# Careful: Samsung EVO 4TB SSD (high failure rates)



## MegaPixel

Hi,

Just letting people know, be careful when your buying a large size SSD, seems Samsung (who also sell their chips to other manufacturers to use in their products) are doing sneaky things like using the good (nand?) chips for the early part of the storage, but the cheaper or even B grade stuff for the last part of it.

I bought a 4TB EVO in August 2021, it failed after 1 month. Amazon sent a replacement and now this one is failing also.

I've not had any issues with any of my 1TB or 2TB EVO SSDs, rock solid and some 5+ years old and been driven every day 24x7x365 but just an FYI on the 4TB and above SSDs, be careful, there's a lot of crap out there at the moment, especially with the chip / rare earth material shortage.

FYI
Samsung QVO Drives = 3 year warranty (budget buyers, cheapest parts etc)
Samsung EVO Drives = 3 to 5 year warranty (middle ground)
Samsung PRO Drives = 5 year warranty (supposedly the best you can get from samsung, bar going NAS SSD RED PRO)


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## zigzag

Did SSD fail completely or just part of it? 

Could you post S.M.A.R.T. values of the drive? I have Samsung 860 EVO 4TB and I'm wondering if it is possible to predict SSD failure using SMART.


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## ptram

That's wonderful! I have a 4TB QVO for part of my sample libraries. And since all Samsung devices I've owned (two DVD players, a cell phone and a vacuum cleaner) have broken…

Paolo


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## MegaPixel

zigzag said:


> Did SSD fail completely or just part of it?
> 
> Could you post S.M.A.R.T. values of the drive? I have Samsung 860 EVO 4TB and I'm wondering if it is possible to predict SSD failure using SMART.



Unable to post SMART results at the moment doing a full scan... It says it will take 6 hours, but for the last drive it took nearly 12...

However, SMART did show 2 failures on the previous drive, and there are 2 failure on the quick SMART scan on this one.

Luckily after last failure, I bought 2 x WD Black 8TB drives to ensure I didn't loose anything again. 1 internal frequent backup and for external infrequent backup.


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## Hadrondrift

My 870 EVO 2 TB SSD failed after 6 months with many bad blocks. SMART-Values 05, B3, B7, BB, C3 increased daily. Everything looked similar to the log posted by @MegaPixel. The drive was replaced by Samsung. There seems to be a problem with the 870 series, I can see similar feedback of other users in other forums. Hopefully only a specific batch is affected. I bought my drive mid 2021.

I have been using Samsung drives for many years and also in the same computer in which the failing one was operated. I have never had a single S.M.A.R.T. error before.


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## MegaPixel

Hadrondrift said:


> My 870 EVO 2 TB SSD failed after 6 months with many bad blocks. SMART-Values 05, B3, B7, BB, C3 increased daily. Everything looked similar to the log posted by @MegaPixel. The drive was replaced by Samsung.
> 
> There seems to be a serious problem with the 870 series. Hopefully only a specific batch is affected. Bought my drive mid 2021.



I bought the drive in August 21, it failed after a month. Amazon sent out a replacement but now this one is going also.


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## MegaPixel

RE: Samsung Magician
The latest version of Samsung Magician I've not been able to get to work for over a year now, I have to use an older version of the software. Many have this problem, Samsung know about it but don't seem to care.

RE: RE: Samsung Magician
With my first 4TB Evo, the full system scan didn't show any bad sectors at all which is why I got my hands on HardDrive Sentinel. But there were 1000s of CRC errors reading and writing files. Samsung Magician only seems to be able to show SMART errors, I think the full scan is just a re-allocation (repair scan) so quite possibly they made it so that it wont show any errors anyway due to re-allocation of bad sectors. But as SMART failures are occurring on reads and writes it will just keep re-allocating and flagging those sectors as non usable. But it does have a CSV export which gives a bit more info, so that boxes thing is not really helpful, just a big progress bar lol


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## Hadrondrift

Just for you information, in my full diagnostic scan of the drive with the Samsung Magician Tool, there were many red blocks visible in the graph (bad blocks). And they never went away, not even after repeated runs.


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## zigzag

Is it possible there were some defective NAND flash chips from the start and errors started showing up when drive got filled up to a point where defective cells were located?


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## zwhita

MegaPixel said:


> seems Samsung are doing sneaky things like using the good (nand?) chips for the early part of the storage, but the cheaper or even B grade stuff for the last part of it.


Following that logic, wouldn't the QVO drives be showing more frequent failure rates? Or is the problem only the controller hardware? I bought my 4TB QVO in mid July; it's about half full and I have not had any problems with it yet.


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## MegaPixel

Hadrondrift said:


> Just for you information, in my full diagnostic scan of the drive with the Samsung Magician Tool, there were many red blocks visible in the graph (bad blocks). And they never went away, not even after repeated runs.



Interesting, I've never seen any errors on the full scan but the export after it has shown me errors. EG. HardDrive Sentinel screen shot is catching them as Samsung Magician is doing its scan.




zigzag said:


> Is it possible there were some defective NAND flash chips from the start and errors started showing up when drive got filled up to a point where defective cells were located?



I'm at 70 to 75% full, I try never to fill an SSD past 80% or 85% at most. I had about 5 crucial SSDs fail on me when filled past 90%.



zwhita said:


> Following that logic, wouldn't the QVO drives be showing more frequent failure rates? I bought my 4TB QVO in mid July, it's about half full and have not had any problems with it yet.


Could be a number of factors, QVO is lower write rating and I think a different kind of chip (stacking), and probably a different kind of controller to handle read/writes. So all could be fine with them but they really screwed something up on the larger 870 EVOs. See screen shot, my other EVOs are rock solid and taken way more of a hammering than the 4TB one has.


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## Pictus

Thanks for the warning!
A substitute maybe the PNY XLR8 CS3040, it is fast enough, excellent TBW and good price +- $520


https://pcpartpicker.com/product/46QcCJ/pny-xlr8-cs03040-4-tb-m2-2280-nvme-solid-state-drive-m280cs3040-4tb-rb



4TB Model M280CS3040-4TB-RB 
Total Terabytes Written (TBW) 6800TB 
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF, hours) 2,000,000 
DWPD 0.93DWPD









PNY XLR8 CS3040 SSD Review


Review of the PNY XLR8 CS3040 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD Solid-state drives (SSD) have been a boom for home and business users alike. The obvious reason is that end users have been able to enjoy increasingly faster data access speeds with each passing year, but an often overlooked consequence of SSD innov




nascompares.com


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## ip20

870s were mentioned. Is it safe to assume 970s might also be affected?


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## ip20

Thanks for the suggestion @Pictus! Any other brands you’d recommend?


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## zigzag

MegaPixel said:


> I'm at 70 to 75% full, I try never to fill an SSD past 80% or 85% at most. I had about 5 crucial SSDs fail on me when filled past 90%


Filling it up once completely after formatting it for the first time, might help detect defective chips. However, this does use up one write of each cell.


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## MegaPixel

Pictus said:


> Thanks for the warning!
> A substitute maybe the PNY XLR8 CS3040, it is fast enough, excellent TBW and good price +- $520
> 
> 
> https://pcpartpicker.com/product/46QcCJ/pny-xlr8-cs03040-4-tb-m2-2280-nvme-solid-state-drive-m280cs3040-4tb-rb
> 
> 
> 
> 4TB Model M280CS3040-4TB-RB
> Total Terabytes Written (TBW) 6800TB
> Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF, hours) 2,000,000
> DWPD 0.93DWPD
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PNY XLR8 CS3040 SSD Review
> 
> 
> Review of the PNY XLR8 CS3040 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD Solid-state drives (SSD) have been a boom for home and business users alike. The obvious reason is that end users have been able to enjoy increasingly faster data access speeds with each passing year, but an often overlooked consequence of SSD innov
> 
> 
> 
> 
> nascompares.com



I just ordered a WD Black 8TB from Amazon.

I will keep using the smaller SSDs and my NVME for boot but will wait 3 or 4 years till PCIE Gen 4 mobos are more mature (and cheaper). As well as incorporating the newer architecture of direct access (like how I think the ps5 or xbox latest works for cpu to storage). And hopefully there are 4 or maybe 5 NVME PCIE Gen4 slots which can all run at max speed on the motherboard. And And lol DDR5 will have matured by then also. I do a full machine update every 5 years, often excluding the drives but I think this time I will include the drives and just keep my case. It's going to be an expensive one but it's work and it's my entertainment system also.

But if I do buy another SSD it will probably be the PRO series from now on, or maybe it's time I bite the bullet and get a 6 Bay NAS on the go with 10GB ethernet and buy a 10GB ethernet card for my machine also. Problem is samsung typically sell their chips to other manufacturers.




zigzag said:


> Filling it up once completely after formatting it for the first time, might help detect defective chips. However, this does use up one write of each cell.



Once this full scan is done, I have a full backup so I will 100% max out the drive with some script just duplicating files till its full to see what falls over, then run a CRC check on all files and see how many fail. Either way, it's a phone call to Amazon in a few days to see if they will send out a replacement, if not it's an email to Samsung.


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## Hadrondrift

ip20 said:


> 870s were mentioned. Is it safe to assume 970s might also be affected?


My two 970s are still running very fine 
I don't think 870s are generally bad. I more think there could have been an error in the production process at a specific time, bad wafers, whatever. They give you 5 years warranty, so they seem to be quite confident about the stability of this product.


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## tc9000

I had a 1TB Samsung 860 QVO fail on me after a couple of months. Got a refund from Amazon. I have a number of T5s and they are all good (so far!).


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## MegaPixel

Hadrondrift said:


> My two 970s still running very fine
> I don't think 870s are generally bad. I more think there could have been an error in the production process at a specific time, bad wafers, whatever. They give you 5 years warranty, so they seem to be quite sure about the stability of their products, normally.



My 1TB EVO 850 is running great (very old, was my work drive, now is mirroring my main work drive and is still going strong). And the smaller 970 EVOs are fine too, but not sure I will trust another 870 EVO 4TB again... Not with work data anyway. Maybe sell it...



tc9000 said:


> I have a number of T5s and they are all good (so far!).


I will have to have a look into the T5s and some others, see where the chips are coming from, 3D nand, the controllers etc.


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## Pictus

ip20 said:


> Thanks for the suggestion @Pictus! Any other brands you’d recommend?


You are welcome.
It is more of model than brand, for 4TB with higher TBW: (PNY 3040 is better)

Sabrent Rocket 4TB (GEN3)
Model = SB-ROCKET-4TB
MTBF = 1,800,000
TBW = 6070

Seagate FireCuda 530 4TB (GEN4)
Model = ZP4000GM30013
MTBF = 1,800,000
TBW = 5100

There are SSDs with very big TBW
https://basic-tutorials.com/news/adata-prospector-ssd-endurance-m-2-ssd-for-chia-mining-unveiled/








PNY LX2030 and LX3030 M.2 NVMe Gen3 x4 Solid State Drives More Endurance for Your Chia® Plotting Needs-PNY


PNY announced today the launch of the LX2030 and LX3030 line of ultra high endurance SSDs to the company’s assortment of solid state drives. The new LX families of SSDs offer ever higher levels of endurance designed for “proof of space and time” applications like Chia (XCH) Plotting.




www.pny.com.tw




But if it is a drive you fill with libraries and only keep reading, there is no need to worry about TBW.


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## MegaPixel

Pictus said:


> You are welcome.
> It is more of model than brand, for 4TB with higher TBW: (PNY 3040 is better)
> 
> Sabrent Rocket 4TB (GEN3)
> Model = SB-ROCKET-4TB
> MTBF = 1,800,000
> TBW = 6070
> 
> Seagate FireCuda 530 4TB (GEN4)
> Model = ZP4000GM30013
> MTBF = 1,800,000
> TBW = 5100
> 
> There are SSDs with very big TBW
> https://basic-tutorials.com/news/adata-prospector-ssd-endurance-m-2-ssd-for-chia-mining-unveiled/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PNY LX2030 and LX3030 M.2 NVMe Gen3 x4 Solid State Drives More Endurance for Your Chia® Plotting Needs-PNY
> 
> 
> PNY announced today the launch of the LX2030 and LX3030 line of ultra high endurance SSDs to the company’s assortment of solid state drives. The new LX families of SSDs offer ever higher levels of endurance designed for “proof of space and time” applications like Chia (XCH) Plotting.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.pny.com.tw
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But if it is a drive you fill with libraries and only keep reading, there is no need to worry about TBW.



Oh I'm miles away from TBW, I will be very lucky to pass it in 5 years, especially on a EVO 4TB SSD (might come close with a QVO drive).

Other than my music files I do go through a lot of small files, 1,000,000s in a day easy (node_modules folders)... And over this weekend wrote a program to parse the Serum VST database, copy its presets with any rating above 1 star to another drive and organise them. Had to do this about 5 to 10 times testing it, so that probably ran up around 0.5m file transfers 20GB per a run for copy in total, a few de-duplication scans for CRC/HASH sha checksum duplicate file comparisons (about 50 gb on scan) and then the errors started to roll in.

But while I noticed some presets were getting CRC errors on copy, I thought I better do a check, and low and behold my NI install folder had quite a lot of CRC read errors which is typically just a read only folder.

But the scan is still going, another 8 to 10 hours to go till completion.... Then I will do a scan with hard drive sentinel and check the logs. Then I format and fill the drive up and do a checksum check on all files on drive to see if any corruption has occurred. But I doubt it will be ok.


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## Pietro

Maybe the 860 model is faulty, cause Ive had 3 of 850 4TB models for a couple of years with no issues whatsoever.

- Piotr


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## MartinH.

Maybe the model numbers don't matter and it's the manufacturing date that is more important? I've had a 1TB 870 EVO drive from last year fail after less than a year too. Definitely not helping my general distrust against SSD technology.


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## MegaPixel

Pietro said:


> Maybe the 860 model is faulty, cause Ive had 3 of 850 4TB models for a couple of years with no issues whatsoever.
> 
> - Piotr


It's only the larger 870 EVOs that seem to have the problem.

Ye, this drive is really starting to fail now... Errors are rolling in fast now...

Just thank god I downloaded all the NI libraries to HD this time, took me nearly 2 weeks to download it all after the last failure (really crap internet where I am)... I wrote a program to rip the AWS download links from native access and put them into FreeDownloadManager to auto download them, put on HD and in a draw. Takes a while to manually install it all though, some are zip files (which is easy), the rest are ISO files which have to be mounted as a virtual drive/cd/dvd to install correctly... Takes quite a while to do it all manually though... Then at the end run native access and it will auto authorise each of the installations.




MartinH. said:


> Maybe the model numbers don't matter and it's the manufacturing date that is more important? I've had a 1TB 870 EVO drive from last year fail after less than a year too. Definitely not helping my general distrust against SSD technology.



A lot of manufacturers are changing parts due to the chip / material / production issues / rare earth material shortages at the moment. It's why EVGA (I think it was) had those blowing up PSU's, they swapped out some capacitors from their normal supplier which were cheaper and they were going pop. A few of the SSD and RAM makers who are supplied by samsung have been caught using the good chips for the early stages of the modules and the cheaper / B grade components for the later / end modules. People have been noticing huge speed fall offs at 50% to 60% capacity on SSDs. *And they have the exact same model / serial numbers.* A monitor manufacturer (ACER) just fell victim to this by swapping out a capacitor or something on the pcb for a cheaper version made by a different manufacturer and they been going up in smoke...


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## MegaPixel

MartinH. said:


> Maybe the model numbers don't matter and it's the manufacturing date that is more important? I've had a 1TB 870 EVO drive from last year fail after less than a year too. Definitely not helping my general distrust against SSD technology.



Also a few years back, it was the controller software which was writing and reading corrupt data to SSD drives, crucial and a few others made a right mess of that... Not so bad now but I still wouldn't dare fill an SSD over 90%, if I do it's by mistake.


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## mussnig

Pictus said:


> Thanks for the warning!
> A substitute maybe the PNY XLR8 CS3040, it is fast enough, excellent TBW and good price +- $520
> 
> 
> https://pcpartpicker.com/product/46QcCJ/pny-xlr8-cs03040-4-tb-m2-2280-nvme-solid-state-drive-m280cs3040-4tb-rb
> 
> 
> 
> 4TB Model M280CS3040-4TB-RB
> Total Terabytes Written (TBW) 6800TB
> Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF, hours) 2,000,000
> DWPD 0.93DWPD
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PNY XLR8 CS3040 SSD Review
> 
> 
> Review of the PNY XLR8 CS3040 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD Solid-state drives (SSD) have been a boom for home and business users alike. The obvious reason is that end users have been able to enjoy increasingly faster data access speeds with each passing year, but an often overlooked consequence of SSD innov
> 
> 
> 
> 
> nascompares.com


I got that one (also with 4 TB) in October and intended to use it for samples. It started to show serious problems after a couple of days. I contacted the manufacturer with the SMART data and they told me that it doesn't look good and that the drive needs to be exchanged.

In the end the communication with the reseller was not so easy (regarding the warranty process) and they didn't replace it but eventually gave me my money back (only received it last week).

Anyways, I probably just had a bad sample and it will work fine with others. Funny thing is that I jumped on a 870 QVO 4 TB deal as I was looking for a replacement. So far it works flawlessly (I have it as an internal drive) but since I keep most non-Kontakt libs on a faster, external NVME, it's not even half full. I hope it will not start to fail ...


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## jbuhler

MartinH. said:


> Maybe the model numbers don't matter and it's the manufacturing date that is more important? I've had a 1TB 870 EVO drive from last year fail after less than a year too. Definitely not helping my general distrust against SSD technology.


I haven’t installed a new SSD in about a year and I’m frantically knocking on wood, but SSDs have been rock solid for me and I haven’t done a lot to ensure I’m buying top of the line. I have about twenty of them, though not all of them are currently in use, and several of those in use are way more than five years old. I’ve yet to have one fail. They usually get taken out of service due to needing more capacity. I haven’t bought any larger than 2TB though. And I try to keep around 10% free even though they are being used mostly for samples and therefore reading. 

Hard drives on the contrary fail on me regularly.


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## MartinH.

MegaPixel said:


> Not so bad now but I still wouldn't dare fill an SSD over 90%, if I do it's by mistake.


Not even sample drives that are basically read only?


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## MegaPixel

jbuhler said:


> I haven’t installed a new SSD in about a year and I’m frantically knocking on wood, but SSDs have been rock solid for me and I haven’t done a lot to ensure I’m buying top of the line. I have about twenty of them, though not all of them are currently in use, and several of those in use are way more than five years old. I’ve yet to have one fail. They usually get taken out of service due to needing more capacity. I haven’t bought any larger than 2TB though. And I try to keep around 10% free even though they are being used mostly for samples and therefore reading.
> 
> Hard drives on the contrary fail on me regularly.


Depends on the Hard Drive manufacturer and often the delivery service...
I've had so many Seagate drives fail on me I lost count, and before that Maxtor. But now I wont buy anything other than Western Digital Black. I've only ever had 1 fail on me and that was just 1 partition which I just deleted and all was fine. But I destroyed 5 seagate drives copying that damaged drive to them. Got to about 50% complete and each failed, never touched them since.

And the delivery service... Well if the drive has been treated like a football on its way to you it will either not work or not last long or you could end up with a drive that lasts a long time and makes lots of clicking noises. They have internal self repair mechanisms which will do what it can to a point but there's only so much it can do. 



MartinH. said:


> Not even sample drives that are basically read only?


Not any SSD, they way an SSD works is the fuller they get the slower, then over provisioning comes into play which can allow you to use 100% of the drive but it really slows the drive down a lot. It kinda changes the way the drive works and how data is stored. In the early days I wouldn't go past 80%, now 90%. But the speed drop off gets worse and worse the fuller an SSD gets, even if it's just read only content.


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## Hadrondrift

jbuhler said:


> I’ve yet to have one fail. They usually get taken out of service due to needing more capacity.


Exactly the same here. I have had about 25 SSDs in use over the last years, most of them got swapped out just to be replaced by a bigger one, not because of age or degradation. I have never had any single failure of any of my SSDs. In contrast, I have had many HDDs from different manufacturers fail.

My 870 EVO 2 TB I bought half a year ago is the first failing SSD for me ever. And as usual, it just replaced a 1 TB 860 that had been running at the same SATA port forever. I think it is plausible that the cause is somehow related to the current material shortage and a consequently lowered manufacturing quality. The pandemic is becoming a bit of a nuisance, although faulty SSDs are of course the least evil...


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## jbuhler

MegaPixel said:


> I've had so many Seagate drives fail on me I lost count, and before that Maxtor. But now I wont buy anything other than Western Digital Black. I've only ever had 1 fail on me and that was just 1 partition which I just deleted and all was fine. But I destroyed 5 seagate drives copying that damaged drive to them. Got to about 50% complete and each failed, never touched them since.


Maybe. I have some of both seagate and WD and honestly haven’t see differential failure in my use. I’ve lost a few of each. I use HDs primarily as backups though I have a few for scratch disks. Oddly the scratch disks don’t seem to fail any more often even though they get written to and erased much more frequently.


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## MegaPixel

Hadrondrift said:


> Exactly the same here. I have had about 25 SSDs in use over the last years, most of them got swapped out just to be replaced by a bigger one, not because of age or degradation. I have never had any single failure of any of my SSDs. In contrast, I have had many HDDs from different manufacturers fail.
> 
> My 870 EVO 2 TB I bought half a year ago is the first failing SSD for me ever. And as usual, it just replaced a 1 TB 860 that had been running at the same SATA port forever. I think it is plausible that the cause is somehow related to the current material shortage and a consequently lowered manufacturing quality.


It could be...

In the early days I had 5 crucial ssd's fail on me, each time I filled them up too far, wouldn't even boot, "please insert system disk". Sent it back, got a replacement, then with the 5th I got a refund. Since then I've only had 2 SSDs fail on me, the 1st 870 EVO 4TB and now its replacement.

But I've had the same experience with Western Digital Black drives, they have been very reliable and with 24x7 use, but I've known people who have had 3 fail on them on each replacement. I still got some which are over 10 years old still working (well I had, the old drives on my shelf count was getting a bit much so I binned them before xmas, all fine but I don't like putting work on drives older than 5 years).

But in the day I'm compiling 1000s of files all day long every couple of minutes, often doing downloads and uploads at the same time, running a server, database etc, so any drive in my machine gets grinded a lot. The irony is my music drives don't get grinded like that but that's the 1 that's failed on me twice but I did grind it with a couple of 1,000,000 files doing de duplication scans and preset sorting deletion and auto folderization etc and running them a few times to get the desired result. Even windows explorer had trouble opening some folders due to too many files being in there, if I tried to use the mouse to cut and paste files it would stop responding and I'd have to wait a while and then paste (move) the files. Then switched to dos/shell/terminal/cli to do it. Then trying to clear the recycle bin, right click on bin icon, wait 2 to 5 minutes for right click menu to appear and then click empty. wait another 2 to 5 minutes for it to scan the files and delete... And sometimes it was pretty much game over, CTRL ALT DEL end windows process and restart it and try again...

But my kontakt drive is spread over 2 SSDs, the 4TB one has the main NI stuff on it and the other one 3rd party libraries only. But all presets, sample packs etc are on the 4TB and I run a de duplication checksum check on that (90GB ish) each time I add to it. Nearly every pack or free download I get I run the check. I bought one pack for £150 and 60%+ of the samples in it were duplicated in it's own pack and not my library. Emailed who I purchased it off and they offered me 2 other packs for free, done a scan on them and they were nearly 40% duplicates also just with different names. Then I add them to my library and do another duplicate scan and clean out the duplicates. So the drive takes quite the hammering when doing this... Especially since November and December sales.

However each time I got the files (samples, presets, downloads etc) to a state I like I sync to my WD Black internal frequent backup, then at the end of each week I then backup from the WD Black internal to my external WD Black, not a single problem (so far, touch wood, hopefully haven't jinxed myself)....


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## MegaPixel

You also got the File Allocation Table to think about... Which can take up a lot of space the larger the drive.


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## YaniDee

It's not just Samsung snd SSDs..Ive had two Seagate Usb Drives (2Tb and 4Tb) which I treated with kid gloves (only used for archiving), die on me within a year of purchase. They replaced the 4Tb, but I don't know if I trust my backups on them now now..


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## gamma-ut

YaniDee said:


> It's not just Samsung snd SSDs..Ive had two Seagate Usb Drives (2Tb and 4Tb) which I treated with kid gloves (only used for archiving), die on me within a year of purchase. They replaced the 4Tb, but I don't know if I trust my backups on them now now..


With externals, you might want to try removing a failed drive and bunging it into a new caddy - the ones where you can just slot a SATA drive in the top are handy for testing them. IME it's often the interface controller that dies not the actual drive, particularly if it died without any form of warning.


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## MegaPixel

YaniDee said:


> It's not just Samsung snd SSDs..Ive had two Seagate Usb Drives (2Tb and 4Tb) which I treated with kid gloves (only used for archiving), die on me within a year of purchase. They replaced the 4Tb, but I don't know if I trust my backups on them now now..


I have my very old, heavily used work drive in an external portable *serbarent case (click to view)* which I use as a portable drive. The drive is fine, well that's what Samsung Magician states but Hard Drive Sentinel states, "Problems occurred between the communication of the disk and the host 178597 times", which could be the usb buss, IRQ issues etc. But make sure you got a case like the serbarent above and a dock so you can check its not the portable unit that the drive is plugged into that's at fault. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alxum-Docking-Station-Function-Tool-free-Black/dp/B01K7GXMTC/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=242DIW3XMYXUX&keywords=hd+external+drive+bay&qid=1641165636&s=computers&sprefix=hd+external+drive+bay%2Ccomputers%2C49&sr=1-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzUDlFVFdMWUhJOUNHJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNjk3NDYwMkUxUU4zV1M0WktHWSZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwODM3OTE4MkRNUkFUSlpHWEhKSyZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU= (Click to view hotswap bay for HD and SSD here)

I've had a few blue screens while windows has been trying to read huge files from it, but it's health is reported as 97% fine, but this is rare. But I've never had an external SSD fail on me... It's quite possible that it could fail if left off for a very long time and next to a magnet or large speaker....

USB Keys, ironically I've never had a USB key fail on me, but omg they are so slow... It would be quicker to write down the binary 1's and 0's of the file that to copy a kontakt library to one... But I've had some which you can't boot from for some reason (installing linux) etc, but works fine for everything else other than booting a computer. I still use a 16GB usb drive I bought from 7 day show back in around 2006 ish.

But for external storage I would use a HD, again WD Black but a WD Blue would suffice for that also. External portable WD drives of 8TB are nearly 1/2 the price of a WD Black internal 8TB but it's a WD Blue I think in the external drives. I buy the black and dock it in a bay to make the weekly backup from the daily backup WD black driver.

More info on samsung magician and its tools... overprovisioning, trim & rapid:


----------



## YaniDee

gamma-ut said:


> With externals, you might want to try removing a failed drive and bunging it into a new caddy - the ones where you can just slot a SATA drive in the top are handy for testing them


Thanks. I have a IDE/SATA to usb adapter, and was able to open the case of the 2Tb..it did not help. The 4TB is completely sealed. In the end, there was a lot of time wasted trying to recover data, not to mention all the time spent gathering terabytes of files for archiving. This is why I do backups of backups..Luckily it was all replacable stuff. When it comes to original music & photos, I do triple backups!


MegaPixel said:


> But for external storage I would use a HD, again WD Black


I have several WD drives that are working 10 years later..(hope I don't jinx them!)


----------



## zigzag

MegaPixel said:


> I've had so many Seagate drives fail on me I lost count, and before that Maxtor. But now I wont buy anything other than Western Digital Black.


Yes, I had the same experience with Seagate. They were dropping like flies. Backblaze is the only company I know that publishes disk reliability reports. HGST (now sold as WD Ultrastar/Gold series) are the most reliable HDDs according to those stats. Seagate has gotten much better over past few years, but it's still the worst. 

They have just started including SSDs in reliability reports, but they don't have enough long running SSD drives yet to make meaningful conclusions. 

Luckily, a SSD drive had never failed me (yet). And I often fill them up over 90% (Not on purpose, I'm just always running out of space). My 4TB 860 EVO has currently only 58GB free and I haven't yet installed new libs I bought during Black Friday/Christmas sales. The issue with SSDs, I read online, is that when they fail, they often fail completely.


----------



## MegaPixel

zigzag said:


> The issue with SSDs, I read online, is that when they fail, they often fail completely.


Yep, pretty much... When an SSD goes, your done...

Data can be recovered by a service but costs a LOT!


----------



## Niah2

Bad experiences with Seagate here as well but this was more than 10 years ago? I can't remember but there was an issue with the manufacturing, seems similar to this I don't know. I've started to get Western Digital HDD both internal and external after that and never and any problems. Recently I have a new PC with 3 internal SDD samsung drives, one is 970 EVO and the other two are 870 QVO. It has only been 1 month of usage but so far so good, I am keeping my fingers crossed and backing things up as usual to WD HDD, it's a hassle and it takes forever but yea that's what it is.

Thank for the heads up !


----------



## typewriter

For heavy use servergrade SSDs may be a good way to go. But those are expensive. 
I also have a 860 evo where the Samsung Software states an issue. Sandisc Ultra 3Ds where pretty reliable to me (2 TB).


----------



## 3CPU

For longer than I can remember, I always keep capacity at no more than 50%. I have not had any failures with Crucial SSD and Samsung NVMe, except for one exception, one HDD failure many years ago, that old HDD got hammered to death lol. And I agree with Pictus, I think some models are lemons. And my other rule is, nothing is running in the background, and I prefer to do manual updates and backups. Not such a chore for a personal home studio setup with no deadlines. My next backup drive might be an OWC external for the Apple M1 Max.


----------



## ip20

3CPU said:


> And my other rule is, nothing is running in the background, and I prefer to do manual updates and backups.



How do you limit or stop things running in the background?


----------



## MegaPixel

ip20 said:


> How do you limit or stop things running in the background?


In short you can't stop them all and you never will but you can limit them, on windows they are services and startup programs. But you will have OS level stuff which you can't stop, well some you can but not all, some will cause your computer to be unstable if you do, and some will force your computer to restart if you shut them down. Try killing certain processes via task manager and windows will often freak out...

On windows:
1. press left windows key to open start menu and type *services.msc*
2. press left windows key to open start menu and type *startup *it should short list options, and the top one should be called *Startup Apps*
3. Install Glary Utilities and use the tools available to you from within that program to really really get into the optimisation of things. (CCleaner can do the same job also but doesn't have all the feature Glary does, both are FREE)
4. Use NVSlim to install a stripped down version of the latest NVIdia drivers (if you got an nvidia graphics card)
etc

NOTE: When stopping services, you need to disable them not just stop them.

NOTE: Services.msc shows you details on mostly everything and what it is and does, but google any of them for more information.

NOTE: You can also see services running in win10 Task Manager (CTRL + ALT + DEL and open Task Manager) or right click task bar and click Task Manager etc, should be last tab.

*IMO*
This is pointless, I do try to keep the startup programs to a minimum, and I do prevent at most 3 services from running but for the most part of it, there is little point. If your having latency issues with your machine and the OS Kernel then this can be a mission. But you got indexing services running by windows which MS have made sure if can screw things up if its ever disabled, eg the search on start bar, which is conveniently tied into Cortana and used to be IE but now it's edge, and once disabled some/many programs wont even be listed anymore etc.


----------



## MegaPixel

Well the SSD results are in... And it looks like it's a call to Amazon tomorrow to see if they will do a 3rd replacement or tell me to frank boff and call samsung...

I zipped up some folders and started a checksum/crc/read check on those files, all were corrupt and non-readable.

The full surface scan found no problems at all... Typical, but HardDrive Sentinel was logging a lot out while Samsung Magician was doing it's scan...

Just wrote a little program to scan and read every file on the drive, if any read failures happen then it loggs them to a database so I can check my backup drives that I got them or re-download what I need..... #sigh

Here's what I will be going to Amazon / Samsung with for replacement no 3...



https://aftc.io/samsung-evo-failure/ssd-1.png





https://aftc.io/samsung-evo-failure/ssd-2.png





https://aftc.io/samsung-evo-failure/ssd-3.png





https://aftc.io/samsung-evo-failure/ssd-4.png





https://aftc.io/samsung-evo-failure/ssd-5.png





https://aftc.io/samsung-evo-failure/ssd-6.png





https://aftc.io/samsung-evo-failure/ssd-7.png





https://aftc.io/samsung-evo-failure/ssd-8.png



https://aftc.io/samsung-evo-failure/ssd-9.png


----------



## 3CPU

ip20 said:


> How do you limit or stop things running in the background?


Apologies! My wording is not always the best. For example, I disable startups that are not critical and won't cause instability. I also disable auto updates and never install monitoring software that is typical of graphics cards and printers. 

The DAW PC is almost always *offline*! I prefer to transfer files via USB drive, and Windows itself is also on a USB drive. Doing this also provides a backup. Most importantly, the backup drives only run when I initiate once or twice a day for typically one project! Limiting runtime/usage and not exceeding 50% capacity. 

Whereas my other computers are for online duties, specifically for shopping, Email, streaming videos and for posting on this great forum.


----------



## EvilDragon

MegaPixel said:


> Not any SSD, they way an SSD works is the fuller they get the slower, then over provisioning comes into play which can allow you to use 100% of the drive but it really slows the drive down a lot.


I can't say this happens on any of my pretty filled 850 EVOs. They're chock full and they still perform at their peak. They're just reading, after all.

I also have it confirmed by Blake Robinson from Spitfire, who has an even larger number of chock full SSDs - read performance is unaffected.

Write performance, whole other ballgame.


ALSO: https://epicgametech.com/is-full-ssd-slower-is-it-a-myth-or-a-fact/


----------



## MegaPixel

EvilDragon said:


> I can't say this happens on any of my pretty filled 850 EVOs. They're chock full and they still perform at their peak. They're just reading, after all.
> 
> I also have it confirmed by Blake Robinson from Spitfire, who has an even larger number of chock full SSDs - read performance is unaffected.
> 
> Write performance, whole other ballgame.
> 
> 
> ALSO: https://epicgametech.com/is-full-ssd-slower-is-it-a-myth-or-a-fact/


Hi EvilDragon,

Looks like all that stuff I done on the NI thread about 6 months back with your info on corrupt NI downloads is about to be put into good use... again....

RE: SSD maxed out
I just don't trust them enough to fill them past 90%, but I got another WD Black 8TB on order now, I don't mind waiting a little extra for things to load.


----------



## MegaPixel

3CPU said:


> Apologies! My wording is not always the best. For example, I disable startups that are not critical and won't cause instability. I also disable auto updates and never install monitoring software that is typical of graphics cards and printers.
> 
> The DAW PC is almost always *offline*! I prefer to transfer files via USB drive, and Windows itself is also on a USB drive. Doing this also provides a backup. Most importantly, the backup drives only run when I initiate once or twice a day for typically one project! Limiting runtime/usage and not exceeding 50% capacity.
> 
> Whereas my other computers are for online duties, specifically for shopping, Email, streaming videos and for posting on this great forum.


I do the same, I have an 8TB internal WD Black for frequent (daily or every other day backups) and an external 8TB WD Black for once a week backups.

But I do the backups manually via a free tool called SyncBackFree, you can setup a copy profile and just let it do the synchronise for you. In effect acting like raid 2 or a mirror. You can ask it to give you a report or just go full silent do it's job or set time schedules but I only run it when I need to run it.


----------



## zigzag

@MegaPixel thanks for SMART report! Weird how positive Reallocated Sectors Counts status is marked as "OK". Status should be at least "Warning/Caution". Reallocated Sectors are bad sectors from which the controller was still able to read the data and move it to good sectors. Uncorrectable errors mean the data could not be read anymore and is lost. 

I hope the 3rd replacement will finally be OK. When you get the replacement, I would recommend testing it, by filling it up 100% (blocks used for over provisioning unfortunately won't be tested) and do the CRC check of the files (and monitor SMART during the process).


----------



## gamma-ut

Do the WD Blacks still make that constant ticking sound? I banished my last one to the broom cupboard because of it.


----------



## MegaPixel

gamma-ut said:


> Do the WD Blacks still make that constant ticking sound? I banished my last one to the broom cupboard because of it.


Some do, some don't, that's probably a sign of it being treated badly in delivery...

But I've heard the ticking noise on all of them not just Western Digital (any colour), on my very old HDs the arm mechanisms are quite loud. After using SSDs its much easier to notice it as your not used to it anymore.

And Amazon are sending out a 3rd replacement of the SSD, which is good because contacting samsung is a pain....


----------



## gamma-ut

MegaPixel said:


> Some do, some don't, that's probably a sign of it being treated badly in delivery...
> 
> But I've heard the ticking noise on all of them not just Western Digital (any colour), on my very old HDs the arm mechanisms are quite loud.


The ticking was a symptom of what WD called "preemptive wear levelling" that had the mechanism move every five seconds or so. It was particularly bad in a batch released around 2018-2019 and I doubt had anything to do with delivery, given that a powered-down drive has the heads parked. For fairly obvious reasons, they are not designed to have the arms move out of park if hit with a sudden mechanical shock short of dropping one off a cliff. 

The clicking was not part of regular data-access head movement. However it was on that batch or SKU bizarrely loud. 

I've never had any other make of drive that had that characteristic.


----------



## MegaPixel

zigzag said:


> @MegaPixel thanks for SMART report! Weird how positive Reallocated Sectors Counts status is marked as "OK". Status should be at least "Warning/Caution". Reallocated Sectors are bad sectors from which the controller was still able to read the data and move it to good sectors. Uncorrectable errors mean the data could not be read anymore and is lost.
> 
> I hope the 3rd replacement will finally be OK. When you get the replacement, I would recommend testing it, by filling it up 100% (blocks used for over provisioning unfortunately won't be tested) and do the CRC check of the files (and monitor SMART during the process).


I will do a copy from the backup WD Black drive to the 3rd replacement and then fill it up with copies of 10GB files till its maxed out to see if it survives.

But I just got of online web chat with Amazon and they are sending out another one, which is good as dealing with samsung can be a pain.

Now for about 4 hours of comparing whats on the drive and whats on my last backup and to see what can be salvaged and re-downloaded. Seems I can't make a zip of any new files on the drive as they just end up corrupt. Better get the downloads started...


----------



## fabian

I have a few Samsung SSD and NVME..everything works fine here at the PC, the same for the macbooks. But they are very "sensitives" is you use cheap data cables..I have lost a whole Kontakt library missing 1 year ago, (bad DATA cable contact)


----------



## MegaPixel

gamma-ut said:


> The ticking was a symptom of what WD called "preemptive wear levelling" that had the mechanism move every five seconds or so. It was particularly bad in a batch released around 2018-2019 and I doubt had anything to do with delivery, given that a powered-down drive has the heads parked. For fairly obvious reasons, they are not designed to have the arms move out of park if hit with a sudden mechanical shock short of dropping one off a cliff.
> 
> The clicking was not part of regular data-access head movement. However it was on that batch or SKU bizarrely loud.
> 
> I've never had any other make of drive that had that characteristic.


Never trust the heads of a HD to parked... There's a very good chance they are not powered down correctly coming off the assembly line and the arms wont be parked at all.

If the click was the rotary system then thats bad...

I still have an Amiga A1200 with a 1MB SCSI HD in it which works fine to this day (early / mid 90s), silent, no clicking or mechanical noise at all lol My WD Black 8TB on the other hand when thats taking a backup I think it would shake itself apart if it wasn't screwed into the cage in the machine lol


----------



## MegaPixel

fabian said:


> I have a few Samsung SSD and NVME..everything works fine here at the PC, the same for the macbooks. But they are very "sensitives" is you use cheap data cables..I have a whole Kontakt library missing 1 year ago, (bad DATA cable contact)


That's another common issue, many of the cables (not just SATA) sold by Amazon etc are not the best quality, but I always keep a 5 to 10 around from different manufacturers just encase. 

It's also a problem with Display Port and HDMI cables, I've had many a display port cable from Amazon which can't handle what it's rated for. Some didn't even fit in the display port connector itself. Even had issues with USB type A cables for midi controllers / printers which dont fit or are too loose and just randomly loose connection. Then some which get too much noise, tried ferrite cores on them etc. Amazon is a cable nightmare... But even the reputable cable manufacturers are starting to loose their quality.


----------



## MartinH.

jbuhler said:


> I use HDs primarily as backups though I have a few for scratch disks. Oddly the scratch disks don’t seem to fail any more often even though they get written to and erased much more frequently.


I think I've read somewhere that HDDs tend to last longer with regular use because it keeps some kind of lubricant in the bearings in better shape.



MegaPixel said:


> The full surface scan found no problems at all... Typical, but HardDrive Sentinel was logging a lot out while Samsung Magician was doing it's scan...


Scan? More like scam, eh? Will you still be using that tool in the future? 

Thanks for all the links and info you provide. I've bookmarked the thread and will need to watch some of those videos later this week.


----------



## gamma-ut

MegaPixel said:


> Never trust the heads of a HD to parked... There's a very good chance they are not powered down correctly coming off the assembly line and the arms wont be parked at all.


This isn't how HDDs are designed, at least not since they traded stepper motors for voice coils back in the time of the dinosaurs.


----------



## MegaPixel

MartinH. said:


> I think I've read somewhere that HDDs tend to last longer with regular use because it keeps some kind of lubricant in the bearings in better shape.
> 
> 
> Scan? More like scam, eh? Will you still be using that tool in the future?
> 
> Thanks for all the links and info you provide. I've bookmarked the thread and will need to watch some of those videos later this week.


*RE: HD Persistent use*
Na, as long as you don't go banging a HD around you should be able to keep one going for a very long time, even with being powered off for a very long time. I got drives on my shelf which have not been powered up in years, holding old work data and all is fine. It's *BIT ROT *due to age you got to worry about in these cases. The main issue other than time and being powered down is more of an electronics (components) thing than a HD having moving components thing... Which is *component drift*. When I was working a process technician we used to age the iMac's and various monitors from various manufacturers by 7 years in 4 days by temperature shifting them from hot to cold over and over for 3 days straight. This will cause the pcb components to drift from their rated specs/tolerances very quickly (capacitors, resistors, surface mount technology etc). Then we put them through testing again and if they passed out the door they go to the consumer, even though being aged. If the machines were left on, most of the time they would pass but if you powered down and then turned on that's when a failure would mostly likely happen, either by a surge or something not getting the voltage it needs or too much etc. The HDs mechanical components which move are so well built they are designed to handle it, but even they have pcb's on them.

I've had more PCs fail on me after being powered off for a long time than when in use. Mechanical systems like HDs do wear but they are built so well and designed for motion and heat they take it better than say a motherboard can.

*RE: Samsung Magician Scan BS*
Ye, that software is complete shait but with HardDrive Sentinel running in the background watching the HD or SSD it tells me more of what is going on while it's doing it's scan, even though it was all good, it was accessing those sectors and saying, ye its all fine here move along but HD Sentinel was going, erm... no... dude... that sector should be quarantined and never re-visited again... lol


----------



## odod

i just purchased Sandisk Extreme 1Tb, only few days after i am using it with HOOPUS, it started to say the disk low etc .. so annoying, i am thinking to buy Samsung T7, but seeing this thread i must carefully spend my money with decent SSD


----------



## MegaPixel

odod said:


> i just purchased Sandisk Extreme 1Tb, only few days after i am using it with HOOPUS, it started to say the disk low etc .. so annoying, i am thinking to buy Samsung T7, but seeing this thread i must carefully spend my money with decent SSD



As far as I can tell its 870 EVO series and ones over 2TB which are having the most problems...

I have 1TB and 2TB 870 EVO's and an 850 EVO which are all fine and have held their ground very well... The 4TB 870 EVO on the other hand... Yeeesh... 3rd time lucky maybe...

Remember samsung make many of the chips for the others also, same with ram... C14 is better, than C16 and C18 ram etc. 3D Nand vs non stacked nand storage, QVO vs EVO vs PRO... EVO supposed to be middle ground...

If reliability is paramount then I think from now on I will buy the PRO range or maybe even try out a NAS grade drive.


----------



## Pietro

I hate to say this, but there is something to this issue. I re-checked and I do have one 870 4TB, which is less than a year.

And I only checked this, because it's been acting weird the past couple of days. It's going into these bursts of 100% activity without anything going on on the drive - or by simply trying to browse through directories. I checked SMART, and what do you know! 91 uncorrectable errors... I'm backing everything up again to yet another drive. It goes suspiciously slow.

This 870 is the newest EVO of the 4 big ones that I have (the other ones are 860 4TB), and the only one with a problem. Sigh. May have to return as well. It's 6 months old!

Thanks for this thread, I wouldn't have checked it otherwise.

- Piotr


----------



## szczaw

Wow, I have two 3gbs and 2gbs 10+ years old io-fusion drives that I've been overheating and everything is fine. Old enterprise level tech maybe safer bet these days


----------



## Instrugramm

I'm currently running 2x 4TB 870 EVOs, no problems so far (at least according to SMART diagnostics). Had a 4TB EVO 860 before that running up until a few months back without a problem as well... sure hope they won't fail on me, glad I saw this thread, I'll definitely keep an eye on my drives.


----------



## tmhuud

We are seeing early failures n 2 TB Pro Evos..... (New out of the box)


----------



## jcrosby

This is a really solid (mac) resource for monitoring drives. It should give you early warnings if the drives start to develop issues. Every time it's warned me, drives have inevitably failed.






DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility


DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.




binaryfruit.com


----------



## cloudbuster

Just want to say thank you to all the contributors so far since I was about to buy a 4TB 870 Evo these days. You probably saved me from a lot of headaches. Gotta take some time and shop elsewhere.


----------



## MegaPixel

jcrosby said:


> This is a really solid (mac) resource for monitoring drives. It should give you early warnings if the drives start to develop issues. Every time it's warned me, drives have inevitably failed.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> DriveDx - the most advanced drive health diagnostics and monitoring utility
> 
> 
> DriveDx - the most advanced drive health (S.M.A.R.T.) diagnostics and monitoring utility. Save yourself the data loss and downtime that is associated with unexpected SSD and HDD failures. Don't worry about losing your important data, music, and photographs.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> binaryfruit.com


And if your on PC grab:
Hard Disk Sentinel Pro, it will monitor temps and any errors. 
But I would also recommend running a SMART test with your SSDs providers software at least once a month.


----------



## emilio_n

I have a couple of Samsung T5 2TB working great. (One of them is 4 years old and still working great)
I have an 860 QVO 4TB a few months ago and today stop to work. Maybe is the enclosure, I will try to replace it, but I am not very confident. I am lucky to have a backup on my NAS. I had all my Spitfire and OT libs there.

I think I will replace it with an SSD M.2. Any recommendations about the brand?


----------



## MegaPixel

emilio_n said:


> I have a couple of Samsung T5 2TB working great. (One of them is 4 years old and still working great)
> I have an 860 QVO 4TB a few months ago and today stop to work. Maybe is the enclosure, I will try to replace it, but I am not very confident. I am lucky to have a backup on my NAS. I had all my Spitfire and OT libs there.
> 
> I think I will replace it with an SSD M.2. Any recommendations about the brand?


That's the tricky part... Samsung often manufacture the chips for most of the others also (including ram).

QVO = Low tier (3D nand stacking)
EVO & EVO Plus = Mid tier
Pro = High tier
Then there's NAS grade SSDs.

As I'm now on my 3rd 4TB Evo in less than a year I mirror it to a WD Black 8TB end of each day and to an external WD Black 8TB end of each week (software file compare crc check and mirror)

TBH, Once your past the burst of an SSD (SATA) your pretty much a WD Black speeds anyway.

NVME is faster but again same chips, and runs hotter.

My serbarent nvme was degrading after 1 year, only lost 10% but it was only for boot and actual main software install and desktop, so wasn't really pushed hard.

If this SSD fails again I will be going back to WD Blacks, but I will still boot from an NVME.


----------



## Pictus

Western Digital WD Red SN700 NVMe 4TB US$480 


Not the fastest drive, but more than fast enough for libraries, very
good price and very reliable, made for NAS with big TBW.
Man, I like this drive!!
Made for NAS, so they must be using high quality chips!!!
For a drive mainly for reading stuff, we don't need high TBW, but
higher quality chips = reliability, we do not want the drive to fail.
https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/9990/western-digital-4tb-wd-red-sn700-ssd/index.html


----------



## 3CPU

Pictus said:


> Not the fastest drive, but more than fast enough for libraries, very
> good price and very reliable, made for NAS with big TBW.
> Man, I like this drive!!
> Made for NAS, so they must be using high quality chips!!!
> For a drive mainly for reading stuff, we don't need high TBW, but
> higher quality chips = reliability, we do not want the drive to fail.
> https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/9990/western-digital-4tb-wd-red-sn700-ssd/index.html


Awesome! Higher quality chips, reliability. WD has been around for a very long time.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

I haven't read every post here, but one bad drive doesn't mean a lot on its own. 

However, Terry's post is a little more concerning:



tmhuud said:


> We are seeing early failures n 2 TB Pro Evos..... (New out of the box)


That's plural, so maybe they did have a bad run.

Seagate is another matter. I simply won't buy anything from that company ever again.


----------



## tmhuud

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I haven't read every post here, but one bad drive doesn't mean a lot on its own.
> 
> However, Terry's post is a little more concerning:
> 
> 
> That's plural, so maybe they did have a bad run.
> 
> Seagate is another matter. I simply won't buy anything from that company ever again.


I’ve had bad experiences with them as well. (Seagate) I too would not but from them.


----------



## MegaPixel

Here's my experience:

*Western Digital HDs*
Pretty much had a great experience with (Western Digital Black all the way or RED Pro for NAS)

*Western Digital SSD/NVME*
I think they are one of the few that actually don't use samsung chips, so you could be safe from the crap samsung is pumping out at the moment.

*Seagate / Maxtor HDs*
Had nothing but bad experience with them, wont ever touch them again.
Had 5 in a row fail just taking a transfer/copy of data from a single very very old WD Black HD. Then bought another WD Black and all was fine. That very very old WD Black is still in use today (8 years old ish - now a data drive in a family members pc). And more bad experiences till I learned my lesson...

*Seagate Ironwolf NAS (HD)*
Personally never used, as I would go for a WD Red Pro, but I hear they are ok.

*Crucial SSD (Crucial M225 256GB - June 2010)*
Every time I filled one of these over 75% ish, it died. Lost 3 in a row, then got a refund.
Was a long time ago, so they might have sorted things out by now...

*Sabrent 1TB (NVME - Boot (not data))*
Not the fastest, but done the job. In *2 years I lost 10% integrity and zero errors*, according to my monitoring and diagnostic tools. Not sure who makes the chips for them but I don't think it's samsung but it could be.

*Samsung SSD - 850 EVO - 1TB (2015)*
100% integrity and still going.

*Samsung SSD - 860 EVO - 1TB (2019)*
100% integrity and still going.

*Samsung SSD - 870 EVO - 2TB (2021)*
100% integrity and still going.

*Samsung SSD - 870 EVO - 4TB (August 2021)*
- Failed
- Replacement sent on Nov 2021
- Failed
- Replacement sent on Jan 2022
Waiting for yet another failure but have mirrors on WD Black 8TB Internal and WD Black 8TB External

*Samsung NVME - 970 EVO Plus 2TB (Jan 2022)*
So far so good, runs hot though, 45c idle, seen 50 to 60. (sabrent nvme was in the 30c idle to 40s under load).


----------



## 3CPU

I checked 970 Evo Plus, purchased October 2020, 100% integrity, no errors reported. I also have a Crucial MX500 secondary drives, purchased October 2020, 100% integrity, no errors. I checked my 12 year old WD mechanical hard drives, still has a heartbeat, but I don't use them anymore.


----------



## MegaPixel

3CPU said:


> I checked 970 Evo Plus, purchased October 2020, 100% integrity, no errors reported. I also have a Crucial MX500 secondary drives, purchased October 2020, 100% integrity, no errors. I checked my 12 year old WD mechanical hard drives, still has a heartbeat, but I don't use them anymore.


*Don't trust Samsung Magician software*, it's ok for a SMART test but it's sector scan is complete BS.

Give Hard Drik Sentinal Pro trial a go (if your on PC)

While Samsung Magician Software was doing a scan and reporting no errors Hard Disk Sentinel Pro was logging 100s of failures on my 4TB EVO's that failed, Samsung Magician only reported 2 errors on SMART (I posted a screen shot in this thread a while back showing this)... 

Then soon after Event Viewer started logging 100s of read failures and many files would not copy having CRC & read errors.


----------



## 3CPU

MegaPixel said:


> Don't trust Samsung Magician software


Don't use it.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf

My experience with SSDs:

Crucial (three of them), SanDisk, WD, Mushkin, Sabrent: no failures.


----------



## zigzag

This might be relevant to this thread.

Some SSDs are apparently still prone to data loss during power outage:








Some Consumer NVMe SSDs Reportedly More Prone To Data Loss During Power Outage


DRAM plus a power outage could makes for a bad situation




www.tomshardware.com





Tested SSDs:
• Samsung 970 Evo Plus: MZ-V7S2T0, 2021.10 *Pass*
• WD Red: WDS100T1R0C-68BDK0, 04Sept2021 *Pass*
• SK Hynix Gold P31 2TB SHGP31-2000GM-2, FW 31060C20 *Fail*
• Sabrent Rocket 512 (Phison PH-SBT-RKT-303 controller, no version or date codes listed) *Fail*
• Crucial P5 Plus 1TB CT1000P5PSSD8, FW P7CR402: *Pass* 
• Kingston SNVS/250G, 012.A005: *Pass* 
• Seagate Firecuda 530 PCIe Gen 4 1TB ZP1000GM30013, FW SU6SM001: *Pass *
• Intel 670p 1TB, SSDPEKNU010TZ, FW 002C: *Pass*
• Crucial P2 250GB CT250P2SSD8, FW P2CR046: *Pass* 
• Samsung 980 250GB MZ-V8V250, 2021/11/07: *Pass* 
• WD Black SN750 1TB WDS100T1B0E, 09Jan2022: *Pass* 
• WD Green SN350 240GB WDS240G20C, 02Aug2021: *Pass*


----------



## MegaPixel

zigzag said:


> This might be relevant to this thread.
> 
> Some SSDs are apparently still prone to data loss during power outage:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Some Consumer NVMe SSDs Reportedly More Prone To Data Loss During Power Outage
> 
> 
> DRAM plus a power outage could makes for a bad situation
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.tomshardware.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tested SSDs:
> • Samsung 970 Evo Plus: MZ-V7S2T0, 2021.10 *Pass*
> • WD Red: WDS100T1R0C-68BDK0, 04Sept2021 *Pass*
> • SK Hynix Gold P31 2TB SHGP31-2000GM-2, FW 31060C20 *Fail*
> • Sabrent Rocket 512 (Phison PH-SBT-RKT-303 controller, no version or date codes listed) *Fail*
> • Crucial P5 Plus 1TB CT1000P5PSSD8, FW P7CR402: *Pass*
> • Kingston SNVS/250G, 012.A005: *Pass*
> • Seagate Firecuda 530 PCIe Gen 4 1TB ZP1000GM30013, FW SU6SM001: *Pass *
> • Intel 670p 1TB, SSDPEKNU010TZ, FW 002C: *Pass*
> • Crucial P2 250GB CT250P2SSD8, FW P2CR046: *Pass*
> • Samsung 980 250GB MZ-V8V250, 2021/11/07: *Pass*
> • WD Black SN750 1TB WDS100T1B0E, 09Jan2022: *Pass*
> • WD Green SN350 240GB WDS240G20C, 02Aug2021: *Pass*


Last week I had 120mph winds here, power on and off a number of times with power levels just dimming and returning, result:

1. File corruption on boot NVME - Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB (sfc /scannow fixed)

2. File corruption on work drive project - Sausmung 870 Evo 1TB (no restore, just github retrieve old)

The 3rd new 4TB Evo was not in use at the time so I assume file and data integrity are ok, my software that makes a selective folder mirror to external WD Black 8TB HD, has not warned me about any CRC differences.

But there should be enough capacitance stored on these drives to write a couple of meg before shut down (don't quote me on that, but I know there is a capacitance buffer for this). More so when the files I lost were in the 5 to 60 kb range.

I also had corrupt and damaged files on the same drive, and different boot nvme (serberant 1tb) about 6 months ago when we had power cuts again...


It seems they have given the best power capacitors to the enterprise consumers, life as normal...


----------



## zigzag

@MegaPixel Is there no end to your streak of bad luck with SSDs? 

You could try contacting that Russ Bishop guy. He might be interested in trying to replicate that kind of failures and he already has got some media attention. 

If reviewers start including better resiliency tests, manufacturers will have to improve their products.


----------



## MegaPixel

zigzag said:


> @MegaPixel Is there no end to your streak of bad luck with SSDs?
> 
> You could try contacting that Russ Bishop guy. He might be interested in trying to replicate that kind of failures and he already has got some media attention.
> 
> If reviewers start including better resiliency tests, manufacturers will have to improve their products.


@zigzag SSDs come to me to die lol


But since the power issues last week, the drive below has come to its end of days... It is old though EVO 850, I think I bought it in 2015, but it's time is coming to an end... New sata cables have not corrected the issue, samsung magician thinks its all fine, but I'm getting glitches from audio and video files on it during read, HD Sentinel however detects these issues.

When this happens, a backup of the drive is a bad idea as what it reads could be corrupt, your best restoring from an older backup.

Luckily I do not keep any essential stuff on my drives over 4 to 5 years old.


----------



## mussnig

MegaPixel said:


> SSDs come to me to die lol


I once had a streak where a total of 3 or 4 AV receivers (for home theatre) broke down in a matter of weeks. Always went back to the store and replaced it, at some point they let me change to a different/better model, but at home I realized it was faulty as well. In the end, the guy at the store (who couldn't believe it when I showed up again) told me to put the AV receiver somewhere else at home - the usual spot seemed to have some "bad energy" (his words, not mine). 😅


----------



## zigzag

MegaPixel said:


> SSDs come to me to die lol


Apparently hehe 

Could it be motherboard or power supply issue? I'm out of ideas.


----------



## MegaPixel

zigzag said:


> Apparently hehe
> 
> Could it be motherboard or power supply issue? I'm out of ideas.


Well sometime in 2023 or 2024 when intel 14th gen cpu's are around (built by TSMC), either release 1 or release 2 and if AMD have nothing that will crush intel chips for workstations then I will be doing the scheduled full system re-build (looking forward to 512GB of DDR5 ram). Hopefully the force will be stronger with that one.

I had the worst luck during the build of this one, of all my previous builds. I had to RMA the motherboard, cpu and the ram. Of which the ram replacement is also faulty but it's only the rgb that has failed, but I like it, I'm not a fan of all this rgb stuff. I've put it through stress tests with out any issues and no blue screens when maxing it out with work loads so I will stick with it.

This one will then replace my old backup machine in storage for use in times of crisis...


----------



## jbuhler

mussnig said:


> I once had a streak where a total of 3 or 4 AV receivers (for home theatre) broke down in a matter of weeks. Always went back to the store and replaced it, at some point they let me change to a different/better model, but at home I realized it was faulty as well. In the end, the guy at the store (who couldn't believe it when I showed up again) told me to put the AV receiver somewhere else at home - the usual spot seemed to have some "bad energy" (his words, not mine). 😅


I kill watches—I seem to have inherited this from my dad. Any watch with electronics in it will die within a year of me starting to wear it. My dad was the same way. Curiously, it doesn't seem to affect other electronics, just watches. I presume it has something to do with wearing it.


----------



## MegaPixel

jbuhler said:


> I kill watches—I seem to have inherited this from my dad. Any watch with electronics in it will die within a year of me starting to wear it. My dad was the same way. Curiously, it doesn't seem to affect other electronics, just watches. I presume it has something to do with wearing it.


I can't wear watches either, but I always seem to have them ripped off my wrist by the way I walk, seems I bump my arms into things (I never notice), 2 or 3 weeks and it will be ripped off my wrist by a doorway or wall or something. Last one the pins were ripped out and it dug out slots where the pins go in, so there was no chance of replacement... So no more watches since then.

However if your nuking watches within a year, you should buy an android or iWatch, RMA it every year before the 1 year warranty runs out  New model each year for free 

You must be generating an electrical field or something, with long term exposure to any electronics and you nuke em lol... There are humans who have been lightly magnetic, supposedly...


----------



## jbuhler

MegaPixel said:


> I can't wear watches either, but I always seem to have them ripped off my wrist by the way I walk, seems I bump my arms into things (I never notice), 2 or 3 weeks and it will be ripped off my wrist by a doorway or wall or something. Last one the pins were ripped out and it dug out slots where the pins go in, so there was no chance of replacement... So no more watches since then.
> 
> However if your nuking watches within a year, you should buy an android or iWatch, RMA it every year before the 1 year warranty runs out  New model each year for free
> 
> You must be generating an electrical field or something, with long term exposure to any electronics and you nuke em lol... There are humans who have been lightly magnetic, supposedly...


I'm sure I'm wired to destroy it right after the warranty runs out! I no longer wear watches now that I have a cell phone. So that solved that problem. For whatever reason, living in my pocket is fine. That was true of watches too, and before cell phones I had opted for pocket watches.


----------



## zigzag

MegaPixel said:


> Well sometime in 2023 or 2024 when intel 14th gen cpu's are around (built by TSMC), either release 1 or release 2 and if AMD have nothing that will crush intel chips for workstations then I will be doing the scheduled full system re-build (looking forward to 512GB of DDR5 ram). Hopefully the force will be stronger with that one.
> 
> I had the worst luck during the build of this one, of all my previous builds. I had to RMA the motherboard, cpu and the ram. Of which the ram replacement is also faulty but it's only the rgb that has failed, but I like it, I'm not a fan of all this rgb stuff. I've put it through stress tests with out any issues and no blue screens when maxing it out with work loads so I will stick with it.
> 
> This one will then replace my old backup machine in storage for use in times of crisis...


I wish you a better luck with the future build. You had exceeded your computer-issues quota for the next two decades


----------



## mussnig

zigzag said:


> I wish you a better luck with the future build. You had exceeded your computer-issues quota for the next two decades


Well, statistically speaking the more SSD failures OP has the less the rest of us have - so, thank you @MegaPixel 😁

Just kidding, obviously I hope you will have better luck in the years to come (and statistically speaking again, you should have).


----------



## MartinH.

jbuhler said:


> For whatever reason, living in my pocket is fine. That was true of watches too, and before cell phones I had opted for pocket watches.


Maybe your sweat is too aggressive? My farther had problems with wearing watches too. The band would always tear from being corroded. For me the bands always tore too and I started using the watches as pocket watches or put them on my keyring.




MegaPixel said:


> @zigzag SSDs come to me to die lol
> 
> 
> But since the power issues last week


Maybe there is a power issue with the wiring of your house that leads to increased failure rates of the most sensitive components. We had something like that ~20 years ago where RAM would always die and need replacing. Then the store handling the repairs recommended we buy a surge protector power strip and with that the problem was gone. I've ever since religiously used computers only with such surge protectors and my failure rates of RAM, CPUs, or other sensitive parts that don't have mechanical parts or condensors was very low. In your case, an uninterruptible power source with a backup battery might be worth a shot.


----------



## chimuelo

SurgeX for the entire house…


----------



## gregjazz

FWIW, I got two Samsung 870 EVO 2 TB drives in April, 2021. One failed last month, and the other started failing a few days ago.

Random files became inaccessible. I use Robocopy to back up all my drives to a NAS, and it would stall at the same point in particular files when copying.

Samsung Magician's scan had the message "failing LBA" and was showing several bad blocks. I've never run into issues like this with SSDs before, and the 870 EVOs are usually my go-to SSDs in multiple builds.


----------



## jamieboo

This is all pretty worrying. I've used Samsung EVO SSDs (although they are Sata not M.2) - I guess I've been lucky so far.
I'm planning a new build and had been intending to go for Samsung 980 Pros but maybe I should go for Seagate Firecuda 530s instead?


----------



## LinusW

Weird, got 870 EVO 4 TB in July and it died a week ago. I had my user folder on that drive so system just fell apart.


----------



## Pictus

Samsung 870 EVO - Beware, certain batches prone to failure!


Certain 870 EVO 4TB and 2TB drives are affected by early failures where they develop uncorrectable errors and some data just cannot be read from them anymore. This seems to primarily affect drives produced in January/February 2021. For example, i have three 870 EVO 4TB, only one is affected (so...




www.techpowerup.com


----------



## HCMarkus

Please don't use your computer without a UPS. The drive you save may be your own.


----------



## vitocorleone123

Seems Samsung had a bad run of chips but decided to cut corners instead of remaking the supply (presuming the supply could be remade with all the shortages then).

I have multiple Samsung drives. One Pro 256GB SSD has been in continuous operation for around 10 years across multiple computers. So it isn’t (or wasn’t, as things can change) the brand per se.


----------



## MegaPixel

Well since I lost 2 (4Tb Evo's) in the space of 6 months (ish), I now sync to a WD Black and pCloud, with an additional backup to an externally docked WD Black.
If it fails again I will get it replaced and sell it, I will only buy RED NAS SSDs from now on, but TBH when using the WD Black it was fine, so I may go back to WD Black's for main storage.

I've got an 850Evo 1TB & 2TB, which have been grinding hard since the day I bought them and still going strong, just now I need a lot more space, SSD is just not viable and not as reliable.

I also found an easy way to kill modern SSDs, I have programming tools to sort through 1,000,000s of small files from presets/patches to node_modules etc, after a few runs of these tools the SSDs life degrades fast, the WD Black on the other hand doesn't even break a sweat and when dealing with small files you get the same speeds as the SSD.


----------



## cedricm

MegaPixel said:


> Last week I had 120mph winds here, power on and off a number of times with power levels just dimming and returning, result:
> 
> 1. File corruption on boot NVME - Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB (sfc /scannow fixed)
> 
> 2. File corruption on work drive project - Sausmung 870 Evo 1TB (no restore, just github retrieve old)
> 
> The 3rd new 4TB Evo was not in use at the time so I assume file and data integrity are ok, my software that makes a selective folder mirror to external WD Black 8TB HD, has not warned me about any CRC differences.
> 
> But there should be enough capacitance stored on these drives to write a couple of meg before shut down (don't quote me on that, but I know there is a capacitance buffer for this). More so when the files I lost were in the 5 to 60 kb range.
> 
> I also had corrupt and damaged files on the same drive, and different boot nvme (serberant 1tb) about 6 months ago when we had power cuts again...
> 
> 
> It seems they have given the best power capacitors to the enterprise consumers, life as normal...


Are you using an uninterruptible power system?


----------



## MegaPixel

cedricm said:


> Are you using an uninterruptible power system?


Nope... I used to but not anymore... I can deal with the loss of active file edits... Live sync with pCloud, only real loss is the active file I'm working on which can get corrupt. However while programming I save every couple of edits as this is required for a re-compile and thus the online sync begins, which also has history (pCloud), so worst case I loose 10 or 20 lines of code at max.


----------



## HCMarkus

MegaPixel said:


> Nope... I used to but not anymore... I can deal with the loss of active file edits... Live sync with pCloud, only real loss is the active file I'm working on which can get corrupt. However while programming I save every couple of edits as this is required for a re-compile and thus the online sync begins, which also has history (pCloud), so worst case I loose 10 or 20 lines of code at max.


But, for goodness sake... why not? If using a laptop and internal drives, I guess can understand; you've got one built in. But with a desktop? Even if you don't mind losing some work, protect those electronics from the ravages of bad power! A decent UPS protects against more than blackouts; will keep voltage sags from wreaking havoc with your system.


----------



## MegaPixel

HCMarkus said:


> But, for goodness sake... why not? If using a laptop and internal drives, I guess can understand; you've got one built in. But with a desktop? Even if you don't mind losing some work, protect those electronics from the ravages of bad power! A decent UPS protects against more than blackouts; will keep voltage sags from wreaking havoc with your system.


Yep, got various special power cleaners and some expensive surge protectors... I used to use one but I've never lost any hardware due to power dimming, spikes etc (touch wood). I will leave that for my clients and hosting provers who's servers I deal with I have no doubt have very expensive UPS solutions. I also build a completely new system every 4 to 5 years also. I can handle loosing the file I am working on as I save so frequently I have a backup of less then 10 minutes ago ready and waiting for me online or older in 2 x WD Black drives (both not plugged in until they are needed).


----------



## davidson

Just to add fuel to the fire - I've not had a drive problem in over 20 years of hard everyday use, the last 6 of which I've been using several crucial SSDs. I bought a Samsung 870 QVO 8tb a few weeks ago. Moved all my data to it and ran a disk speed test the next day and it froze up and wiped the drive container completely, just like that. Coincidence? Maybe.


----------



## HCMarkus

I would not buy or use a drive that is QLC-based.

OK, _maybe_ for non-critical VI Sample storage, where the data is pretty much read-only and can be restored without too much trouble.

Then again... here's another "why?", like my prior one concerning using a UPS. I guess if you simply must have 8TB in a single SSD. I'll pass.


----------



## EgM

Another 870 (1TB) dead... this one in 3 months! Bad sectors adding up fast.
First one died last fall after less than 6 months. I think I'm done with Samsung


----------



## emilio_n

I was thinking to buy a QVO 8tb just tomorrow. 
Any other brand recommended? (I don't care if is a 4tb drive)


----------



## fiction

I need to upgrade two of my 500GB SSD's to 2TB and reading this thread is making me think twice about going with Samsung. 

I currently have a 1TB 860 Evo, 2xT5 500gb and a 2TB Crucial MX500, they're all 95% full except the MX500 and running well for some years now. 

I never ran any tests but I never had any problems while working with any of them. 

I might grab 2 more MX500 2TB since it's working fine and was the last one I got.


----------



## kgdrum

emilio_n said:


> I was thinking to buy a QVO 8tb just tomorrow.
> Any other brand recommended? (I don't care if is a 4tb drive)




fwiw I have been using a WD Blue 4tb SSD without issues for a couple of years and I am planning on getting a second one in the next month or two.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1542811-REG/wd_wdbnce0040pnc_wrsn_4tb_wd_blue_3d.html


----------



## MartinH.

My second 1TB samsung drive is getting bad sectors. That probably was the replacementdrive for the first one that died. 870 evo 1TB has 16 bad sectors after only 3tb lifetime write. What a fucking joke. 
Not thrilled about the idea of ever buying Samsung SSDs again.


----------



## vitocorleone123

Definitely seems particular to some subset of models and/or drives. Scores from CrystalDisk, which is perhaps less accurate - but less annoying - than Samsung Magician.

Primary PC
850 EVO 500GB = 37697 power on hrs w/14447 GB written = 98% health
860 EVO 1TB = 10880 power on hrs w/2458 GB written = 99% health
970 EVO+ 1TB nvme = 16490 power on hrs w/47875 GB written = 99% health

Secondary PC
840 PRO 256 GB = 65173 power on hrs w/83644 GB written = 60% health (getting to be about the time to replace)... that's around 7.5 years of being constantly powered on

I'll need to dig deeper on which ones are impacted, since that drive in the secondary PC is due for replacement in the next year or two, or whenever it gets down to about 50%.


----------



## EgM

MartinH. said:


> My second 1TB samsung drive is getting bad sectors. That probably was the replacementdrive for the first one that died. 870 evo 1TB has 16 bad sectors after only 3tb lifetime write. What a fucking joke.
> Not thrilled about the idea of ever buying Samsung SSDs again.



That sucks :( My first 870 had only 1.1TB writes and the second 1.4TB! 

All my WD Black/Blue and Kingston ones are still perfect after years of use


----------



## MartinH.

I'm currently running a backup and already can tell some files are damaged because they won't copy over and throw crc errors. Really fed up with Samsung.
Thinking about trying a Crucial MX500 with either 1 tb or 2 tb capacity as a replacement till I get the warranty replacement Samsung drive. I'd use the warranty drive as a mirror of my OS drive I think. Not a raid mirror, just making the occasional backup clone and hoping it will last longer if it's not powered on all the time. Does anyone know whether the faulty lines of samsung drives suffer more from write cycles or power on time?


----------



## zzz00m

I've got: 

Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB
Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB
Samsung SSD 860 QVO 1TB
Samsung SSD 870 QVO 2 TB

All 4 drives are still running great. The oldest is the 250 GB SSD, which has been running about 5 years and is at 89% per CrystalDiskInfo with 22,865 power on hours. The other 3 drives were added in the meantime and are all still at 100%.

However, I did have a friend who experienced a "sudden death" with his 850 EVO 250GB in the first year or so. But he lives in an area with frequent thunderstorms such as one that that killed his doorbell and garage door opener. No UPS or serious surge protection in his home.

So I image my system drive daily as a precaution. I will continue to buy Samsung, but remain wary of the larger capacity drives from any manufacturer for various reasons.


----------



## MegaPixel

I like you have gone through this twice...
Only NAS grade SSDs/NVME's for me from now on...

But you got to be careful the data you think is OK coming off the drives may also be damaged, I'm still finding glitches in many a sample from my sample library many months later, re-requesting download links from who I purchased them off.

So after I lost the 1st 4tb evo and got my replacement I bought 2 Western digital Black 10tb drives (I trust WD), I have 1 internal and external. I don't do the whole NAS raid thing so I use SyncBakFree to backup selected folders and only certain file types to the internal WD black HD end of each week or day. It checks the files & folders and only deletes and copies over what is needed to mirror. Then once a month I use same software to sync a mirror on the external WD Black. Saves dealing with raid rebuilding every 4 to 5 years which is when you should replace your drives.

Then my replacement 4tb evo failed, but luckily I had done the above and nothing was lost.

I also sync to pCloud now as you can select which folders and have ignore capabilities like GitHub just in their software, it ain't great but its a solution.

Red nvme/ssd's from now on.

pCloud 4tb custom deal here: https://www.pcloud.com/cloud-storag...=purchase&period=lifetime&product=custom-plan


----------



## MegaPixel

PS. WinRar and 7zip can add a recovery record on archives, I created a batch script which will rar/7zip each folder and files of my choosing, so if data corruption occurs again the backups have a better chance of remaining intact on extraction.

Use Rar on wav's its better than 7zip.
Use 7zip (7z) on everything else.


----------



## tressie5

All this talk of SSD failures has me nervous. My laptop's system drive is an SSD but my four external drives are three 2.5" HDD and one 3.5". Most of the drives, if not all, are over 20 years old and still going strong. Maybe I'll hang on to them a little longer.


----------



## MegaPixel

tressie5 said:


> All this talk of SSD failures has me nervous. My laptop's system drive is an SSD but my four external drives are three 2.5" HDD and one 3.5". Most of the drives, if not all, are over 20 years old and still going strong. Maybe I'll hang on to them a little longer.


Never keep anything important on the boot/system drive, unless your backing it up and/or cloud syncing it every night.

SSDs and HD's typically have a warranty of around 3 to 5 years.

Samsung QVO -3 years.
Samsung EVO/PRO - 5 years.
WD Black/RED/GOLD - 5 years.

I had 6 Seagate drives fail on my just on the copy of an old WD Black to the Seagate drive lol, I've never touched anything other than WD Black / WD Red since.

I've got WD Black drives which are over 10 years old but as this where I store all my work I tend to replace them all the same once they hit that 5 year mark.

I have an SCSI drive from my old Amiga 1200 which is still working, now that's 26ish years old lol, all 1mb of it.

But with my 3rd 4Tb samsung evo now I try to do all the intensive file tasks on my nvme and move them to that drive so it doesn't have to read/write as much.

NOTE: WD Black is about as fast as a EVO SSD on 1000s of small files, larger files SSDs will win.

SSD high failure info and possible reasons:

- When they 1st came out it was controller issues, over fill issues (forgot name for provisioning issue I think), lost 4 or 5 Crucial SSDs 250GB every time I got to 75 to 80% full. Format and it would work again.

- Then the controllers matured and sizes got bigger and pretty much the 500gb, 1tb and 2tb SSDs have been rock solid for me (minor degradation over 5 years but still, 5 years and its replacement time)

- Then the rare earth materials / chip shortage started and everyone has started putting out crap in everything (capacitors, ssd/nvme chips you name it), so they all trying to get away with giving us the crap at the moment

- Also from reports from back blaze so far, seems SSDs have about the same lifespan as HDs, so the 4 / 5 year rule still applies. If you using it for work or storage of precious data, replace in 4 to 5 years just to be safe and keep your old drive as a backup and sync to it every so often (external hot swap dock or whatever)

If you take a look at real enterprise SSDs the Capacitors in them are huge so that when a power loss occurs writes can finish, not even WD Reds have nothing on them, but huge price tag, they go up to some nice sizes though, 32TB (I think it was).


Just make sure to backup and never trust anything basically...
They build everything to fail these days...


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## zzz00m

tressie5 said:


> All this talk of SSD failures has me nervous. My laptop's system drive is an SSD but my four external drives are three 2.5" HDD and one 3.5". Most of the drives, if not all, are over 20 years old and still going strong. Maybe I'll hang on to them a little longer.


Make a backup/image routine standard especially for your SSD's. SSD drives are great for performance, but they can suddenly fail. When they fail, they are not as likely to fail slowly with advanced warnings like the spinner HDD drives usually do.

If you only have one copy of certain data and it resides on an SSD, make a backup ASAP!


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## MartinH.

MegaPixel said:


> But you got to be careful the data you think is OK coming off the drives may also be damaged, I'm still finding glitches in many a sample from my sample library many months later, re-requesting download links from who I purchased them off.


Yeah, I'm worried about that as well. The drive I currently have issues with mostly has unimportant stuff like games on it. But I wonder what would be the best way in general to prevent this kind of data rot.
I am currently running a binary comparison between my busted SSD and the HDD I've backed up the salvageable data to yesterday. But if a byte on the SSD "flipped" in the past, how would I ever know? Doing a crc check or binary comparison on every single backup seems not feasible when what I'm usually backing up is 4tb hdds.




tressie5 said:


> Most of the drives, if not all, are over 20 years old and still going strong. Maybe I'll hang on to them a little longer.


Wow... you really like living on the edge, don't you?:D I switch out the drive where my most important stuff is after 2-4 years even when it's still working flawlessly. There are statistical groupings of increased failure rates after certain usage lengths and I try to minimize risk by switching my project drive while it's still in the statistically safest age and I break in new drives as backup drives so that it's no big deal if just that new drive dies early in its life.









Drive Failure Over Time: The Bathtub Curve Is Leaking


Read this post to learn how drive failure rates fit the bathtub curve in 2021 compared with our 2013 drive stats data.




www.backblaze.com


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## MegaPixel

MartinH. said:


> Yeah, I'm worried about that as well. The drive I currently have issues with mostly has unimportant stuff like games on it. But I wonder what would be the best way in general to prevent this kind of data rot.
> I am currently running a binary comparison between my busted SSD and the HDD I've backed up the salvageable data to yesterday. But if a byte on the SSD "flipped" in the past, how would I ever know? Doing a crc check or binary comparison on every single backup seems not feasible when what I'm usually backing up is 4tb hdds



CRC Checking is fine I used to do it weekly on:
- 2 TB NVME
- 4 TB SSD
- 2 TB SSD
- 1 TB SSD
to
- 8 TB HD (WD Black)

I know the numbers don't add up, but I don't backup everything, just select folders from each.

But I also backed up to another 8TB HD (WD Black), as a manual mirror, SyncBackPro does a CRC check for me, but I just let it go unmanned lol. Note I have SyncBackPro to only backup/sync (copy over or delete stuff that is not present on the source drives), so if CRCs don't match the HDs will have an older copy of the file anyway. Not like typical backups where they do a full refresh backup every month or so and incrementally add backups daily/weekly, that full refresh is often where you can loose stuff.

However my solution for this is to let a server farm with hopefully some form of raid BTRFS etc going on to handle all this for me. So while I backup everything from my NVME's and SSD's to 2 WD Blacks (mirror for 2 backups and no raid BS to deal with), I do a cloud upload to pCloud of only new files (just keep adding 2tb packes for each new client I have that wants backups).

In theory that should be enough but I don't trust them either so for really important stuff or when a client's job is done I either 7Zip or Rar (Rar for wav, 7Zip for the rest), those projects and files needed or just parts of my backups and upload. The reason for this is you got a recovery record on 7z and rar, you can set this to %. so I wrote a script which does this for specific files and folders and then puts them in my to be uploaded to pCloud folder.

So that's 3 backup points, 2 of which are usable instantly (the WD Blacks), if plugged in and if anything is corrupt I can then check the archive files to see if they can restore a pristine version of the file with their recovery records set at 10% or more depending on how important that file, job / client is.

PS. Also use 7Zip & Rar in file split mode, don't dump everything into files more than 2.5GB, it's just bad for data integrity.


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## zzz00m

This thread got me to thinking...

I use Macrium Reflect to make regular full images of all my internal drives (including 2 Samsung SSD's). All image jobs finish with the "Verify" option active, so that after the image file is completely written, Macrium compares a hash for every block in the new image file to ensure it is exactly what it calculated on the source drive as the image was created. So I know that my image files are verified exact replicas of the source drive.

So I got to thinking it's likely that if an undetected error already existed on my source drive, then the image would contain the same error. Correct? Is there a reliable way to verify that the source data does not contain errors?

_"How does Macrium Reflect check the data integrity?_​_Data blocks read from the image file are compared with the original data that was read from the image source disk by using a hash comparison. 

When an image is created each block of data (generally 64K but may be larger depending on the partition size) has an MD5 hash digest created after it is *read from the disk and before it is written to the image file*. This hash value is saved in the index of the image file. When the file is read back the hash value is recalculated and compared with the original hash in the index. Any discrepancy between the two values indicates that the image file is corrupt or cannot be read back reliably."_


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## MegaPixel

zzz00m said:


> I use Macrium Reflect to make regular full images of all my internal drives (including 2 Samsung SSD's). All image jobs finish with the "Verify" option active, so that after the image file is completely written, Macrium compares a hash for every block in the new image file to ensure it is exactly what it calculated on the source drive as the image was created. So I know that my image files are verified exact replicas of the source drive.
> 
> So I got to thinking it's likely that if an undetected error already existed on my source drive, then the image would contain the same error. Correct? Is there a reliable way to verify that the source data does not contain errors?


I have Macrium Reflect also, it's great for taking an image of your system drive but I'm not a fan of using it as a backup tool. I need to target specific files and folders so I can do a CRC check with less disruptive software installed on my machine, and macrium reflect makes a lot of changes to how things work, not all of them I agree with. So I keep it around for a system drive image clone but that's it. Not to mention their upgrade from v6 to latest (don't remember numbers) was about as dumb as dumb can get. I had to download each version and install them 1 by 1 following a guide on their website, too easy for them to j ust give out a full installer of the latest version on my last system re-build. I needed the newer version for NVME image clone.

As for drive image block CRC checking this is a clone of a drive, not on the file level, so if what is on it is corrupt that will be cloned also.

Unless you have the CRC values of all the original intact files to compare with or an image of everything perfect that reflect has created then there is no way to validate if anything is corrupt, other than using it.

This is why I mentioned about rar and 7z with their recovery records in a past post, if the rar or 7z does have some data corruption the recovery record may be able to retrieve the files intact and undamaged. Rar allows you to specify the % size of a recovery record you would like to make, so your Rar files could end up being larger than the original file depending on how far you go and how much priority you put on that file/folder.


*RE: CRC*
There are various CRC methods, not just MD5.

*An interesting CRC check experiment for you.*
Download DupeGuru (I think you will find it on github, just google for it) and install it. Then run it on your sample archive, make sure to select file contents as the compare method in the drop down at the top, that will put it in CRC checking mode, very good chance you have 10s if not 100s of duplicate files with different names.

With each sample library I get given from some newsletter or website or post on vi/kvr or purchased I run a CRC check on them setting my local library as a reference and the new purchased samples folder that I drag and drop in to normal. Often with the free ones you will end up with not a single one being unique, especially if they are one shots (kicks, 808s, snares, hats, cymbals etc). I bought a huge bundle from (wont be named) for nearly 100. I done a CRC check and nearly 75% of the contents matches other stuff I had purchased from other labels. After a few emails they gave me the option to choose a few others to make up for it...

I also do this for presets/patches for spire, serum etc, you'll be surprised what is just renamed and just re-sold or given out over and over just with a different name.


*PS. Warning about drive cloning and restore on new system builds*
Some software which licences itself to the computer is based on it's hardware CPU ID and possibly more. IKMultiMedia is a good example of this, I cloned my NVME and restored it on my new build, I lost a licence doing that as I didn't de-activate it on my old machine, which I was not about to re-build to de-activate and get that 1 of 10 available activations back. So remember to de-activate those that work like that before doing system re-builds or hardware changes. Luckily a lot allow you to just sign in and de-register your old machine on your account and then re-register your new one or modified one but those like IKMultiMedia don't.


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## Hadrondrift

I also use Macrium with verify to create regularly scheduled images - and yes, an undetected error would also propagate into the image.

Macrium cannot determine if the data on the source is or has become corrupt. The verify option only serves to ensure that the _copy_ is and remains error-free. In fact, to later verify a backup image, the original is no longer needed as no comparison is made with the original.

I was affected by the EVO 870 problem. I noticed it by the fact that data could no longer be read_ at all_. Such an event is usually detected and reported by the operating system (Windows). So with me, data was not changed incorrectly and unnoticed, but was completely lost noticed.

To ensure the integrity of data on my source (sample) drives, I create md5/sfv files. However, this only makes sense for directories whose contents change very rarely.

Otherwise, you have to trust the quality and error stability of the disks (hard disks, SSDs). That's why the 870 event has made me a bit nervous. But since I have always had good experiences with Samsung products, I suspect a temporary manufacturing problem here. Only Samsung's silence is annoying, but perhaps it has to be understood from the company's point of view.


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## zzz00m

MegaPixel said:


> I have Macrium Reflect also, it's great for taking an image of your system drive but I'm not a fan of using it as a backup tool.


Thanks for all of the info! I don't bother with backups, as I do a full image of my system drive daily, and a weekly image for my sample drive (it's mostly read only, that only changes on occasion).

But the issue of source corruption is still a valid point of concern...


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## MegaPixel

zzz00m said:


> But the issue of source corruption is still a valid point of concern...


This is why I do a software backup using SyncBackFree / SyncBackPro.

The source drives are copied to 2 x WD Black HDs (mirror), but nothing that is already on the source is copied to that drive again. So if the source drives get corrupted or lost I can restore from 1 of the WD Black drives, if 1 of them fails then I have the 2nd one.

But there is bitrot, NAS BTRFS file systems are designed to prevent bitrot but I don't like dealing with raid so I use pCloud. Now these guys should handle bit rot on their side, so if I do loose the 2 mirrors I have or they get corrupt there is a cloud backup available for the last resort. Again like how I backup to my 2 x WD Blacks (1 weekly/daily and the other weekly/monthly depending on how big the changes are in time), I do the same with pCloud only copying / deleting up what has changed, no overwrite, thus keeping the original files/folders and hopefully they are in the original state that they were when uploaded / copied to the WD Black drives.

Then to assist with some things, not everything I rar things up with a 10% or more recovery record depending on the importance of that file/folder which can recover damaged files (within reason) to damaged archive files if the data is in the recovery record.

The enterprise way of doing things is to have:
1 x NAS (BTRFS or other file system which is designed to prevent against bitrot and does its own data integrity checks on everything periodically). Raid 6 or 10 depending on size etc. Larger NAS's I would mirror the the raid 6 or 10.

Then you have a backup of that raid on another NAS in the same configuration.

Then you also have an offsite backup from a professional backup service.

But this is not cheap.


More details in my previous posts in this thread.


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## zzz00m

SMH... You would think that by 2022 our OS would have our backs on this already...


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## MegaPixel

zzz00m said:


> SMH... You would think that by 2022 our OS would have our backs on this already...


Not a chance... MS & Apple have their own file systems and were never designed for such things, Linux can but all our software won't work as intended on it.

If creative cloud worked natively on Linux the only time I would use Windows would be for gaming...

Also shame vsts etc don't just work on Linux as it has less latency issues than both windows and osX....


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## zzz00m

MegaPixel said:


> Not a chance... MS & Apple have their own file systems and were never designed for such things, Linux can but all our software won't work as intended on it.
> 
> If creative cloud worked natively on Linux the only time I would use Windows would be for gaming...
> 
> Also shame vsts etc don't just work on Linux as it has less latency issues than both windows and osX....


I built a dedicated Linux box a while back, and used it as my daily driver for a couple of years, for everything except my DAW and VST stuff.

I have a lot of respect for Linux. It's technically the best OS under the hood, and apparently the most widely used server OS. But as a desktop tool, the Linux marketplace is still coming up a bit short. Too fragmented as far as supported distributions are concerned for commercial desktop application development.

In the end I came back to Windows. It's either that or Mac for mainstream applications.


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## MegaPixel

zzz00m said:


> In the end I came back to Windows. It's either that or Mac for mainstream applications


Yeah it is shame, Ubuntu should be rock solid at the age it is but the Linux crowd are all over the place (package mess, consistency etc). But not just that its driver support also, its catch 20 2. As the os's are all over the place it doesn't give the hardware and software developers much incentive to bring their stuff over... Hopefully steam might help with that, they got some part of the NVIDIA drivers open source so that may help and might, get the Linux desktop world to get their act together. Its not like they got far to go to surpass windows and osx.

As for the server space, oh yeah Linux is god.

But in the end productivity is king, so back to windows for me also.

BitWig runs on Linux, but never tried it.


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## zzz00m

MegaPixel said:


> BitWig runs on Linux, but never tried it.


Yeah, so does Tracktion Waveform. And many of their plug-ins are cross-platform as well. That's a plus for anyone looking for native Linux plug-ins.

They even have a working build for the Raspberry Pi. Fascinating! But never tried it...


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## mercury

My intention is to buy a 4TB EVO ssd (for a Thunderbolt enclosure) to house sample libraries. Would that be wise?


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## Pictus

mercury said:


> My intention is to buy a 4TB EVO ssd (for a Thunderbolt enclosure) to house sample libraries. Would that be wise?


Safer to buy the Crucial MX500 4TB


https://pcpartpicker.com/product/p7nypg/crucial-mx500-4-tb-25-solid-state-drive-ct4000mx500ssd1


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## Pictus

MegaPixel said:


> In theory that should be enough but I don't trust them either so for really important stuff or when a client's job is done I either 7Zip or Rar (Rar for wav, 7Zip for the rest), those projects and files needed or just parts of my backups and upload. The reason for this is you got a recovery record on 7z and rar, you can set this to %. so I wrote a script which does this for specific files and folders and then puts them in my to be uploaded to pCloud folder.


The last time I checked only RAR/WinRAR have recovery record








How Does the Recovery Record Feature Work?


WinRAR - the data compression, encryption and archiving tool for Windows that opens RAR and ZIP files. Compatible with many other file formats.




www.win-rar.com




7-zip only tell if the archive is corrupted, but can not recover the error.


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## MegaPixel

Pictus said:


> The last time I checked only RAR/WinRAR have recovery record
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> How Does the Recovery Record Feature Work?
> 
> 
> WinRAR - the data compression, encryption and archiving tool for Windows that opens RAR and ZIP files. Compatible with many other file formats.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.win-rar.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 7-zip only tell if the archive is corrupted, but can not recover the error.


Correct, I didn't verify, assumed and typed...


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## MegaPixel

mercury said:


> My intention is to buy a 4TB EVO ssd (for a Thunderbolt enclosure) to house sample libraries. Would that be wise?


Well my 3rd 4TB Evo (2nd replacement) is holding in there well (so far), it's at 75% full.

No matter which SSD you buy, get a HD and make a clone of everything on that using SyncBackFree (if your on pc), so if it does fail you don't loose everything.

WD 10 TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0, Black £200


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## tmhuud

Wow, This will be the SECOND 4TB Samsung that failed us. Never had issues with ny other SAMSUNG below 4tb. This is getting rather annoying...


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## charlieclouser

FWIW - We just went through this massive pile of EIGHTY spinning drives, most were 250gb with some up to 1tb, all between 10-20 years old, and copied them all to a single 16tb HGST drive. 

These drives had *not* been treated kindly. About 20 of the Glyph hot-swap cartridges had bounced around the globe in road cases as they were live tour show capture drives, and all of the drives had been just chucked into cardboard boxes and bounced around between garages and un-temperature-controlled orange-door storage facilities for years until they were in the garage of a house that burned down (!!!). 

After all that, there was exactly ONE drive failure - a LaCie 250gb drive with a Western Digital IDE mechanism inside which would not spin up, either inside its enclosure or pulled and attached to various other IDE enclosures / docks / hosts. All the rest of the drives, including those in janky generic "RocStor" FW400 enclosures bought who knows where, spun up and copied just fine. No corrupted directories, no corrupted files.... all good.

So it's pretty amazing to me just how rugged those old spinners are. I realize that the tolerances are much tighter on the modern high-capacity drives like the 16tb ones I was copying to, but even those bounced around on the back of a FedEx truck on their way to me and they're all fine.

So that's my tale of success with spinners.


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## tmhuud

Samsung was pretty useless over the phone. As I expected. They will send another one. I asked for a refund. Nope. No refund. So I guess I will look for another manufacturer and put the SAMSUNG drive they send in a closet. They do not even have their 'magician' software available for the MAC yet. Can you believe that???? I remember jumping thru so oooo may hoops to get a firmware update on an SSD using a windows PC to get it to work on the Mac. SO I can't even trouble shoot their product on my computer. ALL of their other drives seem to work. lol. Its just frustrating as 4TB is a lot of info and I'll have to use the Backups which are slower. :/


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## gregjazz

...and my replacement Samsung EVO just started failing. Power on time is only 75 days, lifetime writes at a little over 2 TB. I got it six months ago, back in February to replace another failing EVO. Going to try a different brand. It's too expensive and inconvenient to have to replace these every 6-12 months.


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## MartinH.

They really seem to be cursed. Originally I was gonna use it for backups, but I'm not so sure anymore if that's a good idea, reading about all the stories of those drives failing again and again. 
Still waiting to get my replacement drive by the way.


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## MartinH.

I got my replacement drive. Did anyone ever figure out if this defect has been fixed and after what production date the drives are OK again (if ever)?


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## Hadrondrift

My 870 EVO replacement drive now has a little over 3000 hours on it and has yet to show any failure. I hope that the problem only affected a certain batch in 2021. Could also have been an issue with the first firmware (latest is SVT02B6Q). The great uncertainty that this problem has left me with is quite astonishing, I would not buy the 870 model again, even though that might be irrational.

Samsung is keeping quiet, which is perhaps understandable from the company's point of view, but very annoying for the users. After all, I think many end users will still run into this problem without warning in the future.

Well, it currently looks quite good with the replacement, so knock on wood...


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## MartinH.

Hadrondrift said:


> I hope that the problem only affected a certain batch in 2021.



I've read a bit in this thread and they've seen failing drives within manufacturing dates spanning at least 6 months. 









Samsung 870 EVO - Beware, certain batches prone to failure!


Certain 870 EVO 4TB and 2TB drives are affected by early failures where they develop uncorrectable errors and some data just cannot be read from them anymore. This seems to primarily affect drives produced in January/February 2021. For example, i have three 870 EVO 4TB, only one is affected (so...




www.techpowerup.com





My new drive is from January 2022 and I think I've seen reports of drives from October 2021 still being shit. I wonder how much I could get on ebay for it...
Kind of don't trust the thing and I'm very unhappy with how Samsung handled this. There are people who bought 10 or more drives and had more than half of them fail. This is absolutely ridiculous and Samsung should have recalled all those drives. Afaik the last firmware update doesn't even have a changelog, so no-one knows whether the error may have been firmware related or hardware related.


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## tmhuud

Samsungs pretty horrible at dealing with bad drives. We've had 4 go out mostly larger drives within a month. They make it quite difficult to return even though we are all up on serials and model number registration.


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## MartinH.

tmhuud said:


> Samsungs pretty horrible at dealing with bad drives. We've had 4 go out mostly larger drives within a month. They make it quite difficult to return even though we are all up on serials and model number registration.



That sucks! I didn't deal with Samsung directly, I got my replacement drives from the online store I ordered them from. If Samsung refuses to swap those drives, I'll need to pay for the replacement, but I can't imagine that to happen. I already lost data after all.


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## tmhuud

MartinH. said:


> That sucks! I didn't deal with Samsung directly, I got my replacement drives from the online store I ordered them from. If Samsung refuses to swap those drives, I'll need to pay for the replacement, but I can't imagine that to happen. I already lost data after all.


What samsung does it you send it back and they look at it. Then they update the firmware and if that fixes it they send its back to you. Wether it fixes it for YOU, well, thats another matter. But if they test it and it runs fine on THEIR system they call it fixed and your stuck with it. I buy from third parties and register on SAMSUNG site. A couple of times I got nowhere with SAMSUNG so I emailed the thrd party. They refunded my money and didnt even ask for the drive back. 

FWIW: I used Disk Drill and was able to recover 80% of the 4TB drives contents.


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## HCMarkus

MartinH. said:


> I already lost data after all.


I feel for you. I hope you have adopted a robust backup approach to avoid this in the future. I backup constantly, both manually at the end of every session and automatically/continually to Time Machine and BackBlaze.

I lost two days' work to an HD failure in the past. I lost two weeks worth of work due to a wildfire. Don't _ever_ want to go there again.


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## zzz00m

ALL disk drives WILL fail at some point. Have a backup plan and use it consistently. Never have just one copy of anything...


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## odod

that is why i learned a hard way that I must bought from companies that have been doing this as their main product, i avoided samsung .. went to SanDisk instead, 6-10 solid years ... even some are more


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## MartinH.

HCMarkus said:


> I feel for you. I hope you have adopted a robust backup approach to avoid this in the future.


I didn't lose anything important, because I don't trust SSDs with my most important data. I have a backup strategy, but it isn't perfect by any means. Some of it is online too. And some old stuff is in a bank vault. 

A lot of stuff, I simply don't actively back up. To be perfectly honest, I lost track of a large chunk of my data collection a long time ago and it's an ongoing barely progressing project to get back on top of that. I don't even know how many TB of unique data I have because a lot of it is redundand in some form on several drives, but not in a way that would be an organized backup. It's likely over 10tb though, and I have like 20+ TB worth of HDDs lying around. E.g. I probably have an old copy of my steam screenshot collection somewhere, but don't ask me where off the top of my head.




zzz00m said:


> ALL disk drives WILL fail at some point. Have a backup plan and use it consistently. Never have just one copy of anything...



This is true. A big part of my strategy is trying to stop using drives _before _they fail. I only put my most important data on HDDs that have been used for a couple of months as a backup drive, and then I stop using them after about 3 years. That's statistically the time window with the lowest failure rates for HDDs and the strategy has served me well so far. I still back that stuff up of course. After these drives get phased out, they either become longterm storage backup drives / redundant copies, or I put less important data on them. E.g. for a long time I used older drives to hold my games library. That changed when I started to want the SSD loading speed for my games.


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## zzz00m

MartinH. said:


> This is true. A big part of my strategy is trying to stop using drives _before _they fail. I only put my most important data on HDDs that have been used for a couple of months as a backup drive, and then I stop using them after about 3 years. That's statistically the time window with the lowest failure rates for HDDs and the strategy has served me well so far.


I am currently worried about two "long term storage" external HDD drives here that are about 10 years old, and I have not powered them up for more than a few years. They are mirrors of each other, so are duplicated, but I have heard that unused drives can fail to spin up at some point. They have been locked away indoors with low heat & humidity, but my next project urgently needs to be to transfer that data to new drives.

And I recently read an article that recommended against considering SSD for "long term storage".


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