# MX500 rapid erase cycles, seems to be poor wear levelling



## chrcoluk (Sep 23, 2021)

Hi guys

So I decided to open up crystal diskinfo on my laptop, I replaced the SSD with a brand new 500 GB MX500 earlier this year.  Usually I use Samsung SSD's.

The 94% health took me by surprise, as the SSD is not even half a year old, and the laptop is just running windows, no games, no large downloads, not even web browsing.

It does however have backups of the OS made on the second partition.  Usually one done before every windows update (once a month) and automated ones once a week, only one full backup is made per month, the rest are incremental.

The full backups are typically around 16GB compressed, incremental is highly variable, of the 3 done this month, two are under half a GB, the other one is 4GB.  Last month two were under half a GB, one was 5GB.

Here is the data as provided by crystal diskinfo.

Power on hours 3227 (134 days) (laptop is on 24/7)
Total host writes 2038 GB (roughly 4x drive capacity)
Average block erase count *100 (almost one a day)*

This means either write amplification approximately 25x which seems very high (dont think this is the case I believe the SMART writes are "after" amplification), or the wear levelling algorithm is poor.

The drive is manually overprovisioned by 10%, in addition the partitions combined are about 60% utilised.  Overall 270 GB used out of 500GB.

Average drive writes per 15GB.

I do think the total host writes is "after" amplification, so I think the issue seems to be poor wear levelling algorithm.

Has anyone else noticed rapid erase cycles on MX500s?


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## ThaiTaffy (Sep 23, 2021)

I haven't done any testing on mine but after reading this post I will take a look and let you know.


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## RealKGB (Sep 23, 2021)

I have one, it boots macOS that I do use every week or so.
Power On Hours: 3210
Total Host Writes: 850GB
Average Block Erase Count: 0


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## ThrashZone (Sep 23, 2021)

Hi,
Back ups should not be stored on the same disk they are for and connected all the time
They should on a separate hdd and disconnected after completion and verified otherwise they're just as at risk as the original install different partition or not.

I have some mx100 256gb & 128gb that are really old and most are still 100% to 99% as os drives.
So where did you buy this mx500 miners have been selling some since chia or what ever it was crashed


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## chrcoluk (Sep 23, 2021)

It was from amazon direct (not 3rd party).

I have found this thread on toms hardware, (I am still reading it)

A very interesting read so far on page 7.

I seem to have the same symptoms as these guys, the drive was installed in January (yet power on hours is 134 days).

I calculated my write amplification as 25x based on erase cycles, calculated as 20X using their formula.






						Question - Crucial MX500 500GB sata ssd Remaining Life decreasing fast despite few bytes being written
					

The Remaining Life (RL) of my Crucial MX500 ssd has been decreasing rapidly, even though the pc doesn't write much to it.  Below is the log I began keeping after I noticed RL reached 95% after about 6 months of use.  Assuming RL truly depends on bytes written, the decrease in RL is accelerating...




					forums.tomshardware.com
				




The 2 smart values these guys are using to calculate write amplification are from my MX500.

F7 - 73840348
F8 - 1550641798

Also my laptop is very rarely turned off its on 24/7 which seems to be the worst case scenario for the problem they discovered.



ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Back ups should not be stored on the same disk they are for and connected all the time
> They should on a separate hdd and disconnected after completion and verified otherwise they're just as at risk as the original install different partition or not.
> 
> ...


These backups are not to solve hardware failure, but for rollbacks on things like bad windows update, or operator error.

Eventually though they will be going direct to my NAS when I have it configured and online and they are also copied to my main PC currently so a second copy is on a hdd.  Please respect the thread is not about where backups should be going.


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## ThrashZone (Sep 23, 2021)

Hi,
Maybe address the simple question I asked you I'll use double spaces like you so you don't miss it lol


Where did you buy the ssd.

RMA if the ssd really bothers you.


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## newtekie1 (Sep 23, 2021)

I've got a 1TB MX500.

Power on hours 16141
Total host writes 56026GB
Average block erase count 86

There are really only two things that determine SSD drive life. Number of NAND blocks left for re-allocation and host writes. And the host writes are actually only for warranty purposes, the drives will be capable of way more than they are actually rated for.

I actually think that Average Block Erase Count starts at 100 when the drive is brand new, and then decreases as the drive wears. The current and worst values should always be the same, and the threshold on my drive is set to 0. That means once it drops to 0 it will trip a SMART error.

Edit: Actually, I have a brand new MX500 500GB, I can check to see what that value is, but I bet it is going to be 100 out of the box.


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## R-T-B (Sep 23, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Maybe address the simple question I asked you I'll use double spaces like you so you don't miss it lol
> 
> 
> Where did you buy the ssd.





chrcoluk said:


> It was from amazon direct (not 3rd party).


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## ThaiTaffy (Sep 23, 2021)

Gove


newtekie1 said:


> I actually think that Average Block Erase Count starts at 100 when the drive is brand new, and then decreases as the drive wears. The current and worst values should always be the same, and the threshold on my drive is set to 0. That means once it drops to 0 it will trip a SMART error.
> 
> Edit: Actually, I have a brand new MX500 500GB, I can check to see what that value is, but I bet it is going to be 100 out of the box.


Mines about 2 months old  and indeed has values of 100 throughout the error report

Though I think it's more than likely the software looking at my temporary files hddView attachment IMG_20210923_111411.jpg


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 23, 2021)

chrcoluk said:


> Hi guys
> 
> So I decided to open up crystal diskinfo on my laptop, I replaced the SSD with a brand new 500 GB MX500 earlier this year.  Usually I use Samsung SSD's.
> 
> ...





ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Back ups should not be stored on the same disk they are for and connected all the time
> They should on a separate hdd and disconnected after completion and verified otherwise they're just as at risk as the original install different partition or not.
> 
> ...





ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Maybe address the simple question I asked you I'll use double spaces like you so you don't miss it lol
> 
> 
> ...



Contact Crucial about it and then RMA if you are that concerned about it


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## ThaiTaffy (Sep 23, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> Contact Crucial about it and then RMA if you are that concerned about it


Like I said I don't think those numbers are accurate as newtechie1 explained


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## R-T-B (Sep 23, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> The current and worst values should always be the same, and the threshold on my drive is set to 0.


Only the data field matters.  Ignore the other fields when reading SMART data.


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## GerKNG (Sep 23, 2021)

i have/had four MX500s (all 1TB) and some of them are beyond their TBW (400+ TB written) and the average block erase count is still 0


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## ThrashZone (Sep 23, 2021)

Hi,
This one is so old one of my first ssd's ever bought
One I hammer as a benchmark ssd system images restored so many times I've lost count I'm surprised it's not farting dust lol


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## newtekie1 (Sep 23, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> Only the data field matters.  Ignore the other fields when reading SMART data.


That is not true, the Threshold field matters, it is the point where a SMART error will be reported.


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## Pandarambe (Sep 23, 2021)

Hi there,
I too notice my Crucial MX500 SSD Health Status is deteriorating quite fast surprisingly. I bought this SSD around March 2021 this year. If you know what the values speak off, feel free to share your thoughts.
In comparison with my Samsung EVO C drive which is 5 years today, the Health Status is at 86% LOL.


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## freeagent (Sep 23, 2021)

You guys has some good luck!

I bought an M4 256 and it died @ 98% life left. Any pc that it’s plugged into will not make it past post.. and it went in the bin. Had good luck with Intel and WD ssds lol.. hope you get er fingered out!


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 23, 2021)

Pandarambe said:


> Hi there,
> I too notice my Crucial MX500 SSD Health Status is deteriorating quite fast surprisingly. I bought this SSD around March 2021 this year. If you know what the values speak off, feel free to share your thoughts.
> In comparison with my Samsung EVO C drive which is 5 years today, the Health Status is at 86% LOL.
> View attachment 217963


Might be a bad batch, RMA it and move on.


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## chrcoluk (Sep 23, 2021)

As a comparison my other 500GB SSD a 850 pro, has 65 erase cycles and is about 7 years old.  Its had heavier write use as well including around 1 year in a ps4 pro that auto records game footage.

I could RMA the ssd, especially as I have a spare unused MX 500 to swap in immediately (both brought together so if bad batch probably same), I dont know if its a defective unit or firmware flaw though, if its the latter it just buys 8 months usage rather than fixing the problem.

But I will report to crucial and if they offer a RMA will follow it through.

Also I have now installed storage executive which confirms it as a legit drive.



newtekie1 said:


> I've got a 1TB MX500.
> 
> Power on hours 16141
> Total host writes 56026GB
> ...



I have just double checked.

The 'raw' value (far right in diskinfo) is 100.
The 'current' value which starts at 100 is now 94.



Pandarambe said:


> Hi there,
> I too notice my Crucial MX500 SSD Health Status is deteriorating quite fast surprisingly. I bought this SSD around March 2021 this year. If you know what the values speak off, feel free to share your thoughts.
> In comparison with my Samsung EVO C drive which is 5 years today, the Health Status is at 86% LOL.
> View attachment 217963


You have it reporting in hexadecimal, the value for your erase cycles is 140.  You have 5472GB writes, on a 250GB SSD so not quite as high amplification as me but still very high.


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## R-T-B (Sep 23, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> That is not true, the Threshold field matters, it is the point where a SMART error will be reported.


Sure but without the data field it's meaningless.

My point is current and worst are useless to most users analyzing the data.


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## RealKGB (Sep 23, 2021)

freeagent said:


> I bought an M4 256 and it died @ 98% life left. Any pc that it’s plugged into will not make it past post.. and it went in the bin. Had good luck with Intel and WD ssds lol.. hope you get er fingered out!


Heh, the Crucial M4 128GB that my dad bought in 2011 is still going strong as my Windows boot drive. 88% life after 10 years of service, could not ask for a better drive.
I have 2 Samsung 850 EVOs and 1 840 EVO (all 250GB) that I use elsewhere (iMac G5, P4HT, Mac mini 2011) and they have been doing great. I'm sticking with Crucial (first) and Samsung (second) for SSDs, they have served me well.

As for OP, I'd recommend RMAing the SSD if it worries you.


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## chrcoluk (Sep 23, 2021)

I filled in their offline chat form, so I could provide as much detail as possible for them to digest I will let you guys know what happens.

The SSD assuming it can get all the way through its rated life span will still out live the warranty, and there is a workaround posted on toms hardware, so I am not overly concerned, but if I can get a fix either via RMA or new firmware I will take it so fingers crossed.

The firmware is M3CR023


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## ThrashZone (Sep 24, 2021)

Hi,
Don't make things like they used to.


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## newtekie1 (Sep 24, 2021)

I hooked up a brand new fresh out of the package MX500 and confirmed that the Average Block Erase Count does in fact start at 100. Which confirms that it is a percentage that counts down and OP's drive is still at 100%.  There is no point in bugging Crucial support about this, trying a workaround, or returning the drive, the number starts at 100 and goes down from there. Your drive is functioning completely normally.

That then begs the question where does CrystalDiskInfo get it's health status from?  One would think it is likely reading Percent Lifetime Used, which from what I can figure is just the Total Host Writes compared to the rated TBW.  But those numbers don't add up to the health status CrystalDiskInfo is providing(OP's drive should still be at 98 Percent Life Used but they claim CDI is saying 94% health). So I'm going to go with my theory that I've always had about CDI's health status %. It's just pulled straight out of thin air, it doesn't relate to any actual SMART data and doesn't relate at all to the actual drive's health.







R-T-B said:


> Sure but without the data field it's meaningless.
> 
> My point is current and worst are useless to most users analyzing the data.


By "Data Field" I assume you mean Raw Values field. And to most people that field is totally garbage information because they can't read hexidecimal. The current field is just the raw value translated into a number most people can understand.


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## R-T-B (Sep 24, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> The current field is just the raw value translated into a number most people can understand.


No, it's not.  Take your example screenshot.  Do you really believe you have 100 relocated sectors with a data field of 0?

Just plug the data field (which CDI seems to insist on calling "raw values") into a hexadecimal calculator and be done with it.  I'm telling you, the other fields are useless for this.


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## newtekie1 (Sep 24, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> No, it's not. Take your example screenshot. Do you really believe you have 100 relocated sectors with a data field of 0?


No, I believe I have 100% of relocated sectors left.  That's what the current field is saying.  Not that I'm a big fan of how CDI interprets SMART data, or even how some of the SMART data is calculated. But now we are getting off topic.

The point is OPs drive is still at full health despite what CDI claims.


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## R-T-B (Sep 24, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> The point is OPs drive is still at full health despite what CDI claims.


It has a high average block erase count. Not sure I'd call that "full health" but it's still within spec.


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## RJARRRPCGP (Sep 24, 2021)

chrcoluk said:


> Hi guys
> 
> So I decided to open up crystal diskinfo on my laptop, I replaced the SSD with a brand new 500 GB MX500 earlier this year.  Usually I use Samsung SSD's.
> 
> The 94% health took me by surprise, as the SSD is not even half a year old


This appears to be a known issue with MX500s, I was using one of those for my daily driver in 2020 and I was surprised at the amount of alerts that Crystal Disk Info was giving me, kept reporting the percentage plunging within just one year! And mine wasn't a puny 240 GB or the like, it was a 500 GB. Mine plunged to 81 percent or 82 percent in just one year!

The first is on October 30, 2020 and the second, was most likely on February 4, 2021:









						If I use my SSD past it's rated endurance, does it mean my SSD will die afterwards?
					

"does it mean my SSD will die afterwards?"  Yes, nothing lasts forever. Thank You!




					www.techpowerup.com
				




February 4, 2021, was when I started to use my Samsung 970 Pro 512 GB NVMe SSD.


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## newtekie1 (Sep 24, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> It has a high average block erase count. Not sure I'd call that "full health" but it's still within spec.


Am I talking to a wall? A reading of 100 for the Average Block Erase count is the starting value for the drive new out of the box. It's completely healthy.



RJARRRPCGP said:


> This appears to be a known issue with MX500s, I was using one of those for my daily driver in 2020 and I was surprised at the amount of alerts that Crystal Disk Info was giving me, kept reporting the percentage plunging within just one year! And mine wasn't a puny 240 GB or the like, it was a 500 GB. Mine plunged to 81 percent or 82 percent in just one year!



It's more of a problem with CDI and the fact that they seem to be pulling the health number completely out of their ass.  Don't trust any program that gives a health percentage. Just look at the total TB written and compare it to the rated endurance of the drive and you have a percentage of life left in the drive.  Heck, in the MX500 drive Crucial even does that calculation for you and puts in in the SMART data.


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## R-T-B (Sep 24, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> Am I talking to a wall? A reading of 100 for the Average Block Erase count is the starting value for the drive new out of the box. It's completely healthy.


It's value is 91, not 100.

EDIT:  Nevermind, was confused by this post.  Examine and you will understand why I went off track...  his drive is indeed fine.



Pandarambe said:


> Hi there,
> I too notice my Crucial MX500 SSD Health Status is deteriorating quite fast surprisingly. I bought this SSD around March 2021 this year. If you know what the values speak off, feel free to share your thoughts.
> In comparison with my Samsung EVO C drive which is 5 years today, the Health Status is at 86% LOL.
> View attachment 217963


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## ThrashZone (Sep 24, 2021)

Hi,
Here's my other really old mx100

The first was a rma refurbished replacement crucial does not send new ssd on rma
Linux killed that one by never running trim on it and ultimately the crucial's firmware is why so this issue is probably firmware issue as well.

MX500 was/ is a cheap ssd for a reason.


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## Khonjel (Sep 24, 2021)

Shit! I'm scared but confident at the same time after reading through you guys' posts. Mine was bought back in 2018 iirc. Will post health check data later for you guys to check since I'm not that knowledgeable on SSD.


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## chrcoluk (Sep 24, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> Am I talking to a wall? A reading of 100 for the Average Block Erase count is the starting value for the drive new out of the box. It's completely healthy.
> 
> 
> 
> It's more of a problem with CDI and the fact that they seem to be pulling the health number completely out of their ass.  Don't trust any program that gives a health percentage. Just look at the total TB written and compare it to the rated endurance of the drive and you have a percentage of life left in the drive.  Heck, in the MX500 drive Crucial even does that calculation for you and puts in in the SMART data.



In my case it is matching up to the erase cycles from the SMART counter.  Not out their backside. 

Or should we ignore that erase cycles counter and run the ssd's past their rated cycles?

Edit

I do agree it shouldnt be called health status, probably endurance utilisation instead.



newtekie1 said:


> Am I talking to a wall? A reading of 100 for the Average Block Erase count is the starting value for the drive new out of the box. It's completely healthy.
> 
> 
> 
> It's more of a problem with CDI and the fact that they seem to be pulling the health number completely out of their ass.  Don't trust any program that gives a health percentage. Just look at the total TB written and compare it to the rated endurance of the drive and you have a percentage of life left in the drive.  Heck, in the MX500 drive Crucial even does that calculation for you and puts in in the SMART data.



Please read all posts, and you will see you looking at the wrong value, to remove all doubt here is the screenshot.  It was you who I actually corrected yesterday, did you even read my first reply?

The raw value is 100 not the countdown value.  The value you speak off is 94.

After posting this I just noticed I had that pending sector count issue that was posted in the toms hardware thread as well. (its now 0).


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## ThrashZone (Sep 24, 2021)

Hi,
Best way to limit a ssd life on a os ssd is creating two other data partitions on it.


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## chrcoluk (Sep 24, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> It's value is 91, not 100.
> 
> EDIT:  Nevermind, was confused by this post.  Examine and you will understand why I went off track...  his drive is indeed fine.


He misled you, he seems to be trying to say the "current" value is 100 its actually 94, I posted the screenshot now to remove all doubt. The raw value is 100 meaning its actually 100 erase cycles.



ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Best way to limit a ssd life on a os ssd is creating two other data partitions on it.


R: is my ram disk which due to a windows bug it gets attached to the system drive in task manager and apps like diskinfo.

D: is a data partition, and where did you find this myth that having multiple partitions reduces an SSD life? the sectors are not mapped like a spindle.


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## mb194dc (Sep 24, 2021)

Yes, what firmware have you got on the drive?

I have mx500 in a raid array and the 22 or later version firmware fixes it I think. 

Get the crucial SSD tool downloaded.


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## ThrashZone (Sep 24, 2021)

Hi,
How much unallocated space is there ?


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## chrcoluk (Sep 24, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> How much unallocated space is there ?


I overprovisioned it.

Unallocated space is 44.62 gig.  Out of total 465.75 gig usable on the device.

Also 140 gig free on the 2 partition's, they not full.



mb194dc said:


> Yes, what firmware have you got on the drive?
> 
> I have mx500 in a raid array and the 22 or later version firmware fixes it I think.
> 
> Get the crucial SSD tool downloaded.


As in the screenshot M3CR023, there isnt a newer one available for me to install.  The actual latest firmware cannot be installed to drives with my firmware version according to crucial.


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## ThrashZone (Sep 24, 2021)

Hi,
How large is your ram disk ?


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## mb194dc (Sep 24, 2021)

chrcoluk said:


> I overprovisioned it.
> 
> Unallocated space is 44.62 gig.  Out of total 465.75 gig usable on the device.
> 
> ...



23 is the latest. 

I've seen huge improvement in longevity between 20 and 22 version firmware drives. None are on 23 yet though. Wearing too quick was a known issue with 20 iirc. It's a raid 10 array with 4 of them.

Just checking storage executive, it's 173 block wear levelling count that runs up way too fast with earlier firmware.


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## chrcoluk (Sep 24, 2021)

mb194dc said:


> 23 is the latest.
> 
> I've seen huge improvement in longevity between 20 and 22 version firmware drives. None are on 23 yet though. Wearing too quick was a known issue with 20 iirc. It's a raid 10 array with 4 of them.
> 
> Just checking storage executive, it's 173 block wear levelling count that runs up way too fast with earlier firmware.


Maybe mine is already improved over the old version then, perhaps would be even worse, thank you for the information.


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## ThaiTaffy (Sep 24, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Best way to limit a ssd life on a os ssd is creating two other data partitions on it.


I've never heard of this either I just put my os on a WD black m.2 run all my temp files and downloads onto a 7200rpm Toshiba then keep any games and programs on my mx500.

This is how I've done things since I bought my first ssd's over a decade ago and touch wood have yet to have one fail.


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## chrcoluk (Sep 24, 2021)

1TB samsung 860 Evo in main PC, 22316 power on hours, 3764 gig host writes, 2 data partitions (not OS drive), has *3* erase cycles.

I tried to check OS on my pc drive but its a 970 EVO NVME and that doesnt make erase cycles visible.


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## ThrashZone (Sep 24, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> I've never heard of this either I just put my os on a WD black m.2 run all my temp files and downloads onto a 7200rpm Toshiba then keep any games and programs on my mx500.
> 
> This is how I've done things since I bought my first ssd's over a decade ago and touch wood have yet to have one fail.


Hi,
I don't do anything but leave some unallocated space large personal data is on a different ssd or hdd and all mine are still 98% is the lowest 10 years old too
Back to page one, data/ back ups should be on a different disk I personally use a folder system not a partition system to separate data.


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## chrcoluk (Sep 24, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> I've never heard of this either I just put my os on a WD black m.2 run all my temp files and downloads onto a 7200rpm Toshiba then keep any games and programs on my mx500.
> 
> This is how I've done things since I bought my first ssd's over a decade ago and touch wood have yet to have one fail.


 I run multiple partitions otherwise I would face one of two situations, either 100s of gigs of unutilised fast nand storage, or having to wipe all non OS data on every OS reinstall/recovery.

To me its standard practice to partition off data partition on boot drive, unless the boot drive is small enough that its just for an OS and nothing else.

Even more so in a laptop where there is no space to add additional drives. Both you guys are probably the first 2 people I have come across on the internet who dont routinely partition large OS drives.

How big is your black m.2? To use it just for the OS and nothing else.


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## ThaiTaffy (Sep 24, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> I don't do anything but leave some unallocated space large personal data is on a different ssd or hdd and all mine are still 98% is the lowest 10 years old too
> Back to page one, data/ back ups should be on a different disk I personally use a folder system not a partition system to separate data.


Might sound a bit old school but I still have a zip drive I use to backup most of my data back in the UK



chrcoluk said:


> How big is your black m.2? To use it just for the OS and nothing else.


Its actually I bit big at 256gb I know not ideal but it was on sale.


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## chrcoluk (Sep 24, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> I don't do anything but leave some unallocated space large personal data is on a different ssd or hdd and all mine are still 98% is the lowest 10 years old too
> Back to page one, data/ back ups should be on a different disk I personally use a folder system not a partition system to separate data.



In an ideal world yes for backups, and they are on my PC, as I explained before the laptop has 1 storage device thats it, a backup on a 2nd partition is better than no backups and when NAS is online the backups will go there.

In regards to data, are you suggesting e.g. I buy a 1TB ssd use it for the OS and just leave 800 gig unutilised because it cant be used for anything else. 



ThaiTaffy said:


> Might sound a bit old school but I still have a zip drive I use to backup most of my data back in the UK
> 
> 
> Its actually I bit big at 256gb I know not ideal but it was on sale.


ok 256 gig not as big as I thought might be.


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## ThrashZone (Sep 24, 2021)

chrcoluk said:


> In an ideal world yes for backups, and they are on my PC, as I explained before the laptop has 1 storage device thats it, a backup on a 2nd partition is better than no backups and when NAS is online the backups will go there.
> 
> In regards to data, are you suggesting e.g. I buy a 1TB ssd use it for the OS and just leave 800 gig unutilised because it cant be used for anything else.
> 
> ...


Hi,
So far I use 500gb sammy evo ssd's for data drives 
If I needed more which I do but atm I use a WD black 1tb for some t.v. series until I see a good price for 1tb or 2tb sdd and I'll switch to them when ever that happens.

Frankly I don't see any use for anything larger than 250/ 256gb for os I lean towards the pro/ 256 for os but I do have a couple 500 because they were on sell and I needed some more os drives so I got some 500gb
But yes I split them in half for windows and leave them to linux to do whatever to them it does

Just because efi allows many partitions doesn't mean anyone should do it


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## chrcoluk (Sep 24, 2021)

I wouldnt if the drives were small, in my main PC I am using all sata ports, and I need all the space I can get so I buy bigger drives when I can.  When I had a 120 gig SSD in here, it was OS only just one partition. Same on my laptop with its old samsung 830, but that was a pain as I had no OS backups on the laptop, and I couldnt put much data on there, hence the upgrade.

You should see what I have done on my spare rig 

850 pro in there has the usual windows partitions, has a data ntfs partition and has a zfs partition for use in proxmox and a lvm partition as a bonus, so the drive is dual purpose proxmox and windows bare metal boot.
Two 860 evo's in there have proxmox zfs root partitions but also LVM partitions at end of each drive.
All spindles in there are on dedicated sata card for use in TrueNAS (future planned use of the box).


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## ThrashZone (Sep 24, 2021)

Hi,
Think crucial has gone down hill personally 
Samsung has some crappy series too


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## Khonjel (Sep 24, 2021)

Okay hit me with it chief. Is this good or bad?


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## ThrashZone (Sep 24, 2021)

Hi,
Temperature is terrible at 45c


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## Khonjel (Sep 24, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Temperature is terrible at 45c





I'm in tropic of cancer btw.


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## chrcoluk (Sep 24, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Think crucial has gone down hill personally
> Samsung has some crappy series too


I remember their 840 ssd's needing that emergency firmware, to stop bitrot.

In my opinion this issue isnt as bad as that as the ssd still functions normally and probably will do for the duration of warranty, just with accelerated erase cycles.



Khonjel said:


> Okay hit me with it chief. Is this good or bad?
> View attachment 218097


How old is the ssd?

You have 245 erase cycles with 4131 hours, 28956GB write.

When I first looked I thought thats quite bad as only about a 1/3 more hours than mine but with 2.45x the cycles, however you have written 29TB of data. About 15x the amount I have written.

The guys on toms hardware reckon if you have many power cycles the problem doesnt show up, you have nearly 3k power cycles, more than half of the power on hours, so averaging less than 2 hours per power up.

So to me given the host writes I think it looks much better than mine, your F7 is also much closer to your F8.

You are I think roughly 2.4x write amplification at a quick guess.  Everything looks good, just you are writing to the drive heavily.


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## Khonjel (Sep 24, 2021)

chrcoluk said:


> I remember their 840 ssd's needing that emergency firmware, to stop bitrot.
> 
> In my opinion this issue isnt as bad as that as the ssd still functions normally and probably will do for the duration of warranty, just with accelerated erase cycles.
> 
> ...


Holy fuck! 29TB of write? I even moved my Users folder to the Western Digital hard drive to mitigate wear and tear on the SSD. It should be just AppData, ProgramData, both Program Files, Microsoft software (edge and whatnot) and Windows itself. Think it's the pagefile?

And I bought it in early 2019 or at the end of 2018.


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## ThrashZone (Sep 25, 2021)

Khonjel said:


> View attachment 218099
> I'm in tropic of cancer btw.


Hi,
We aren't that far apart 
Difference might be central air conditioning and not.



chrcoluk said:


> I remember their 840 ssd's needing that emergency firmware, to stop bitrot.
> 
> In my opinion this issue isnt as bad as that as the ssd still functions normally and probably will do for the duration of warranty, just with accelerated erase cycles.


Yep plus if you do rma you'll get a refurbished back not a new one this is crucial's rma policy.


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## chrcoluk (Sep 25, 2021)

Khonjel said:


> Holy fuck! 29TB of write? I even moved my Users folder to the Western Digital hard drive to mitigate wear and tear on the SSD. It should be just AppData, ProgramData, both Program Files, Microsoft software (edge and whatnot) and Windows itself. Think it's the pagefile?
> 
> And I bought it in early 2019 or at the end of 2018.


It could be a few things.

First windows logs a ton of data, Microsoft take the approach to run their logs in very verbose mode.  Every time sync is logged, every svchost startup is logged, and much more on top of that, they also use cyclic logs so once the logs hit the size cap the full size of the log is written for every line that gets updated.  So e.g. if a log is 20MB, when one line is added to the log, the 20MB is rewritten.  Some of these logs are adding lines every few seconds. (they are also the source of many scams as the scammers know these logs fill up full of crap).
Next of course as you said is the pagefile, how much this writes I dont know, Microsoft themselves have said on a blog pagefile is much more reads vs writes, this will likely depend on memory pressure's on your system.
Hibernate another possible cause if you use hibernation.
In regards to AppData and ProgramData, AppData is used much more than you think, some examples.
Web browsers by default store their profile in AppData, and web browsers write a *lot* of data, not just temporary cache, but also now have their own virtual filesystem, app cache, code cache, logs, the journaling for the logs, their databases, the journaling for the databases, then there is browser extensions which can also be write heavy depending on the extension.  Also almost forgot, some will cache media as you stream it.  Netflix, youtube etc.
Google drive will cache every file thats synced temporarily in its AppData folder.
Steam will download any game first inside its Program Files folder, before moving it to the destination.
Macrium logs inside ProgramData.
The default system temp folder is C:\Windows\temp.  The default user temp folder is inside AppData.
Finally modern windows update has very large patches now due to the cumulative patch system

To give you an idea, I use both volume shadow copy and also do Macrium incremental backups, I moved my documents, pictures folders to a spindle, I also moved the user temp folder to a spindle (most temp files are in user temp), as an experiment I also currently on my main PC have my browser profile folder on my second ssd (when I put on spindle the browser was noticeably laggy), I moved my browser temp files to ram disk.  Even with all this done I can see from size of volume snapshots and size of incremental backups there is still 100s of megs writes per day to my OS drive.

As long as you have confidence your ssd will be able to function for its rated erase cycles, you will probably be fine, it will outlive its warranty easily.



ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> We aren't that far apart
> Difference might be central air conditioning and not.
> 
> ...



Thanks for this info, I will think twice on the RMA then if that is offered.


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## chrcoluk (Sep 26, 2021)

A little update, nothing from Crucial yet, but I ran the smart self test script for about 3-4 days and the erase cycle hasnt moved, however that did raise the temp of the drive, so I stopped it, I power cycled and have since left it running normally, and will monitor erase cycles for a bit to see how it behaves, the laptop usually is rebooted once a month for windows updates, but occasionally more often for other reasons, I plan to power cycle on every reboot now so at the minimum there is a power cycle every month.


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## RJARRRPCGP (Sep 27, 2021)

chrcoluk said:


> I plan to power cycle on every reboot now so at the minimum there is a power cycle every month.


You don't need to force a power down. Just choose "Shut down" on the Start menu.


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## chrcoluk (Sep 27, 2021)

RJARRRPCGP said:


> You don't need to force a power down. Just choose "Shut down" on the Start menu.


Which is what I am doing.


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## eidairaman1 (Sep 27, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> I hooked up a brand new fresh out of the package MX500 and confirmed that the Average Block Erase Count does in fact start at 100. Which confirms that it is a percentage that counts down and OP's drive is still at 100%.  There is no point in bugging Crucial support about this, trying a workaround, or returning the drive, the number starts at 100 and goes down from there. Your drive is functioning completely normally.
> 
> That then begs the question where does CrystalDiskInfo get it's health status from?  One would think it is likely reading Percent Lifetime Used, which from what I can figure is just the Total Host Writes compared to the rated TBW.  But those numbers don't add up to the health status CrystalDiskInfo is providing(OP's drive should still be at 98 Percent Life Used but they claim CDI is saying 94% health). So I'm going to go with my theory that I've always had about CDI's health status %. It's just pulled straight out of thin air, it doesn't relate to any actual SMART data and doesn't relate at all to the actual drive's health.
> 
> ...


Ive never liked that tool


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## chrcoluk (Sep 29, 2021)

Well it stayed on 100 cycles for a while, but yesterday there was 2 cycles in one day, now on 102 cycles.  It seems only a few days uptime without a power cycle is enough to set it off again.

Some data from the snapshots I took from smart. Note they not done the same time each day, I just check my laptop when I finish work, and hit save in crystal diskinfo.

24 sept host writes 2044GB cycles 100 idle state prevented by self tests
25 sept host writes 2053GB cycles 100 idle state prevented by self tests
26 sept host writes 2059GB cycles 100 idle state prevented by self tests
26 sept (later) host writes 2062GB cycles 100 power cycled
27 sept host writes 2064GB cycles 100 allowed to idle
28 sept host writes 2071GB cycles 100 allowed to idle
29 sept host writes 2076GB cycles *102 *allowed to idle



eidairaman1 said:


> Ive never liked that tool


Well to answer his questions, he misunderstood the cycle data I provided.

The lifetime remaining on the MX500 matches the erase cycle rating.

The 'current' value for erase cycle count matches the 'current' value for percent life time used.  Both are 94 on my MX500.
The raw value for erase cycles is now 102, which he misunderstood as to be the 'current' value.

On my 970 evo which doesnt provide any erase cycle figures, I noticed the predicted life goes down in crystal diskinfo when it starts using spare sectors.


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## Sora (Feb 22, 2022)

This issue only affects the SMI2258 drives (square box) with the M3CR02x firmware, and possibly the SMI2259 with the M3CR03x firmware.

No, it wasn't fixed, even drives obtained with the firmware installed from the factory demonstrate the problem.

Recent drives (in the rectangular box) use the SMI2559 and M3CR043 firmware.

Affected units will see the C5 field occasionally switch to 1 followed by a burst increase of the F8 field, this happens so often on the affected parts that it ends up significantly higher than the F7 field, which for an OS disk should actually always be ahead of F8 on these drives.



eidairaman1 said:


> Might be a bad batch, RMA it and move on.



It wasn't a bad batch, i have multiple M3CR023 parts bought years apart with differing manufacturing dates with the same issue from different etailers, the recent M3CR043 i have purchased do not demonstrate the issue.


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## freeagent (Feb 22, 2022)

I pulled a Toshiba 1TB spinner from my moms dell laptop a couple of years ago. She doesn’t do anything other than look at Facebook and stuff like that. The amount of writes the drive had was mighty impressive. Sleep/hibernate kicks the crap out of drives.


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## mb194dc (Feb 23, 2022)

I have a replacement in Raid 10 array for one of mine, life left went below 10% on the old one (This is in a data centre where they must be using hundreds of them). 

Life left is over 100%...  on the new one, Which is strange, I also have Crucial software, it's showing 10 nand blocks reallocated but 36 still available. Only very low amount of actual data written to this drive though. 

Bit concerned as don't want it to fail unexpectedly, even if redundancy in the array.


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## Sora (Feb 23, 2022)

mb194dc said:


> I have a replacement in Raid 10 array for one of mine, life left went below 10% on the old one (This is in a data centre where they must be using hundreds of them).
> 
> Life left is over 100%...  on the new one, Which is strange, I also have Crucial software, it's showing 10 nand blocks reallocated but 36 still available. Only very low amount of actual data written to this drive though.
> 
> Bit concerned as don't want it to fail unexpectedly, even if redundancy in the array.



Theres a fault there, the current and worst is supposed to begin at 100,






Your smart data has exceeded 100% and the  value has rolled over from 200, which it shouldn't,
you're actually at 165% life time used


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## mb194dc (Feb 23, 2022)

Sora said:


> Theres a fault there, the current and worst is supposed to begin at 100,
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yes it's strange , I thought it could have been modified somehow or a bug. It's barely had any data written to it and not high up time hours which makes me question how it can be near endurance.

I'll get it changed out for another one I think anyway.


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## micropage7 (Feb 24, 2022)

this afternoon i find my SSD suddenly not respond at all, first i think it's from the cable after recheck everything looks normal but i feel something that not right, i remove the ssd and place it on external case then test it on other pc, and this is what i have...... damn



now i try to back it up to somewhere before it get worse


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## Cutechri (Feb 24, 2022)

Here are my drives. Been using them for over a year now.


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## mb194dc (Feb 24, 2022)

That's the newer firmware version that doesn't have the problem. 

It doesn't seem clear to me if the erase cycle issue actually impacts drive life much. 

Or if the endurance algo simply can't handle it leading life left to plunge far too quickly when actually the nand will take much more usage than it's suggesting.


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## Cutechri (Feb 24, 2022)

I updated the firmware myself only recently, the drive had been on the older firmware until now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


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## mb194dc (Feb 24, 2022)

That whole lineage is fixed it's M3CR020 in particular that wears ridiculously quickly.  M3CR023 has fixed the problem, mainly.

I think M3CR032 had another bug with raid configurations but not the endurance problems. 

You can't flash M3CR023 to anything higher though. 

M3CR033 should be all good I think.

In conclusion, Crucial need better firmware engineers!


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## chrcoluk (Feb 24, 2022)

Ironic this thread recently got updated, my laptop is down at the moment pending investigation, a bunch of critical window files can no longer be read, so will need to recover from backup and figure out whats going on, dont want to say anything else until I have done this.

Funny Cutechri drives are older than mine but he/she got the newer model.


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## Sora (Mar 8, 2022)

mb194dc said:


> That whole lineage is fixed it's M3CR020 in particular that wears ridiculously quickly. M3CR023 has fixed the problem, mainly.


no it has not.


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## Shrek (Mar 8, 2022)

A little off topic; do modern thumb drives wear level?


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## mb194dc (Mar 9, 2022)

The 23 version firmware definitely reduces the erase issue and extends the life of the drives, at least for the way I am using them in a Server. It may not totally fix the problem. If I had one of them in a home system, be interested to see how long would last past what the SMART data is saying as an experiment. Not going to do that in a Server though!

Meanwhile I had my problem drive changed out and ended up with one that has the same problem and the older firmware on it. Will get another one put in later...


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## Cutechri (Mar 9, 2022)

chrcoluk said:


> Funny Cutechri drives are older than mine but she got the newer model.


If you're talking about the firmware - I updated it myself, as I've already stated.


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## chrcoluk (Mar 9, 2022)

Cutechri said:


> If you're talking about the firmware - I updated it myself, as I've already stated.


The older models cannot be updated to the newer firmware?


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## Assimilator (Mar 9, 2022)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Temperature is terrible at 45c


These drives are rated up to 70 degrees, so no, no it's not.


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## Sora (Sep 4, 2022)

chrcoluk said:


> The older models cannot be updated to the newer firmware?



no, the 33 and 43 versions are for the mx500's with the newer controller.


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## Shrek (Sep 4, 2022)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Temperature is terrible at 45c



Confused; that is just over body temperature and a lot of PC cases can be 45°C internally.


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## ThrashZone (Sep 5, 2022)

Shrek said:


> Confused; that is just over body temperature and a lot of PC cases can be 45°C internally.


Hi,
Idling doing nothing at 45c is way to high
But then again could be a sammy m.2 so normal


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## Sora (Oct 9, 2022)

So these come with M3CR045 now, there is no firmware upgrade from M3CR043 or M3CR044, reportedly M3CR045 has a flaw that results in hangs.


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## Friday_V8R (Oct 18, 2022)

I have a MX-500 (1 Tb) CT1000MX500SSD1.

TBW shown by the official documentation is 360 TB (see ref). Mine has only 18 % life remaining while I only wrote 108,501 TB.
(ref : https://content.crucial.com/content...0/flyer/crucial-mx500-ssd-productflyer-en.pdf)

Report from the Crucial Storage Executive app :






And Crystal Disk Info :





I know I use it a lot, but still. Only 18 % life remaining while I don't even used half of its cycles, I really think this is bad.
Some ideas ?


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## freeagent (Oct 18, 2022)

Friday_V8R said:


> I don't even used half of its cycles, I really think this is bad.
> Some ideas ?


I had a Crucial M4 256 that died for no reason, had like 98% life left.

Computer blue screamed and drive was dead. 

No more Crucial for this guy


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## Friday_V8R (Oct 18, 2022)

freeagent said:


> I had a Crucial M4 256 that died for no reason, had like 98% life left.
> 
> Computer blue screamed and drive was dead.
> 
> No more Crucial for this guy


I'm about to say the same thing. This is sad. I really liked Crucial in the early days. Like I was a big fan of WD till the moment they sold their crappy WD green thingies.

Looks like I'll have to find another brand for SATA SSDs...



freeagent said:


> I had a Crucial M4 256 that died for no reason, had like 98% life left.
> 
> Computer blue screamed and drive was dead.
> 
> No more Crucial for this guy


BTW, nice computer that you have  I'm about to order a 7900X. Can't wait to have it ^^


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## Sora (Oct 19, 2022)

Friday_V8R said:


> I have a MX-500 (1 Tb) CT1000MX500SSD1.
> 
> TBW shown by the official documentation is 360 TB (see ref). Mine has only 18 % life remaining while I only wrote 108,501 TB.
> (ref : https://content.crucial.com/content...0/flyer/crucial-mx500-ssd-productflyer-en.pdf)
> ...



Did you not read a single post in this thread?


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## ThrashZone (Oct 19, 2022)

freeagent said:


> I had a Crucial M4 256 that died for no reason, had like 98% life left.
> 
> Computer blue screamed and drive was dead.
> 
> No more Crucial for this guy


Hi,
I still have couple very old mx100's 256gb being used at about 10 years now atm with 1-win-10 and 1-11 on my z490 rig
One died but it was a incompatible firmware with linux clash that killed it "linux never ran trim" not anything else.
RMA'ed and it's still working today same as others of which a couple mx100 128gb in an old lappy.
Yeah a lot smaller ssd's but seem like an energizer bunny line


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## swaaye (Oct 19, 2022)

I have a few MX500 250GB drives at work. They were $25 one deal day.  They may have slow writes that cause the occasional system hitch but for $25 I think they are uh quite awesome really compared to the hard drives that were in those PCs.




freeagent said:


> I had a Crucial M4 256 that died for no reason, had like 98% life left.



I have a M4 128GB still chugging along. Every now and then it needs two power ups to get a bootin.  I figure it is 11 years old at this point and yeah has a lot of hours on it so no complaints really.  For all I know the problem is actually the funky OEM Acer B85 motherboard.

I am still waiting to have a SSD in a desktop role fail from flash wear.  There is a Samsung 830 at work in an ancient Core 2 system that's at like 60% lifetime. That thing has been on 7 days a week since new.  I know of an OCZ Vertex 2 60GB still out there at a coworker's house. I thought it bit the dust at one point like 6 years ago but I secure erased it and reinstalled Windows and it's been good since heh. A few SATA 3 Sandforce drives out there too yet.


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## Sora (Oct 29, 2022)

swaaye said:


> I have a M4 128GB still chugging along. Every now and then it needs two power ups to get a bootin. I figure it is 11 years old at this point and yeah has a lot of hours on it so no complaints really. For all I know the problem is actually the funky OEM Acer B85 motherboard.



its the SSD, known issue with M4's.


			Crucial M4 Solid State Drive - SSD - Unresponsive or Not Reliably Detected - Stone Computers :: Knowledgebase


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## didi (Oct 30, 2022)

I have 11 CT500MX500SSD1 drives for 1 year already and I can't understand how they measure life expectancy.


THW (GB)Power on CountPower on HoursLife %FW809252477064M3CR023989825598567M3CR023801835222467M3CR023556832955569M3CR0234744291169670M3CR02320943184510178M3CR010523683654883M3CR023621525834584M3CR023423042419084M3CR023

4461140471185M3CR02346810778100M3CR045THW (GB)Power on CountPower on HoursLife %FW

I opened support case with them, let's wait for reply.


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## Sora (Oct 30, 2022)

internal as well as host to device writes are counted towards the decay of the disk life counter, in the case of the M3CR02x devices the internal writes are several factors higher than host writes, this is corrected in the M3CR03x and 4x based MX500's though its unknown if this is a result of the new nand controller in use in these or the firmware itself.


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## mb194dc (Oct 30, 2022)

Those M3CR023 drives are going to wear down fast per reasons above.

It's reasonable to assume it's the controller because if it wasn't then Crucial would simply have fixed the firmware ages ago...  Hoping when I need to swap my drives out again get ones with the new controller!


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## Sora (Oct 31, 2022)

mb194dc said:


> Those M3CR023 drives are going to wear down fast per reasons above.
> 
> It's reasonable to assume it's the controller because if it wasn't then Crucial would simply have fixed the firmware ages ago...  Hoping when I need to swap my drives out again get ones with the new controller!



The new variants come in a slightly smaller rectangle box, the old variants in a square box.
You  can confirm with the retailer which one they are shipping and act accordingly.


----------

