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

[SuperConker]

Basically you don't want to see any of these Errors on a new Samsung 870 EVO:

-Reallocated Sector Count
-Used Reserved Block Count
-Runtime Bad Block
-Uncorrectable Error Count
-ECC Error Rate
-CRC Error Rate

If any of those start showing up you have a bad drive.

This goes for older Samsung models too, but so far it's only the 870 EVO that has been problematic for people.

 

[Daytrader]

My evo went to 99% almost instantly, its normal, that was 5 years ago, still at 98% now.

 

[SPDIF]

Yep when that happens with your 870EVO, nothing to worry about. I have 10 drives here going to 99 percent after written only 2TB total. Most of them go to 98 percent after written more then 10TB.

 

[chrcoluk]

Flashed my drive now, the new SMART counter has a value of 44.

 

[SPDIF]

Flashed my drive now, the new SMART counter has a value of 44.

How many TB written? In my case the new FC counter is 12, written 4.1TB. I am trying to figure out the exact meaning of the FC smart counter. I have seen drives bad with a high counter, but also good drives with a high counter value. Is it bad blocks, no idea, but i surely keep an eye on it, will report here if i know more!

It is a new 870EVO 2TB manufacture date 03-2023

I also have some drives written more then 8TB and FC counter is still zero... We will see what happen with them, if one fails or not.

But higher raw attribute values may be better or worse depending on the attribute and manufacturer.

 

[chrcoluk]

How many TB written? In my case the new FC counter is 12, written 4.1TB. I am trying to figure out the exact meaning of the FC smart counter. I have seen drives bad with a high counter, but also good drives with a high counter value. Is it bad blocks, no idea, but i surely keep an eye on it, will report here if i know more!

It is a new 870EVO 2TB manufacture date 03-2023

I also have some drives written more then 8TB and FC counter is still zero... We will see what happen with them, if one fails or not.

But higher raw attribute values may be better or worse depending on the attribute and manufacturer.

Is 1.2TB written, 3 erase cycles.

I am curious now if the erase cycles will accelerate on the new firmware. Drive is 500gig model.

Also the value now has shot up to 156.

I have done a magician bench of the drive post flash as well, and its interesting, I was concerned the newer firmware would gimp the drive to get round manufacturing defects. Both tests system was idle with primocache paused state.

Test ran before the firmware update

Seq Read 559
Seq Write 528
Random Read 26611 IOPS
Random Write 23192 IOPS

Test ran after firmware update

seq Read 560
Seq Write 531
Random Read 27587 IOPS
Random Write 32714 IOPS

 

[SuperConker]

That drive you did RMA whas 100 percent okay! Why they go fast to 99 percent only Sammy knows. But anyway it's the same whith any 870EVO i have here, it goes to 99 percent and then stays there for years...

You have a good change that Samsung just return the same SSD back to you. It happened with me many times, because i thought it would die again. But after some time i see it did stay at 99 percent for very very long time. You just did send back an 100 percent healthy drive... There are no errors to see like the SSD from amiens80.

I cannot explain why the 870EVO is doing this, after an very short time it goes to 99 percent, then it stays there for a very long time. Only Samsung can explain this behavior.

What you have is POR Recovery count at 7. This means your SSD was powered off 7 times unexpected while it was busy working. Yes 40 degrees is a little high, i think it was mounted in an Laptop?

The drive amiens80 is showing us is NOT doing fine.
There are several Errors on his drive, none of which should be there.


If you look closely you can see the following Errors in his screenshot:

Reallocated Sector Count 97
Used Reserved Block Count 97
Runtime Bad Block 97
Uncorrectable Error Count 99
ECC Error Rate 199


That is a dying drive i am afraid, and he will lose his data if he doesn't back it up and RMA the bad drive.

 

[SPDIF]

The drive amiens80 is showing us is NOT doing fine.
There are several Errors on his drive, none of which should be there.


If you look closely you can see the following Errors in his screenshot:

Reallocated Sector Count 97
Used Reserved Block Count 97
Runtime Bad Block 97
Uncorrectable Error Count 99
ECC Error Rate 199


That is a dying drive i am afraid, and he will lose his data if he doesn't back it up and RMA the bad drive.

We where speaking about the drive from vortexiur, NOT from amiens80. amiens80 said that the drive from vortexiur was okay, and showed an image of a bad drive.

@chrcoluk; FC counter from 44 to 156? Wow that's fast, but your drive is still okay. I am beginning to think that it has nothing to do with bad sectors. It's something else, like Controller Busy Time as other drives from Samsung report. I have one here with FC counter at 365, written 6TB. Nothing bad to see, life still 99%.

Keep an eye on it, and let us know if you see something strange. I do the same here and will report it.

 

[kevin335200]

We where speaking about the drive from vortexiur, NOT from amiens80. amiens80 said that the drive from vortexiur was okay, and showed an image of a bad drive.

@chrcoluk; FC counter from 44 to 156? Wow that's fast, but your drive is still okay. I am beginning to think that it has nothing to do with bad sectors. It's something else, like Controller Busy Time as other drives from Samsung report. I have one here with FC counter at 365, written 6TB. Nothing bad to see, life still 99%.

Keep an eye on it, and let us know if you see something strange. I do the same here and will report it.

I may have found what "FC", also ID 252 actually means for Samsung SSD: Read ECC Count
Source: PM863a datasheet

I did a little research before, just my two cents.

 

[SuperConker]

We where speaking about the drive from vortexiur, NOT from amiens80. amiens80 said that the drive from vortexiur was okay, and showed an image of a bad drive.

@chrcoluk; FC counter from 44 to 156? Wow that's fast, but your drive is still okay. I am beginning to think that it has nothing to do with bad sectors. It's something else, like Controller Busy Time as other drives from Samsung report. I have one here with FC counter at 365, written 6TB. Nothing bad to see, life still 99%.

Keep an eye on it, and let us know if you see something strange. I do the same here and will report it.

Sorry, thought you meant amiens80.

In that case, the drive vortexiur had was fine (no bad errors on it).

Although, dropping 1% health in less than 24 hours is a bit fast.
The 870 4TB drives i had all took about 1 month to drop 1% health.

 

[chrcoluk]

We where speaking about the drive from vortexiur, NOT from amiens80. amiens80 said that the drive from vortexiur was okay, and showed an image of a bad drive.

@chrcoluk; FC counter from 44 to 156? Wow that's fast, but your drive is still okay. I am beginning to think that it has nothing to do with bad sectors. It's something else, like Controller Busy Time as other drives from Samsung report. I have one here with FC counter at 365, written 6TB. Nothing bad to see, life still 99%.

Keep an eye on it, and let us know if you see something strange. I do the same here and will report it.

yeah drive still has no symptoms of failure, all CRC/ECC reallocated etc. zero values.

 

[SPDIF]

I hope your drive stay good for you! At least we know that FC has nothing to do with bad sectors as someone posted here. Thanks kevin for the info! So that counter is nothing to worry about, ECC reading errors that could be corrected, same feature as normal HDD have.
Only when it is absurdly high, then surely something in wrong. You can have this for example from a bad SATA cable.

 

[asdsdf]

Hey,
Thank you everyone for bringing attention to this.

I've read most of this thread and it seems that all of the problematic drives were made in 2021, none in 2022 or later. I'm planning on buying one from a physical store, so I can check the manufacture date from the box before buying it. Does this sound like a terrible idea? I plan on only keeping the OS and data I have copies of elsewhere on it.

It seems most of the previously "reliable" brands have had various issues lately. At least the issues for Samsung drives seem like they're very localized so it's easier to avoid the problematic ones, though I of course despise that they haven't acknowledged the issues.

I hope this is on-topic enough for this thread.

 

[AliTheAce]

I've got 2 x 2TB 870 Evo's, one manufactured Nov 2022 and the other March 2023. They'll be used in my Atomos Ninja V+ recording 6K prores RAW at 1500+Mbps (150-280 ish MBps), and I won't have access to SMART data as they are external drives. Both on the latest firmware, never used and came from factory from the latest firmware.


I'm guessing the newer batches of the drives are fine? Anything I should do to ensure they stay reliable? As I'll be shooting some important projects on those drives and editing off them too.

 

[tpudine]

I've got 2 x 2TB 870 Evo's, one manufactured Nov 2022 and the other March 2023. They'll be used in my Atomos Ninja V+ recording 6K prores RAW at 1500+Mbps (150-280 ish MBps), and I won't have access to SMART data as they are external drives. Both on the latest firmware, never used and came from factory from the latest firmware.


I'm guessing the newer batches of the drives are fine? Anything I should do to ensure they stay reliable? As I'll be shooting some important projects on those drives and editing off them too.

Should be fine, I've still seen no reports of drives that shipped with the new firmware going bad.

 

[SPDIF]

Ladies and gentlemen, i just got back 10 new 870EVO from Samsung that where broken, they where al 1TB drives.
They all have the production date of 04/2023! Super new drives. I also got some new 4 and 2TB drives back.
Now i did discover something, all the new drives from 1TB have a new firmware on it that you can't download from Samsung, or get anywhere else.
Only the drives from 1TB have the firmware version SVT03B6Q, the other drives from 2 and 4TB still use the older firmware SVT02B6Q.
They are slightly faster then the ones with older firmware, but what has changed i really have no idea. Maybe this firmware become available after Samsung do more testing.

I surely will keep an eye on it, and see what happens with this new drives with new firmware on it. Let's see if they still have a problem, or what has changed in the SMART tables.
See the screenshot below from this new 1TB 870EVO drive;

 

[amiens80]

"Ladies and gentlemen, i just got back 10 new 870EVO from Samsung"
why do you own 10 drives liek that ? are you a profesional of something ?

 

[SPDIF]

"Ladies and gentlemen, i just got back 10 new 870EVO from Samsung"
why do you own 10 drives liek that ? are you a profesional of something ?

Yep you got it, why? Is it forbidden to have a shop? Since 2014 i have my own shop after working 10 years in another shop as technician.
Soon i can celebrate ten years.

I did not comply with how my boss was doing some things, and we had some words ended up being fired. So i decided with my wife to start my own shop, and until now things are going very well. Even in the pandemic i had to much work.

Like for example my boss did use smartphones that someone bought and bring back, he just sold them as new after wiping memory.
He sold TV's that are hanging on the wall for demonstration playing every day for years. When we had no stock anymore we had to clean them and put back in the box, so he could sell it as new. That's why we had a big discussion, and he fired me... But now i am the boss, and i don't do this things with my client's. I sell those items as second hand for people that does not have $$$ to buy new. You ever see the face of a very poor girl that could get an Iphone for her birthday? I will never forget it in my live, she cry from happiness and now she grow up having her own family, and always come to my shop.
I was so happy for that girl to leave this life behind her.

But enough off this, let's stay ON TOPIC!

And oh yes, these drives i got from Samsung are now all Made in China! No more Korea .

 

[amiens80]

Yep you got it, why? Is it forbidden to have a shop? Since 2014 i have my own shop after working 10 years in another shop as technician.
Soon i can celebrate ten years.

I did not comply with how my boss was doing some things, and we had some words ended up being fired. So i decided with my wife to start my own shop, and until now things are going very well. Even in the pandemic i had to much work.

Like for example my boss did use smartphones that someone bought and bring back, he just sold them as new after wiping memory.
He sold TV's that are hanging on the wall for demonstration playing every day for years. When we had no stock anymore we had to clean them and put back in the box, so he could sell it as new. That's why we had a big discussion, and he fired me... But now i am the boss, and i don't do this things with my client's. I sell those items as second hand for people that does not have $$$ to buy new. You ever see the face of a little very poor girl that could get an Iphone for her birthday? I will never forget it in my live, she cry from happiness and now she grow up having her own family, and always come to my shop.

it is ok ! i just was curious ;-)
so, tou have 10 consumers who go back at your shop with 10 fails ssd ? you have to RMA them yourself ? why they did not do it themselves ?

 

[SPDIF]

I sold them and i wanted to help my customer's, somehow i did feel responsible... Many people need the computer for work or school and could not wait for a month.
Many of them where drives i sold to make their laptop faster. I did install them copy everything from HDD to SSD.

 

[SPDIF]

Anyway i will keep an eye on how long it takes before health goes to 99 percent, with this 870EVO from 1TB and new firmware.
Also keep an eye on that FC SMART table code that goes up very slowly with older EVO's. This new one is still zero with 108GB written.
If anything changes i will let everyone know here.

 

[JusTiCe8]

Hi guys and gals,

thankfully to a comment on amazon, I discover the 870 EVO issue then this post.

I still bought one (1 TB) which has been manufactured on 2021 10 06 with a SN: S626NF0RA03544 (model MZ-77E1T0), is it worth a try or is it guaranty to fail because of a bad production batch ?

For the record, I have a 850 EVO 500 GB which run for about 5 years now (20132 hours, 13368 GB total writes) which has never fail me, used a primary disk with windows 7 ultimate 64 bits.
CrystalDiskInfo report is attached.

Thanks.

 

[veodko]

I just had an 870 EVO 1TB manufactured 2021.06 fail on me. Not even 30TBW on this drive, and whats funnier is that I checked it's SMART last week and all my disks were in good condition >95%
Drive had 800GB of data on it, fortunately not anything really important and most of stuff backed up anyway.

It froze my Windows 10 completely, then the OS refused to boot even though it wasn't a bootable drive (it was loading indefinitely).
I removed the drive and then tried to connect it using a USB->SATA cable, which caused the disk utility as well as Samsung Magician to freeze too.

The drive worked out of the box in a Linux machine though, with all files visible. I thought I'm saved the hassle of setting up stuff again, but unfortunately no.
Most of the (small) files I was able to copy without problems, but some larger files (~4GB) cause I/O errors (Error splicing files) always at the same progress (e.g. 3.8GB out of 4.3GB).
Some of the files copied after unplugging the drive and trying again, but some just crash always at the same time. Also the speed drops drastically after copying some larger stuff.
I tried doing some partial copying/appending using rsync as well as limiting the copy bandwith (using --bwlimit rsync option) but no success.

Is there any way I could restore some of this data myself? I'd like to just copy stuff back, but if it's not possible I'll just trash the drive and go on as it's not anything important.

 

[JusTiCe8]

I just had an 870 EVO 1TB manufactured 2021.06 fail on me. Not even 30TBW on this drive, and whats funnier is that I checked it's SMART last week and all my disks were in good condition >95%
Drive had 800GB of data on it, fortunately not anything really important and most of stuff backed up anyway.

...

Is there any way I could restore some of this data myself? I'd like to just copy stuff back, but if it's not possible I'll just trash the drive and go on as it's not anything important.

Do you know which firmware version is installed on it ?

According to many previous posts, I bet you could use the drive for target practice or whatever except file storage and common computer's parts usage.

 

[veodko]

Firmware Revision: SVT01B6Q

smartctl returns "scsi error aborted command", I think this is the reason Windows freezes after plugging in this drive, something happened with SMART, but also with the data as I'm unable to recover some of the larger files. I had a few Virtual Machines there and they were running at the time of the sudden crash. I was able to copy every thing but a single partial vmdk ~4.3gb file that hangs at 3.8GB each time.
Other file is just 2GB and hangs at 1.6GB, it's from a VM that wasn't even powered on.