in size as this process continues.
Note: Most current drives hide some blocks for this process but cheaper or older drives do not. You can extend the life of the drive by deleting files from the drive, remove the pagefile.sys from the drive, The drives firmware will run after the system is idle for 5 minutes. The firmware does the cleanup of the drive and helps maintain drive health. Often system are set to sleep too fast and this process is blocked by the windows sleep functions. I would suggest that you delete files and empty recycle bin and get about 20% free space then boot into bios and leave the system powered on in bios for a few hours to allow the firmware cleanup to complete. It might extend the life of the drive.

you might also download and run crystaldiskinfo.exe as a second source of reading the smart data. Some older drives may not conform to standards and their info may be incorrectly decoded.
check for firmware updates and special programs for your actual drive from the vendor.