ISSUE 19.06 • 2022-02-07 HARDWARE By Ben Myers With solid-state drives (SSDs), the SMART ante is raised because an SSD can fail catastrophically — CLU
[See the full post at: Our world is not very S.M.A.R.T. about SSDs]
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Our world is not very S.M.A.R.T. about SSDs
- This topic has 204 replies, 37 voices, and was last updated 2 years, 11 months ago.
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an SSD can fail catastrophically
So can an HDD, although they tend to give early warning as the mechanical bits wear. The only resolution is a regular backup and a new disk.
cheers, Paul
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Note that the catastrophic failure of an SSD, i.e. when it is bricked and useless, applies to older SSDs. Nearly all of the newer ones become read-only when all the spare blocks are consumed.
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Hi Ben,
Thanks for the good article on SSDs. I have a related problem in my MacBook Pro. I have the smallest SSD (128) and now discover it’s too small to take the next OS-X update. How do I determine if the SSD can be upgraded to 256/512 or if it’s soldered in? I found these specs for an upgrade kit but don’t see how to determine if my laptop is compatible using the printed part number – where can I find that? Macbook Pro 2017 running OS 10.14.6.
Compatibility:
MacBook Pro 13″ A1708
– MacBookPro13,1 Late 2016: MLL42LL/A (2.0 GHz Core i5)
– MacBookPro13,1 Late 2016: MLL42LL/A (2.4 GHz Core i7)
– MacBookPro14,1 Mid 2017: MPXQ2LL/A (2.3 GHz Core i5)
– MacBookPro14,1 Mid 2017: MPXQ2LL/A (2.5 GHz Core i7)Identifying Numbers:
– APN: 661-05112, 661-07586
– Printed Part #: 656-0042, 656-0045, 656-0045A1 user thanked author for this post.
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I’ve seen MacBooks newer than 2014 with SSDs that can be replaced, not integrated into the motherboard. Best bet is to check out one’s model at EveryMac followed by a visit to iFixit for repairs illustrated with very good photos.
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Another reason not to own Apple products.
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Just another reason I have never, and never will own anything Apple. I am old, and started with personal computers in the very beginning, so very well remember the introduction of the IBM PC, which started the world of building your own computer with parts from many various sources. Apple was a highly proprietary system, with parts available ONLY from Apple, and they rapidly became the far second system. Years of building my own systems and working on many others led me down the anti Apple path.
I know Apple now has some good products for some people, but to me it would be almost impossible for Apple to make a second first impression.
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Ben,
Great article ! … but I was a bit surprised you made no mention of over-provisioning and how it’s ‘supposed’ to affect the SSD life span. Attached are screenshots of my Samsung 840PRO, it’s SMART state and 8% OP. Any comments on how OP affects this conversation would be welcome … Thanks!
Marty
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Intentionally, I tried to keep a laser focus on SMART, both to stay on track and also not to write too many words. Maybe you’re suggesting a follow-on article all about SSDs, explaining TRIM, overprovisioning and other SSD features?
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With solid-state drives (SSDs), the SMART ante is raised because an SSD can fail catastrophically
I don’t pay any attention to SMART data. I don’t use Google, but Google uses a lot of drives. In a study of consumer-grade disk drives (pdf) published in 2007, Google found S.M.A.R.T data not so reliable a predictor of drive failure.
“Out of all failed drives, over 56% of them have no count in any of the four strong SMART signals, namely scan errors, reallocation count, offline reallocation, and probational count. In other words, models based only on those signals can never predict more than half of the failed drives.”
In 2007, at least, SMART data was equivalent to a coin flip for predicting failure.
On the other hand, I personally have had a number of drives fail, at least three catastrophically (one apparently had a short in the PCB and wouldn’t let the PC even POST). In none of those instances did I lose anything, because I had recent drive images of everything on the drive.
If one wishes to have real insurance against data loss, establish a regimen of regular drive imaging, and stick to it religiously, whether with HDD’s or SSD’s. Nothing else will save your bacon as effectively.
Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.We were all once "Average Users".-
You should keep a minimal amount of pagefile to avoid issues. I had this discussion a while ago with ch100 here. I think 800MB was the value and that is what I would suggest as a minimum although I thought I used a lower value. Adding more RAM won’t change that. A fixed pagefile is best if it is enough to cover the needs when RAM is not enough. The issue is if you do run out of RAM, it will start swapping and then you will notice a huge slowdown on a mechanical hard disk, although I never seen how it impacts the performance when using a SSD, especially the fast NVMe kind. What can happen is if you do need more RAM and the pagefile is fixed and too small, you can run into issues and have the system break down on you.
The key here is not needing to use your full amount of RAM. I don’t think the pagefile is used that much because you make it bigger if not needed on Window. Unix is different and I am not sure about Linux today. If you use applications that need a lot of RAM and leave a ton of browser windows open for days, with memory leaks, you can end up using a lot of RAM. But 16GB seem plenty for normal usage browsing the web, no gaming and no heavy duty apps like video editing.
I monitor my RAM usage and never ran into issues, I restart my browser when it starts to eat up gigs after days being open on many tabs, but if you want to have peace of mind, you can let Windows manage your swap file. It will grow if needed. The fact you have a lot of RAM for your needs is probably the most important factor in all this. I’m not sure the rest makes much difference in your real life experience.
I’ve never heard of RAM wearing out due to use. It needs power to keep information, so I guess it always have power regardless of whether you write to it or not during use of your PC. I wouldn’t worry about this.
Just having 16GB and a SSD does the most for your performance.
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Better than the paging file, turn off indexing! The paging file is there for the times when your computer runs out of memory, and it has to swap out data and program segments to make room for the program you just clicked on.
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can I help extend the life of the SSD by turning off the paging file?
There is no point trying to extend the life of an SSD.
They are very long lived and in normal use (anything not crypto generation) will give many years of service – sudden failure notwithstanding.
See this 7 year old article for more info.
https://techreport.com/review/27436/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-two-freaking-petabytes/cheers, Paul
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Trying to “spread the word” about this newsletter, I posted the link to this article on FB. So I was surprised to see that, while it displayed the title of the article, it also displayed a Twitter logo and advertised 1Pass.
If a friend of mine had posted this, my first thought would have been that this is a phishing scam. Can y’all do anything about this?
There is a way to care for your SSD and HD drives that will extend their lives, recover bad sectors, refresh entire drives, is easy, and has been proven effective and safe for many years. (Not for Mac though.)
Just get SpinRite from Gibson Research and run it periodically. That’s all. It will save your sanity and hardware. End of worries!
Go to https://grc.com and read up. Lots of other good stuff there also.
It is a reasonable one time cost – no annual subscriptions – updates are free except for infrequent major versions. I’ve been running version 6.0 since 2005 and version 5.0 before that. Cost to upgrade from 5 to 6 was $29. If you get the current version 6.0 now the update to 6.1 is free and coming soon. It sounds like it will be awesome.
You’re welcome.
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SpinRite is great for what it does, but it does not deal with a hard drive with a progressively worsening number of bad sectors afterwards. Let’s say, for example, that a system with a spinning hard drive gets a bit of a bump, and the drive read-write heads momentarily touch the surface of the drive, scratching off some of the magnetic coating. SpinRite may be able to take care of the immediate problem, but the etched-off coating is now floating around inside the drive, with the possibility of an abrasive effect on other areas of the drive platter(s). There’s a reason drives are assembled and disassembled in clean rooms, absolutely free of dust and dirt.
I cannot advocate using SpinRite on an SSD, but Steve Gibson is better prepared to advise all of us on that topic.
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Spinrite will likely induce added wear on an SSD based on how it works. Having said that, as a last resort to data recovery, with intent to copy or clone that data to a replacement drive, and with intent to retire the damaged SSD after recovery is complete, running it in Spinrite Level 2 can be highly effective.
Sources:
https://twitter.com/sggrc/status/289454123005390848https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/352439-is-spinrite-still-an-option-in-todays-world
Of course, if you are keeping good backups, you won’t need to go down that road.
~ Group "Weekend" ~
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Steve Gibson does not claim that Spinrite will make any drive last forever. In my opinion, he provides the best tool to handle your storage device intelligently and to know when to replace it.
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My 960GB Sandisk Extreme Pro has been in daily use for 7 or 8 years, and is used for everything including games, some video and photo editing, Office, internet, and even as a DVR for for several months until we got a dedicated 3TB WD Red HDD. Sandisk Toolbox says it still has 98% life remaining. It’s been the main drive in 2 different PCs, and it still runs fine. The 10-year warranty is a nice touch, too.
Going all the way back to the Kingston V100 96GB SSD we’ve never worn out an SSD. An early Mushkin 240GBGB SSD did fail suddenly after 18 months use, and they replaced it with a newer model which has an upgraded controller. That’s the only one I’ve ever seen fail.
Despite my confidence in SSDs we still make regular backups on Portable HDDs which we plug into a USB port to do the backup then unplug it for safekeeping (screw those ransomware bad guys!).
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We’ve now doing the same thing with an excellent StarTech 3.5″ external enclosure that supports 2 interfaces: eSATA and USB 3.0 . The metal enclosure is cool, trayless and front-loading.
Yes, it only accepts 3.5″ SATA HDDs, but HDD cost per gigabyte has dropped enormously as SSDs are now preferred for speed.
We just spent $80 on another brand new WDC 2TB “Black” HDD, which was close to $300 several years ago.
The other benefit of these external enclosures is a separate ON/OFF switch: we now switch that external enclosure ON just long enough to run our backup task, then we switch it OFF.
This policy should mean that this 2TB HDD will run reliably for most of the 5-year warranty period, and Western Digital does honor their factory warranties, provided a new WDC drive is registered at their on-line warranty database.
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My 960GB Sandisk Extreme Pro has been in daily use for 7 or 8 years, and is used for everything including games, some video and photo editing, Office, internet, and even as a DVR for for several months until we got a dedicated 3TB WD Red HDD. Sandisk Toolbox says it still has 98% life remaining. It’s been the main drive in 2 different PCs, and it still runs fine. The 10-year warranty is a nice touch, too.
Going all the way back to the Kingston V100 96GB SSD we’ve never worn out an SSD. An early Mushkin 240GBGB SSD did fail suddenly after 18 months use, and they replaced it with a newer model which has an upgraded controller. That’s the only one I’ve ever seen fail.
Despite my confidence in SSDs we still make regular backups on Portable HDDs which we plug into a USB port to do the backup then unplug it for safekeeping (screw those ransomware bad guys!).
Agreed. I ran a Windows 2003 Server with some SSD in RAID-1 configuration for 8 years without an issue. As we were replacing the server I took the old one home formatted the drives and installed Windows XP on the system with C: and D: no raid. Then a few years later I gave the computer to a friend that was in need of a computer. The hardware finally died due to motherboard overheating, but it wasn’t due to SSD failure. I know SSDs do fail as I’ve had a couple fail but for the most part, I’ve had much fewer SSD failures than I did with mechanical drives. My current computer has 4 years on it with the same SSD drives. The one drive says I’ve transferred 33.1 TB on it so far and no signs of a failure yet.
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I tried Clear Disk Info and it gave 1% life remaining for one of my disks. But Crystal Disk Info and Hard Disk Sentinel give 96%. Power On Time is 14140 hours. A Kingston 120G with 11TB writes.
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The usage of your MacBook that you’ve portrayed seems pretty unlikely to wear out the SSD with excessive write operations. Is this the original SSD, or one that was installed after the initial purchase? If you installed it yourself in 2020, it is still pretty new. You’ve got 16GB of memory there, cutting down on SSD writes, compared to the budget Macs with 4GB or 8GB. Great screen!
Leaving a computer on generally has no effect on the SSD or hard drive. Ditto watching movies and shows. If the number crunching makes intensive use of the SSD, it is perhaps the major risk factor.
Keep on!
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What I think is happening are differing interpretations of the same data, because there is no agreed upon standard for SSD SMART data attributes. SKHynix is unwilling to release a technical description of how it uses SMART data in SSDs, as I noted in the article. Other manufacturers are not always forthright about SMART either.
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You computer jocks seem to be so tied up in your computerese that you miss the most *basic* issue with SSDs: the physics of the devices. The devices are limited by the depth of the potential wells into which electrical charges are placed to store data.
If the wells are not deep enough, thermal effects can cause charge to leak out. Boltzmann’s law gives that probability for each potential well; given the large numbers of such wells (bits), the probability of data corruption becomes nonvanishing. Moreover, if the temperature increases, the probability of leakage from the wells increases – exponentially.SSDs are suitable only for short-term storage.
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This is in fact true.
Most modern SSD’s, when stored (no power) under 70F (21C) will retain their integrity for at least one year. Longer is possible but YMMV depending on the NVRAM type, quality, batch, etc. Too many variables. Higher storage temps can greatly shorten that metric.
We use SSD’s as live operating drives, and HDD’s for archival storage – either powered or cold.
For long storage (over one year but under ten) we prefer CMR HDD drives for speed and ease of backup restoration. For even longer time periods and for relatively small data sets (25GB per optical disk) we use archival grade Blu-Ray disks – or in the case where terabytes of long term storage are needed we rotate storage for critical records to new HDD media on a schedule.
Tape appears to be making a comeback for long term storage, but I can’t get over my mis-trust of that media from the bad old days . . .
If you use a home backup solution – I always recommend a USB HDD based removable drive, and always have two. One online to receive backups and one offline. Rotate regularly. Put the in-service start date on a label on these drives, and replace them if they get wonky or older than five years.
~ Group "Weekend" ~
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Do you have any experience with M-DISCs?
Christopher Barnatt at YouTube put one to a torture test: he wrote data to an M-DISC then put it in a freezer for a few days. After it thawed, Chris was still able to read all the raw data without any errors.
We recently purchased a few slim ODD writers that are supposed to write M-DISCS too, but we haven’t gotten around to trying any for large files like drive images of C: .
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We have been using M-Disks for a few years now, but am now researching alternatives. It’s becoming apparent that the media is getting hard to find, and the smaller DVD sized capacities seem to be discontinued.
The DoD torture tested M-Disks a few years ago and results seemed pretty good.
Media obsolescence as well as their readers is a major concern. If I have a disk rated for hundreds of years, and if that data matters, will anyone be able to read it then?
But . . . this is starting to develop into an entirely new topic, one that is VERY interesting but might deserve it’s own thread.
~ Group "Weekend" ~
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Really good surge protectors or a UPS of ample capacity! Really good power supplies offer some protection for the rest of the computer. The magnitude of the surge, usually when power is restored, has a lot to do with it. Here in the US, a surge of 130v is almost negligible. 200v will destroy not just an SSD, but most everything else inside a computer.
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We use CyberPower OR1500pfclcd surge protectors.
They are part of CyberPower’s PFC Sinewave UPS series and we use them to support our work stations, modems, and routers.
Specifications are as follows:
- Power Rating 1500 VA/1050 Watts
- Topology: Line Interactive
- Waveform: Sine Wave
- Plug type & cord: NEMA 5-15P, 6 ft. cord
- Outlet types: 8 x NEMA 5-15R
- Communication: USB, Serial
- Management software: PowerPanel Business Edition
- Warranty: 3 year
- Connected Equipment Guarantee: $200,000
For less expensive/sensitive equipment we use Tripp Lite Isobars. The Tripp Lite isobars are not as robust as the CyberPowerbut units but come with $50,000 Ultimate Lifetime Insurance. We have used the insurance three times over the last 20 years to replace electronics that have failed due to power surges (television, WIFI radio, and microwave).
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If you are in the US/Canada, have you tried finding a Cyber Power reseller by going to their web site at https://www.cyberpowersystems.com/reseller-search/ .
The page has links to their resellers including, but not limited to, Amazon, B&H, Best Buy, CDW, Costco, Fry’s, Home Depot, Newegg, MicroAge, Office Depot, Provantage, Staples, Walmart, etc.
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A power surge will sound the death knell for SSD drives
A power surge only affects the PSU, which isolates and provides regulated power to the other components. The PSU is designed to cope with a range of input voltages, but too much or too little will cause the PSU to provide the wrong voltage to internal components. Some internal components will tolerate the improper voltage and some won’t, but none will be unaffected in some way.
If you need reliability or have power supply issues, there are two things you need to do.
Backup regularly, because no solution is 100% effective.
Add a UPS in front of the PC(s) to limit the voltage changes / provide power during low / no power times.cheers, Paul
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We had a HP Windows 10 work station that was exposed to a power surge about a year ago.
Installed a new SSD , used its recovery software to restore it to an as new condition, reinstalled its software, and recovered its working files from a backup.
The machine has been working fine ever since.
Thus me comment related to SSD drives and their exposure to power surges.
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Our AC power cabling always enforces the following “policy”:
CHEAP links BURN first
EXPENSIVE links BURN last
Thus, at the 110V wall outlet, we plug in a relatively cheap surge protector with multiple outlets. Ideally, the later surge protector has a separate ON/OFF switch for each outlet.
Next in line is a high-quality UPS / battery backup unit: we’ve been using the APC brand for years, and they work great, particularly if their PowerChute Personal software is installed with the required USB cable installed correctly.
Last in line is the quality PSU that we try to install in every workstation that we build. Presently, our hands-down favorite is Seasonic brand. Their Tech Support is superb.
If a surge burns the surge protector but leaves the UPS intact, you’re out maybe another $10 to $20.
If a surge burns the UPS too, you’re out maybe another $100.
If a surge burns all the way thru the PSU, your system probably suffered the direct hit of a lightning strike: but, the good news is that the latter event is highly improbable, and there are other ways to shield computers from such worse-case events.
Just our “policy” here. Hope this helps.
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With a conventional hard drive, there are two kinds of failures that are possible (roughly speaking)… mechanical failure and electronic failure. The various moving parts will eventually wear out, and that will necessarily cause problems.
Whether you get any warning about this is a luck of the draw thing. You might, but it’s by no means certain. Even if there is some warning, it doesn’t mean there won’t be any data loss by the time you are aware there is a problem.
The second kind of failure is an electronics failure. Hard drives have RAM (for buffering/caching) and CPUs like a PC (or a SSD), and these components can fail. When this happens, it is quite likely to be of the “bolt from the blue” type that no one saw coming.
SSDs, of course, have no moving parts, so the first kind of failure can’t happen. The second kind can, though. It’s not as obvious, but there is also a difference between a media wear-out failure and any other electronics failure, in that one is an expected, fairly predictable thing that you can see coming from the SMART data, while the other electronics failure can’t really be predicted by SMART, just as with the hard drive whose electronics fail suddenly.
A lot of people are put off by the ticking time bomb aspect of the SSD, where you can watch it losing its life from the moment you start using it. The hard drive is a ticking time bomb too… you know it’s going to fail at some point, but there’s no inkling of when it might be, so it’s easier to kind of think of it like it isn’t going to happen (until it actually does).
I’ve got one SSD that I’ve beaten on pretty hard since I bought it (a Samsung 840 Pro 128GB). I’ve had the swap/paging file on it for the whole time I have had it, and Firefox used to have some pretty nasty memory leaks that caused it to consume all of my RAM very frequently, and it was only the speed of the SSD that kept the system limping along until I could close Firefox and get the RAM back. Still, that now 8 year (and one month) old drive is still in service. The drive is now down to 67% of its rated service life, and it has had just over 42,000 power-on hours.
Note that the rated life doesn’t mean that the drive just dies when the clock runs down to zero. It was like this with at least one model of Intel drive (the electronics would turn the drive to read-only instantaneously, and once it was powered down, it would brick itself, so you could not even use it in read-only mode to get your data), but in the famous Tech Reports test of SSDs, where lots of drives were written to until they died, the 840 Pro was only about half done when it got to its officially worn-out status.
The most recent hard drive failure I had was the sudden, bolt-from-the-blue type. I was upgrading my Asus laptop (Core 2 Duo era) from XP, and while the drive had a lot of hours on it (~23k, if I recall) and was approaching five years old, it still worked perfectly, with no SMART data worries and no misbehavior of any kind. It was a reliable workhorse.
And then, during the installation of 7, it quit. No noise, no warning at all. It never read or wrote another byte of data. The warranty was five years, so I contacted Seagate and sent it back under warranty, just under the wire.
That drive had a lot of hours and a lot of years, at ~22,000 and nearly 5, respectively, but my Samsung 840 Pro SSD has it beat, with three more years and nearly double the active hours. It will fail someday, but I have backups, so I will leave it in and keep getting my money’s worth out of it all these years later!
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
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Urged on by discussion here, I tried an Inateck all-purpose USB 3.0 adapter for hard drives, bought a couple of months ago, for the first time. It is all purpose because it handles SATA drives and both notebook 44-pin 2.5″ and desktop 40-pin 3.5″ parallel ATA drives. ClearDiskInfo shows the SMART attributes for the SATA drive I connected up, but Speccy gets confused. So the Inateck implements the USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) to allow SMART data to be seen over USB 3.0. I have not yet put it to the acid test of seeing SMART data for a PATA drive. The Inateck unit is affordable at around $30, well worth it for me.
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Here is a photo of the Inateck all-purpose USB 3.0 adapter, so there is no doubt what I talked about.
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Best to do show, along with tell. There are three types, all attaching to a USB port on a computer.
For most purposes, the Inateck one shown in a photo previously, handles a 2.5″ SATA solid state drive as well as other kinds of drives, both old-time spinning and SSD. Attach a SATA drive to the SATA connector, provide power to the Inateck, connect the Inateck adapter to a USB port with a cable.
For any of these gizmos, the drive shows up as an external drive, either on a MacOS, Windows or Linux computer.
I do not have photo for the second one, to which an NVMe SSD is attached, and which also plugs into the computer’s USB port with a cable.
The third one is intended only for MacBook SSDs, which use a proprietary, Apple-only edge connector, very different from a standard NVMe SSD. Same idea here. Attach your MacBook SSD to the small board, then connect the small board to a USB 3.0 port with the supplied cable, aluminum housing optional. The photo shows one very similar to the one(s) I have here for MacOS data recovery.
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@OscarCP, here is an Amazon.com page for the product Ben referenced.
This thingy lets you hook up IDE and SATA drives to a computer via a USB cable. You plug the desired drive in the appropriate connector, connect one end of the USB cable to the dock and the other to the computer. All connections are external, no opening of computer cases is required.
I don’t have this exact device, but I have others like it, as well as a couple of docking stations like this one. These serve much the same purpose as the Inateck; some models feature dual SATA connectors but this one in particular has one SATA and one IDE.
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One of the problems that less experienced users may not appreciate initially, is insufficient DC power that is provided by any given USB port.
This problem occurs most frequently with older USB 2.0 ports, but it can also occur with newer integrated USB 3.0 ports if the motherboard’s chipset doesn’t meet the minimum current specifications.
The easiest way around this non-obvious barrier is a “Y” USB adapter cable that plugs into 2 x USB ports: one transmits data, and the other simply supplements the USB device with extra DC power.
This problem becomes obvious if one is installing a USB add-in card into an empty PCIe expansion slot: if the card has a Molex or SATA power connector, a power cable from the PSU needs to plug into that connector to provide the USB port with all the DC power any device could possibly need.
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We often look to the manufactures warranty policy for an estimate of the useful life of equipment.
In the case of Western Digital, they offer a 5-year limited warranty on their 250 GB, 500GB, 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB WD Blue SATA SSD 2.5”/7mm cased internal drives.
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The drivers do not need to be on the SSD. If they are installed in Windows, that’s all that is needed, regardless of where Windows lives.
I would say the drive is fine. The SMART implementations are notoriously varied, and CrystalDiskInfo is probably just misinterpreting the numbers it sees. If it were being reported bad by the utility from the drive manufacturer, though, I would contact them for assistance. You can always do that if you are concerned, but if it were mine I’d be fine with it. I am always making backups, though, just because failures do happen.
On that topic, I took my Acer Swift 1 out of mothballs (not literally) last night to check and see if Windows was still installed on it, and it was, so I started to boot it to check something, and it got about halfway there and then turned off. Power plugged in, but battery stopped charging, and it won’t respond to anything.
I only mothballed the Swift because its role was taken by my Dell XPS 13, but it had been working fine until then.
Failures happen, and often with zero warning. This time it was presumably the Swift’s motherboard (as it encompasses nearly everything), but it could have as easily been a SSD or a hard drive.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
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I would have a lot more confidence in these tools if they could agree a little better.
🍻
Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.2 users thanked author for this post.
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To repeat what I stated in my article, if there were standards for SSD SMART attributes and their meaning, all of the software that looks at them would have a consistent way of interpreting what they mean. There are no SSD SMART standards today, so every SSD manufacturer does what it wants, and most do not bother to tell us what they do. As a result, every piece of software that looks at SMART has latitude to interpret results differently. And they do, as seen by all the commentary here.
If anything, this is a worse embarrassment for the computer industry than Microsoft Windows, Apple MacOS and various Linux flavors (at least the ones I’ve tested) failure to grapple with timely notifications of hard drive and SSD reliability issues, before we all have to cope with BSODs, unbootable Macs and kernel panics.
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This HP configuration largely matches the setup in my customized Dell Precision T5810 with its 256GB SSD for programs and regularly used stuff and a 2TB traditional hard drive to keep all the data I use. One thing to consider is customizing the hard drive setup to cycle the drive down when it has not been used for a while. The drive remains in a hot standby state, ready to cycle up again when needed, albeit with a few seconds delay. The idea is to save wear and tear on the drive motor and bearings. You can set this up in the Windows Power Options.
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Yesterday’s New York Times had a piece by industry veteran John Markoff front, top and center of the business page addressing the issue that as circuits inside chips get closer and closer together, and smaller of course, the odds increase for random electrical leaks leading to equally random totally unpredictable failures of all kinds. This applies not just to CPUs, but also to memory and all kinds of other chips. Maybe the industry stops at 7nm processes? 5nm?
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Ben Myers: “Maybe the industry stops at 7nm processes? 5nm?”
If not, maybe Nature calling out: “enough is enough! will do it:
This has been worry for several years now: as components become tinier and tinier, the probability of a quantum phenomenon known as tunneling increases, meaning that electrons can jump from where they are supposed to be to somewhere else where they shouldn’t, regardless of insulating barriers, equally tiny. Also the probability of being hit to serious and even total damage in a tiny component by a hard cosmic ray particle such as an iron nucleus, could be high enough to result in repeated integrated circuit failures.
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV1 user thanked author for this post.
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Only 6 days ago:
“Elon Musk’s Starlink operation lost 40 out of 49 satellites it launched into the Earth’s upper atmosphere on Wednesday, as a geomagnetic storm knocked out the majority of the fleet.”
“Why do I have this sinking feeling?” asked the church mouse, the first rodent-astronaut to pilot a StarLink Internet transponder satellite.
“Just wait until you reach the lower atmosphere at Mach 10,” replied the Choir Master.
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Here’s a link to the Markoff article referred to above:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/07/technology/computer-chips-errors.html
I’m always amused when I see a reference to the “cosmic rays caused it” line, which is the oldest excuse in the book given by tech support call center reps when they’ve run out of ideas to explain some problem with their software.
But I think the analogy of finding a leaking faucet in one unit of an apartment building that covers the entire land mass of the United Sates is fabulous.
— AWRon
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The “cosmic ray did it” may be amusing, but this is not going to be so amusing if the size of the components in an integrated circuit becomes sufficiently small. Which is the point of “cosmic ray” being mentioned here, in the first place.
As to Musk’s satellites coming down soon after being launched:
“Ohh, who could have guessed that it was not ideal to launch during an ongoing massive geomagnetic disturbance, because the direct impact with a solar mass ejection, predicted using spacecraft solar data to hit Earth days in advance, was going to thicken the upper atmosphere?”
Well, this has been known since the beginnings of the Space Age, in fact it is basic stuff we, that have to deal with artificial satellites and also have a side interest on the mechanics of the upper atmosphere, must and do know.
And this is the company, with Mr. Musk as its head, that is supposed to have in orbit and manage well an unprecedentedly huge constellation of thousands of satellites, meant to profitably connect, those who can pay, to the Internet everywhere? And this low-orbit design has been chosen to make the speed of connection super-high, so the satellites are going to be just some 50 km above the International Space Station and the Chinese space station (that has already had to be moved to dodge another one of Mr. Musk’s satellites). And these satellites are giving heartburn to astronomer’s all over the world, because, even with extra precautions, they reflect down too much sunlight, spoiling the work of whole (very hard to get time for) telescope observing nights, particularly with the ones with really big eyes. Way to go, Mr.Musk!
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV1 user thanked author for this post.
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I think something got lost in my post about cold storage and SSD’s.
By “cold,” we mean a drive that contains data and is continuously offline with no power. We do NOT mean a drive that is occasionally plugged in from time to time, nor a continuously active drive in service. Your primary SSD in your computer is safe unless you don’t use that computer for a year or so.
SSD’s that are in frequent use do not lose data due to cell drainage. SSD’s that are used as long term cold storage can drop data depending on age and environment. This applies to any flash based storage.
For an in depth explanation see https://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data-retention
~ Group "Weekend" ~
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The article linked by NetDef ( #2424661 ) puts an end to a lot of concerns about SSD loss of information under normal usage conditions. Including my own.
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV1 user thanked author for this post.
I also thank you for this wonderful article. This week i ran into an unusual problem with a WD Blue 500G NVMe in one of my PCs. System shutdown and would shutdown in about 30 seconds when a boot started. Older machine so i suspected that new grease was needed on the CPU. It did need the grease, but the system still would not boot. Booted from cloned SSHD drive. System came up normally. Tried to clone the system to the NVMe drive. System shutdown within a few minutes of the clone starting. Tried again, same result. Used Windows format drive command to fully (not quick) format the NVMe. Cloned the system and booted from the NVMe. Been running 3 days now. WD Dashboard shows the drive as normal with 100 spares showing on the smart data.
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If the SSD is listed as failing then it may last another year, or only a day. Whether you use it or give it away, it needs a new disk.
cheers, Paul
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In case this setup may benefit other Users here, this is how we setup the system software on a new workstation:
After the OS and all application software are installed and working correctly, we run “Migrate OS” in the excellent Partition Wizard software.
That task should install a second identical set of system software on a second bootable drive.
Then, we periodically write a drive image file of C:, and make redundant copies of that drive image as a hedge against sudden storage device failures.
If the main C: partition gets hosed and/or begins to malfunction due to malware and such, we simply change the BIOS boot drive and boot from the second OS copy on the second bootable drive.
While running from that second bootable drive, we fire up Acronis and restore the latest working drive image file to the primary boot drive.
Then, we change the BIOS boot drive back to the primary boot drive.
Restoring a working C: partition takes all of 10 to 15 minutes, and totally eliminates the need to spend hours trying to troubleshoot a system software failure.
To put a little icing on the cake, we also keep a CHANGES file up-to-date, so we know what recent changes must be re-done, because they were done after the latest drive image of C: was created.
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Thanks for your several informative posts in this thread.
Could you please provide specific software information for “Partition Wizard” and “CONTIG”?
Also, is your reference to the CHANGES file something inside one of the programs, or a separate piece of software?
Thank you,
— AWRon
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Here is the link showing the steps to Migrate OS:
How to Migrate OS to SSD/HD | MiniTool Partition Wizard Tutorial
Here is the link to download the Minitool Partition Wizard which includes the Migrate OS feature. Hover on the blue “Download Partition Wizard” button on this page to try out the Pro Version:
Thanks for Downloading MiniTool Partition Wizard Free
MACRIUM REFLECT: There’s a totally free version of Macrium Reflect available to Clone/Copy/Migrate your OS to another drive. I have found it to be very reliable and fairly easy to use over a period of several years. So, you can migrate (copy/clone) Windows onto a second drive, then if the need arises you can select that drive in your system BIOS (or UEFI as they call it these days) and boot from it:
Macrium Software | Reflect Free Edition
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How does your system avoid possible ransomware? I mean, if the second HDD is installed in that same PC, couldn’t a hacker still encrypt its contents for ransom? apologies if I failed to understand your full post. 😀
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> couldn’t a hacker still encrypt its contents for ransom?
Good question!
Yes: it’s “wide open” like any other NFTS drive letter.
There are other and better solutions to blocking ransomware, but I am not the best person to ask about the most recommended solutions.
AskWoody probably has some of THE BEST experts for advice on that problem.
For one, our version of Acronis True Image software does claim to have a robust defense against ransomware, but I believe that defense only applies to drive image files written by that software.
We also routinely backup drive images to an external USB enclosure, and switch it OFF when we are not actively running our backup BATCH programs.
Similarly, we have re-purposed a few aging Windows XP PCs that are now dedicated to doing nothing but backup storage: again, we STARTUP those XP PCs only long enough to update backups, then they are SHUTDOWN promptly.
If ransomware hoses an entire C: partition, our workstations allow a recovery by simply restoring a working drive image: all such drive images were written to save all system software files, so a successful restore ends up over-writing every file in C: .
As an extra precaution, before restoring a working drive image, one might also re-format C: by launching a program that has not been infected by ransomware. But, in the past we have found that such reformatting is not necessary and as such ends up being a waste of time.
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Point taken, thanks. We do a similar thing by plugging in a portable USB hard drive with a black case to create a system image backup, then unplug that drive. A second portable drive with a red case is used for the next backup. then we continue to alternate those drives for additional backups. This provides some protection in case any form of malware is discovered that may have been hiding there when we made the most recent backup. Again, not perfect, but this method has served us well for about 6 years now. For the record we use a WD My Passport 2TB and a Seagate 2TB portable. Both are 2.5-inch size so they are powered from any available USB port, no power adapter required.
Speaking of old Windows XP machines we have a Compaq from 1999 still running on Windows 98SE, allowing me to enjoy a couple of now-ancient games!
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Hello.
I enclose four screen captures of Clear Disk, CrystalDiskInfo, SSD-Z and HardDiskCentinel of a 256GB SSD Samsung 860 Pro. The only one that warns me is the Clear Disk. I don’t know who to trust.
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I found the article on SSD SMART very interesting and helpful, but I too found the differences in reporting among tools disturbing, and looked deeper into possible causes. I would also suggest that ClearDisk is the questionable reporter. Although I understand that there can be a difference of interpretation of SMART parameters, there are some differences that cleardisk has that turn out to make it unusable for me, in favor of Crystaldiskinfo, or perhaps an alternative better choice would be the SSD manufacturer’s own monitoring software.
When I use HDD’s I find the SMART data has been useful in conjunction with Victoria disk utility, and looking at reallocated sectors, and pending sectors (and seek times in the test). When these parameters start to increase, and after running Victoria and get even higher, (along with “funnies” in system operation) it has turned out that it was time to think about replacing the drive.
With the conversion to SSD’s, it’s been a learning experience, and that is why I pursued this a little more.
I used 5 tools on one of my Samsung drives. Cleardisk, Crystaldiskinfo, Samsung Magician, Passmark Disk Cleanup, and the windows based smartmon tools using the “smartctl” command. (I have two of the same kind of Samsung drives in two of the same model laptops; I used cleardisk and crystaldisk on one of them, and all 5 on the other. The cleardisk/crystaldisk differences were consistent on both.) All of the four other tools were consistent in reporting; cleardisk had that parameter 231, percent lifetime remaining, that didn’t seem to make any sense.
Looking further, (and using the picture of SMART reporting by manufacturers from the original article that I’ve attached) the first reason for cleardisk’s lack for my use is that cleardisk is the ONLY tool that reports that parameter for my Samsung drives. The picture suggests that it is not available in Samsung. All the other tools (even Samsung’s) do not report that parameter. It may be in the SMART data somewhere, but if Samsung does not report it with their tool, any “interpretation” might be questionable.
All the other parameters were reported, and pretty much agreed identically, except for another key value, that of parameter 241, total GB written. Cleardisk reports a negative number that I cannot resolve into any kind of number that makes any kind of sense. The other tools reporting of that number are consistent, and end up helping to determine a SWAG at used and remaining life.
I found a Samsung article (https://image-us.samsung.com/SamsungUS/b2b/resource/2016/05/31/WHP-SSD-SSDSMARTATTRIBUTES-APR16J.pdf) that gives a detailed description about how Samsung would go about determining remaining life. For the full blown method (their words from the article) “…estimating SSD lifetime using conventional SMART attributes is a relatively complex and labor intensive process, involving multiple calculations.” Even their “simpler” method involves using some tricky commands to get some initial SMART data, starting off a testing cycle, using the drive in normal service for a nominal time, and gathering the after testing SMART parameters and doing some more calculations. That looked kind of daunting too.
But a simplistic SWAG might be available (and ends up agreeing with the other tool reports). It seems that SSD’s life is very much related to the amount of writes to the device. Using the parameter 241 value (total LBA’s written) provided by the four agreeing tools, it appears that my two drives have had 1.4 TB and 3.1 TB written to them. The warranted or serviceable life for my Samsung model drives that I found by a search suggest that they should be able to have 300 TBW “life”; that matches the 99% remaining by CrystalDiskinfo, and I’ll continue monitoring the SSD’s on a periodic basis to see if the hypothesis for this SWAG remains consistent. The Samsung number doesn’t mean they fail after that, but gives some idea of when I should be more watchful and look at some of the other parameters.
Thanks for a very thought provoking article; I also agree that it would be “nice” if the manufacturers would all have a consistent way of reporting drive status. Samsung’s magician just reporting “good” is nice, but it would be nicer if the quality term was a bit more granular.
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Sorry, no experience with RAID at all.
I have looked at Event viewer on occasion, but only when something seems to be going wrong. Guess I never did end up looking for HDD events there when I was suspicious. Guess I went for the “old reliable” other tools I trusted to help to get to the eventual solution.
And yes, cabling and connections can end up causing really hard to resolve intermittent “funnies.”
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IMO the only true stamina check of an SSD and data within is end-user habit.
Images and backups works well here with a monthly forced clean and trim.
I have a OCZ Solid from circa 10 years ago+ that still works well using that method..who needs additional mis-aligned results junkware to set the paranoia levels higher LOL, just use it.If debian is good enough for NASA...1 user thanked author for this post.
The above is a rare empirical comparison that was published on an Internet User forum many years ago. I don’t remember the author(s), however. It confirms empirically how HDD speeds slow down as they fill up. The intervening factor is the need to maintain constant linear recording density on rotating platter HDDs.
This constant recording density means that the amount of raw data on any given circular track is directly proportional to track diameter. Therefore, the outermost tracks are the fastest and the innermost tracks are the slowest. When a new HDD is formatted the first time, the formatting begins at the outermost tracks and continues inward until the partition is fully defined.
The Partition Wizard software can also be run to confirm the same phenomenon. The “Surface Test” option also begins at the outermost tracks of any given partition. As it runs, it computes and displays the running average data rate. If the User watches how that displayed number changes, it slowly declines as the “Surface Test” task proceeds its way thru the partition, sector-by-sector.
The individual squares in the partition map do not correspond exactly to physical sectors; the amount of raw data inside any one “square” is an approximation which Partition Wizard calculates, in order to fit the entire “map”onto a single monitor window, regardless of partition size.
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It’s worth noting that USB 3.0 maximum theoretical bandwidth is 5Gbps, whereas the newer USB 3.2 standard has max. 10Gbps bandwidth. This permits a SATA III (6GB/s) SSD to achieve full performance compared to the limitations shown in the video you referenced.
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You mentioned: “1,212 MB/second is slightly more than DOUBLE the SATA-III ceiling of 600 MB/second (6G / 10).”
Yes, and that bandwidth allows for simultaneous Read/Write speeds of 500MB/s or more; not that I expect any SATA SSD to achieve mixed R/W performance that high, but it’s nice to see there’s enough headroom for it.
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Correction – The WD Elements USB 3.0 portable drives with 2TB storage are not SSD
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I’m curious about one file system change that might have a direct effect on some ransomware.
We tend to populate a tower chassis with as many drives as it can handle. And, with Icy Dock’s 5.25″ 8-drive enclosure for 2.5″ SSDs, it’s pretty easy now to run out of drive letters, particularly when some letters need to be reserved for Network Drives and USB ports.
So, in light of these limitations, we have run “Migrate OS” to create a clone of the OS on a second drive. Then, we simply remove any drive letter that has been assigned automatically once the “Migrate OS” task is finished.
Removing a drive letter is very easy in Windows Disk Management.
Do you happen to know if ransomware will simply ignore a formatted partition if it lacks a Windows driver letter?
Removing a drive letter has resulted in no adverse consequences for us.
Only certain software can still access a formatted partition that lacks a drive letter: HDTune is one such program that still sees such a partition, even if it has no drive letter assigned.
If we ever need to boot from a secondary OS, the boot sequence always assigns C: anyway, even if that secondary boot partition has no drive letter assigned normally (i.e. when booting from the primary boot partition).
“Do you happen to know if ransomware will simply ignore a formatted partition if it lacks a Windows driver letter?”
I would not assume this is safe. Even if it’s safe today ransomware is under continuous development and may be able to overcome this tomorrow.
Safe “offline” backups mean “physically disconnected from the network or computer.”
We know from bitter experience that malware can target network shares not assigned a drive letter. It’s a very short leap for it to also enumerate local volumes that are not assigned a drive letter.
Example, here is a SMART monitor listing drives, note that one of the drives does not currently have a drive letter. The program is doing nothing special to find that drive, the OS kernel provides this info if you know how to ask. I can also read and write data to that volume with several admin tools. I could also use a redirected folder name to mount that volume, no drive letter required!
Here’s a look at the DISKPART utility (built into every windows system) output on the same system. There’s nothing stopping ransomware from using this very tool scripted to mount the drive once it get’s onto your system.
~ Group "Weekend" ~
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Many MANY thanks for that detailed answer, and clarification.
I feared what you confirmed, but I don’t have enough experience to have answered my question without help.
I don’t know if this next point is DIRECTLY or IMMEDIATELY relevant; nevertheless, we recently dove into the Management Console of our LAN router. The real-time clock had never been set properly, and a firmware bug prevented the Event Log from being updated.
After we selected the option to get current time from the Internet, that router’s Event Log started showing a large number of DDOS attempts and simple “hacks” that are automatically blocked by our router’s built-in IPS (intrusion prevention system).
All of the IP addresses blocked by that IPS originated in China, quite possibly because we have been volunteering pro bono to help investigate what happened at the 100-nation world military games held in Wuhan during October 2019.
(An infrared surveillance satellite photographed a huge HOT SPOT at a PLA garrison near Wuhan: one senior journalist inferred plasma-furnace cremation sites running 24/7. A similar HOT SPOT was also detected in Wuhan proper. This is pretty serious: those military athletes were in very good health and very fit before they succumbed to some biological warfare agent, most probably added to the fish in 2 lakes where aquatic events were held.)
As such, somebody “out there” has a reason to hack our LAN.
That experience, in turn, has motivated me to DISABLE all of the “Wake on” options in all of our network controllers e.g. “Wake on Pattern Match” and “Wake on Magic Packet” are 2 such settings that we were able to DISABLE in all of our network controllers, both integrated and 2.5 GbE USB dongles.
It occurs to me that ransomware criminals may also be exploiting these “Wake on” options to STARTUP computers remotely.
I really do appreciate your detailed answer: those criminals probably already know how to corrupt an entire partition, even if it lacks an assigned driver letter.
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First of all, a big thanks Ben for the original article. I was previously bitten with SSD failure about 6 years ago when my boot drive failed and also had issues restoring the data which resulted in my decision to purchase a new PC and also to install Macrium reflect. As before, the 250 Gb SSD is just for system files and everything else is on a 4Tb HDD.
As I consider how to cover my bases going forward, especially given that my CPU/motherboard combination does not qualify for the upgrade to Win 11, I am looking at three options:
- Carry on backing up the configuration and hope that no issues occur with the SSD; Win 11 is not a necessary upgrade and get a spare SSD ready for emergencies.
- Buy a brand new PC and migrate everything over ready for Win 11.
- Buy a new SSD and drop it into the chassis and migrate my Win 10 system over at a time of my choosing to avoid the angst of an emergency system rebuild.
Given the issues with chip manufacture right now, the upgrade is potentially more expensive than in a year or 2 but of course may be even worse. This is my main machine (apart from iPhone and iPad) so losing it would be more than just annoying. If this was you, how would you proceed? (Appreciate this may be thread drift, ben – happy to set up a new thread if appropriate)
Peter
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Carry on backing up the configuration and hope that no issues occur with the SSD
Backup is to recover from issues, SSD or otherwise. MR will allow you to boot from USB and restore to a new SSD. No need to do anything else.
If your SSD does die, buy one then. If the motherboard dies, you can try to replace it or buy a new PC. Either way, wait until you have a failure before spending any more money.
cheers, Paul
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Boot sectors are only required on MBR disks – not so common since W10.
MR correctly restores all drive data on MBR and GPT disks. It also correctly aligns SSDs.cheers, Paul
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Looks like a good method. Two things:
1. Print a list of the drives, Boot Drive priority, restore queue, etc. for all involved persons involved so nobody has an excuse to screw it up.
2. On the end of each drive that is exposed/visible when the PC side panel is removed place a label designating which partitions are on that drive; again, so nobody involved can screw it up. Peel & stick label with Scotch tape over it might stay stuck on for a few years, LOL.
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You mentioned: ” It would help a LOT if Microsoft would make it easier to map logical drive letters to physical drives, perhaps by adding a “description” column to a spreadsheet that is easily maintained by system administrators. ”
Great idea! However, the best I’ve come up with at home is when offered to name the New Volume (usually after initializing the drive) I’ll name it SeagateDATA3TB, or WDBackups4TB, or TVRecordings3TB, etc.
Our main PC is a HTPC/Gaming/Home server rig with a 960GB SSD boot drive, 3 x HDDs, and an 8TB external HDD that causes the PC to take an extra 15 – 20 seconds to post before booting into Windows (annoying).
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> to avoid the angst of an emergency system rebuild
> losing it [main machine] would be more than just annoying
Here’s an option that has worked VERY well for us:
search Newegg for “refurbished HP workstation”
That search turned up a marketplace seller named “PC server and parts”. Visit the latter’s website, where you can find a huge selection of “refurbished” HP workstations with Windows 10 Pro pre-installed.
HP’s workstation hardware is very reliable, and the latter vendor will do a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro before shipping, and rebuild with a brand new SSD.
HP’s website also has an enormous volume of pertinent documentation.
Because of the hardware restrictions in W11, tons of these now “obsolete” workstations are turning up USED. For our work, the Intel Core i7-3770 is all the power we need for routine database and website maintenance: 4 cores, 8 threads, with turbo-boost.
And, the newer “used” HP workstations come with powerful Xeon CPUs.
HP also manufactures literally tons of spare parts, like proprietary PSUs, specialized SATA power cables and such, which can be readily located at eBay.
When we discount the retail price of a new OEM version of W10 Pro x64, the hardware that comes with one of these REFURBs is almost free.
As long as you don’t mind doing your own hardware maintenance, in your situation I would try to “clone” a copy of “main machine”, complete with all the same third-party software and all the same User settings.
This “clone machine” can also network to your main machine, and you can do peer-to-peer backups over Ethernet. XCOPY works fine over a LAN.
These workstation motherboards have empty expansion slots, and you can upgrade your network as needed with 2.5 and 10GbE add-in cards.
You won’t need a second Keyboard/Video/Mouse, if you get a quality KVM switch.
However, since your main machine dedicates an entire SSD to the OS, you have the option to add a redundant “data drive” to “clone machine”, time permitting:
… everything else is on a 4Tb HDD
For flexibility, I would also purchase a second 4TB HDD and install it in StarTech’s excellent external USB | eSATA enclosure. Connect the USB cable to “main machine”, and power it UP only long enough to update backups, then power it OFF.
As I see it, you need to backup that 4TB HDD in any event.
Then, if “main machine” dies, you can simply re-connect the StarTech enclosure to “clone machine”, and you’re up and running in something like 60 seconds.
That way, you can decide what to do with “main machine” after you get A-ROUND-TUIT (that’s the opposite of A-SQUARE-TUIT).
We can ship ROUND-TUITs to you, but they’re expensive! 🙂
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It would help a LOT if Microsoft would make it easier to map logical drive letters to physical drives
You can do this easily with a bit of PowerShell.
Copy and past the code below into a PS window and all will be revealed.cheers, Paul
Get-WmiObject Win32_DiskDrive | ForEach-Object { $disk = $_ $partitions = "ASSOCIATORS OF " + "{Win32_DiskDrive.DeviceID='$($disk.DeviceID)'} " + "WHERE AssocClass = Win32_DiskDriveToDiskPartition" Get-WmiObject -Query $partitions | ForEach-Object { $partition = $_ $drives = "ASSOCIATORS OF " + "{Win32_DiskPartition.DeviceID='$($partition.DeviceID)'} " + "WHERE AssocClass = Win32_LogicalDiskToPartition" Get-WmiObject -Query $drives | ForEach-Object { New-Object -Type PSCustomObject -Property @{ Disk = $disk.DeviceID DiskModel = $disk.Model Serial = $disk.SerialNumber Partition = $partition.Name DriveLetter = $_.DeviceID VolumeName = $_.VolumeName } } } }2 users thanked author for this post.
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I want to populate rows in the “Comments” column, inside the red rectangle here:
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I have no idea if you can populate that section.
More importantly, that info will be lost if you have a machine failure so you are better off having the info saved on a remote system / paper.cheers, Paul
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Noobie question — If I migrate my wife’s production machine Win 10 Pro 64-bit with apps and data from a HDD to a SSD, shouldn’t I splurge on a large SSD? I’ve read somewhere that having lots of extra SSD capacity extends its useful life.
I’m thinking of buying a 2 TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus to put in as an NVME M.2. (The machine is only PCIe 3, not 4, and with DDR3 not 4, but there’s a hack to do this as an NVMe M.2..)
And also a classic HDD for nightly scheduled backup with a purchased Macrium Reflect.
What do you think?
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I checked into that Samsung 2TB 970 EVO Plus. That would be a truly excellent choice.
And, you’ll need an available M.2 socket that supports the NVMe protocol.
Only other thing is the form factor: a single 2.5″ SSD can be mounted in a 2.5-to-3.5″ adapter that has 2 “slots” or levels e.g.:
Corsair CSSD-BRKT2 Dual SSD Mounting Bracket
And, wiring is easiest because there is no need for any additional cabling adapters.
BUT, there is a BIG performance difference between NVMe and SATA; for those Samsungs expect 3,400 MB/second READs vs 550 MB/second READs, respectivelly.
Unless there is a reason why you absolutely MUST HAVE NVMe speeds, I would purchase the 2.5″ 870 EVO, instead of the M.2 version; and, I would also purchase the latter “dual mounting bracket” and install that sub-assembly in an available internal 3.5″ drive bay.
The latter configuration gives the 2.5″ SSD much better exposure to active cooling, which will flow over both planar surfaces, especially if a single SSD is mounted in the top layer.
M.2 SSDs are more prone to heat “throttling” unless you go to the trouble of finding a compatible heatsink. But, M.2 heatsinks are pretty expensive, as compared to the retail price of a 2-slot 2.5-to-3.5″ mounting bracket.
Another option is an M.2-to-2.5″ adapter. Look in Icy Dock’s product catalog for a few options like the next photo.
The latter requires a compatible U.2 cable and connector.
You’ll want one that includes thermal transfer material that permits direct contact between the M.2 and its enclosure. Or, I believe there are similar adapters that are wide open to active air flow on their top sides.
Hope this helps.
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There is no need to have extra capacity to make the drive last longer. The only time an SSD will have reduced life is if you use it hard in a commercial environment / bitcoin miner. In a workstation you will not see any benefit.
BTW, to gain the potential extra life you need to remove some of the capacity from use and assign it to the internal spare.You should already have an external HDD for backup.
cheers, Paul
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Supreme —
A) So, do you think a Samsung 970 EVO Plus (2TB or 1TB) is SLC, TLC or QLC?
If Samsung made it in two or three of these flavors over time, is there a way to know in advance?
B) If, currently, a Samsung 970 EVO Plus is not the best SLC, then who is, and which models?
In my case, I’m going to mod an older PC with only PCIe3 and DDR3, so I don’t need an NVMe M.2 that’s for a newer, better setup, but I would like it to be as durable as reasonably possible.
Thanks.
(And please all chime in with dissenting opinions!!)
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Supreme – Is MLC OK?
I know about getting an adapter-card socket. You wrote “x4 lanes”. So I would only use the PCIe x4 slot, not the x 16?
Thanks again,
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So, do you think a Samsung 970 EVO Plus (2TB or 1TB) is SLC, TLC or QLC?
Samsung Is the Latest SSD Manufacturer Caught Cheating Its Customers
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I’m pretty loyal to the Western Digital brand, so take that into consideration.
Western Digital acquired SanDisk several years ago, and that was a wise acquisition:
SanDisk had already developed SSD technology in competition with other manufacturers, so WDC was able to improve on already good things being sold by the former SanDisk.
We have now purchased several Western Digital “Blue” 2.5″ SSDs and every one has worked perfectly right out of the box.
The WDC m.2 SATA SSDs perform as reliably as the WDC 2.5″ SSDs.
Our favorite M.2 adapter is this StarTech model 35S24M2NGFF:
https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/35s24m2ngff
Even if only one or two sockets are populated, it’s nice to know there are other available sockets for future expansion — withOUT needing to add more power cables.
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Unfortunately, WD has been in trouble for downgrading their SN550 SSD and their RED HDDs.
The SN550 originally had a respectable 800+ MB/s sequential Write speed after the SLC cache was exhausted. The newer version is still called SN550, but with different NAND and controller its post-SLC cache Write speed is now less than 400MB/s.
The WD Red series originally used CMR (conventional magnetic recording). The newer version substituted SMR (shingle magnetic recording). Although SMR might be OK in a simple NAS home server for data, using it in a RAID setup is a bad idea. WD was exposed for this. Eventually, they changed so that WD Red is SMR only, and they released the Red Plus which is CMR.
It’s the deception that makes one no longer trust a maker who does that. Also guilty of similar deception is Crucial (their P2 SSD), ADATA (their SX8200 Pro), and Kingston (I forget the model number bit it was several years ago). At home, we have two WD SSDs which work ok, but I probably won’t buy any more ….
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Re: how to we decide?
Newegg’s valuable answer to that question provides space below each product description for customer “Reviews”.
In the past, those “Reviews” have been very informative whenever I have needed to study them.
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Power loss 1 second earlier would result in the same data loss.
There is nothing you can do about data loss when the power fails. You can only try to prevent power failure with a UPS, but nothing is ever guaranteed.
cheers, Paul
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Fiber optics.
One might also check the grounding on the pole nearest them if they have above ground service. Lightning suppressors for circuit boxes are also available.🍻
Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.1 user thanked author for this post.
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“Just to amplify his point somewhat, we always plug a UPS into a less expensive surge protector — between the UPS and the wall socket.”
Please do not do this!
It’s against code in nearly all countries to daisy chain surge protectors with other surge protectors or UPS units or power strips.
And for good reason. Unless you know how to calculate loads, and monitor your power strips and UPS outlets to stay at safe loads, one runs the risk of an electrical fire. There is also the problem of impedance over longer chained extension runs which can create heat in the wire and especially at the plug junctions.
In commercial buildings where occasional fire inspections take place the inspector can and will usually levy fines against the business if they find daisy chained power cords, strips or UPS’s plugged into secondary surge protectors.
~ Group "Weekend" ~
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We’ve been doing this for 20+ years and never had a single problem.
We only use high-quality components, and we are careful to connect short AC cables to avoid impedance problems.
Our APC UPS units record blackouts and voltages outside the User-defined range, and they do switch to battery power during those events.
Can you cite the “Code” in your City and State, so I can read it, please?
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Gentlemen, clearly he hasn’t burned his building down. Be respectful and agree to disagree.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
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