MX500 rapid erase cycles, seems to be poor wear levelling

[newtekie1]

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.

 

[R-T-B]

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.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

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.

 

[newtekie1]

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.

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.

 

[R-T-B]

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.

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

 

[ThrashZone]

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.

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

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.

 

[chrcoluk]

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.

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).

 

[ThrashZone]

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

 

[chrcoluk]

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.

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.

 

[mb194dc]

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.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
How much unallocated space is there ?

 

[chrcoluk]

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.

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.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
How large is your ram disk ?

 

[mb194dc]

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.


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.

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.

 

[chrcoluk]

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.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

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.

 

[chrcoluk]

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.

 

[ThrashZone]

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.

 

[chrcoluk]

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.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

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

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.

 

[chrcoluk]

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.

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.

 

[ThrashZone]

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.


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

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

 

[chrcoluk]

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).

 

[ThrashZone]

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