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

That is quite normal for an 860 EVO, it's one of Samsung's most reliable SATA-drives ever made
(along with the more expensive 860 PRO model).

There aren't supposed to be any reallocated sectors/bad blocks within the warranty-period of an SSD
(like we see so much of on the failed successor, 870 EVO).

Two of my SATA-drives are over 5 years old and are still showing 0 reallocated sectors on them.


This one right here is just over 5 years old now, but the SMART-data are all normal on it still:

01.png


This one is almost 3 years old, so it's still kind of new:

02.png


This one here is 8 years old now and is still doing fine:

03.png


Samsung used to make really good SATA SSD's.
 
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Alcje said:
I see a lot of 860 screenshots of cyrstdisk info, I also checked mine. Isnt it strange that on al screenshots the reallocated sector count is 100? Mine the same. How accurate is crystaldiskinfo?View attachment 305606
Click to expand...
Those are not your reallocated sectors. To get the correct number, you have to look at the "raw value" and convert it back to decimal (it's in hexadecimal). CrystalDisk Info won't do that for some reason. In your case, it's 0.
 
tpudine said:
Here's how to make CDI show SMART values in decimal (should be default imo):
  • Go to 'Function' -> 'Advanced Feature' -> 'Raw Values' -> select '10 [DEC]'
Click to expand...
Good to know, thanks! :)
 
For those here mentioning that the Crucial MX500 also has some issues, any ideas/trends on what firmware seems to be problematic? The 2 I received from Amazon have M3CR045 printed on the drives which isn't mentioned at https://www.crucial.com/support/ssd-support/mx500-support

Additionally, I am unsure of the wording on that Support page, my current interpretation is:
* Drives that shipped with firmware older than M3CR023 can be updated to M3CR023
* Drives that shipped with M3CR032 can be updated to M3CR033
* Drives that shipped with M3CR043 or higher, can only be updated via Crucial Storage Executive software
* To avoid confusion you can use the Crucial Storage Executive software to update your firmware regardless of what firmware your SSD shipped with.
 
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Nicholas Steel said:
For those here mentioning that the Crucial MX500 also has some issues, any ideas/trends on what firmware seems to be problematic? The 2 I received from Amazon have M3CR045 printed on the drives which isn't mentioned at https://www.crucial.com/support/ssd-support/mx500-support

Additionally, I am unsure of the wording on that Support page, my current interpretation is:
* Drives that shipped with firmware older than M3CR023 can be updated to M3CR023
* Drives that shipped with M3CR032 can be updated to M3CR033
* Drives that shipped with M3CR043 or higher, can only be updated via Crucial Storage Executive software
* To avoid confusion you can use the Crucial Storage Executive software to update your firmware regardless of what firmware your SSD shipped with.
Click to expand...
Occasionally, everything in Windows just stops. The MX500 drive just hangs, and does nothing.
They have stopped put firmware online, now you have to use their tool; Crucial Storage Executive.

This will update your drive like Samsung magician. If firmware is available it will be shown.
Your drives are both affected and this program will update them to firmware version M3CR046.

Make an backup if you put data on it already! In some cases everything is wiped...

For others reading this topic, it is only needed if your Crucial drive came shipped with firmware version M3CR045, lower firmware versions can't be updated to this, and are not affected by this bug.
 
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Rumours of MX500 switching to QLC turned out to be false, it's still TLC across the board.
But they have started cheaping out on the DRAM, so if you get a new 1/2/4TB model it will only have 512MB DRAM instead of the expected 1GB per TB.
 
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hey, need a little advice, australian here.

I ordered 6x 870 Evo 4TBs from Amazon during their recent sale, got a steal but noticed the serial nos all start in S6.

The intention was to have all 6 in a TrueNAS in an enterprise HP server, am I OK to simply use these as long as I have the latest firmware or should I return these and wait for the seemingly revised version to be more widely available?
 
meds said:
hey, need a little advice, australian here.

I ordered 6x 870 Evo 4TBs from Amazon during their recent sale, got a steal but noticed the serial nos all start in S6.

The intention was to have all 6 in a TrueNAS in an enterprise HP server, am I OK to simply use these as long as I have the latest firmware or should I return these and wait for the seemingly revised version to be more widely available?
Click to expand...
I can't answer your question, but I can give you a data point.

I'm also in Australia and I purchased 2 x 870 EVO 4TB drives from Amazon during the same sale.
  • They were supplied from Amazon US (so probably old stock)
  • both were made in Korea with 2023.03 on them ("MODEL MZ-77E4T0", "R-R-SEC-MZ-77E4T0" if that means anything)
  • both have similar serial numbers starting with S6 and firmware SVT02B6Q
  • and both had no SMART errors during my brief testing in a Windows PC with Samsung Magician
    I'm unclear from this thread which NAND they have or if we can even know without ripping them open (which I'm not going to do!).
I'll be using them in a BTFS mirror in a media/backup PC running Linux, so if there's a firmware update Samsung had better release an ISO image for this!

I had been about to buy Crucial MX500's but thought it would be safer to go for a Samsung drive! I have multiple Samsung SSD and NVME drives made before COVID and they are all reliable. Wish I'd read this thread beforehand. While I am using RAID I need these to replace some old and reliable HDDs!
 
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Even brand new drives with the SVT03B6Q firmware are affected (and not just the older drives with SVT02B6Q).
 
SuperConker said:
Even brand new drives with the SVT03B6Q firmware are affected (and not just the older drives with SVT02B6Q).
Click to expand...
Until now i did not see any bad ones over here, it's a little to early to say that now. They are fairly new , and an bad one here and there is always possible. We will see in about six months or one year how it goes. When i get one back, i surely post it here. I don't think that Samsung want to burn their fingers again with this. :) Let's see what happens. Just wanted that Techpowerup could could put some light on this. But nothing at all... Also nothing from Samsung, that's what can make me angry...:mad: Techpowerup said they would investigate, but absolutely quiet here too... Ach well... Last chance for Samsung, if the same things start again with bad drives over here, they will never see me again.
 
SPDIF said:
Until now i did not see any bad ones over here, it's a little to early to say that now. They are fairly new , and an bad one here and there is always possible. We will see in about six months or one year how it goes. When
i get one back, i surely post it here. I don't think that Samsung want to burn their fingers again with this. :) Let's see what happens. Just wanted that Techpowerup could could put some light on this. But nothing at
all... Also nothing from Samsung, that's what can make me angry...:mad: Techpowerup said they would investigate, but absolutely quiet here too... Ach well... Last chance for Samsung, if the same things start again with
bad drives over here, they will never see me again.
Click to expand...
Look at post #718

That is one of the brand new drives with the SVT03B6Q firmware on them.

And after only one day of use, it has already gotten one bad block on it.
 
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The communication from Samsung is the worst. And no changelog ever, either. The flaws in their latest drivers, 870 and 990, are especially sad considering Samsung SSDs were always considered to be the most durable.
 
Anyway it is still to early now to say that the ones with new firmware are also bad. That one drive showed here is no indication for the thousand's sold over the world. There is nothing else to find on the internet, my own shop en other shops i know. At moment it is fairly quiet, Samsung knows very well it did go totally bad and lost many customer's. There are 6 drives here now used daily, at moment they al show 100 percent okay, and i sold many of them. Until now no complaints. Let's hope it stay like that, don't forget that drives like that are now considered older technology drives, but still used everywhere. And they are 10 or even 20 times slower then NVMe drives. Even modern laptops now switch over to NVMe drives.

Samsung has to make something good now, and you can be sure they don't want this disaster to happen again as one of the biggest manufacturer of Solid State Drives in the world.
All problems with the bad 890 and 990 drives are now at moment snoozed down. Time will tell if we can trust Samsung again, i still use them and sell them again. If later the same thing happen again, then it is time to look away from them... I give them one chance to make it up with us.

I just wish that Techpowerup looked deeper in this with an big article and tests, but also no word about it... But what can you do if Samsung keep it's mouth closed tightly...

Even with all problems that raised around the world, they are still the best drives available for your money. At least that is just my one cent.
 
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SPDIF said:
Anyway it is still to early now to say that the ones with new firmware are also bad. That one drive showed here is no indication for the thousand's sold over the world. There is nothing else to find on the internet, my own shop en other shops i know. At moment it is fairly quiet, Samsung knows very well it did go totally bad and lost many customer's. There are 6 drives here now used daily, at moment they al show 100 percent okay, and i sold many of them. Until now no complaints. Let's hope it stay like that, don't forget that drives like that are now considered older technology drives, but still used everywhere. And they are 10 or even 20 times slower then NVMe drives. Even modern laptops now switch over to NVMe drives.
Click to expand...

The new drives with SVT03B6Q Firmware are still too new, so most people won't have this new version yet
(and most people won't really notice if their drive is failing, let alone, be posting about it on some forum).

So to see one of the new ones go bad this soon (and on this forum) is not at all a good sign.


It's also the same exact fault that the older versions have (bad sectors/blocks) which cannot be fixed with a Firmware update.

You will also lose your data (eventually) if you keep using the 870 EVO after it goes bad
(with the 980/990 PRO failures, your data stays safe still).

So it's definitely not a good sign that the new versions have the same issue.
 
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Exactly my point, it's too early to speak that they are all bad already, we will know soon enough, don't worry...;)

And i am sure Samsung don't want this disaster to happen again.

No with 890 and 990 you also could lose data, it was not anything better then 870EVO. But time will tell, if not then bye bye Samsung. As said earlier it is very quiet everywhere at moment, let's hope it stay like that.

Also Crucial and others played a lot of games with drives in the pandemic, not only Samsung. Adata changed various components on drives without letting know anyone, then suddenly speed dropped enormous. WD also has had various problems with drives and firmware.
 
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Alcje said:
I see a lot of 860 screenshots of cyrstdisk info, I also checked mine. Isnt it strange that on al screenshots the reallocated sector count is 100? Mine the same. How accurate is crystaldiskinfo?View attachment 305606
Click to expand...
100 in current column is 100% of spare not allocated, it goes down.
 
chrcoluk said:
100 in current column is 100% of spare not allocated, it goes down.
Click to expand...
Only when this is going down it's time to worry and look out for a new drive.:)
 
SPDIF said:
Also Crucial and others played a lot of games with drives in the pandemic, not only Samsung. Adata changed various components on drives without letting know anyone, then suddenly speed dropped enormous. WD also has had various problems with drives and firmware.
Click to expand...
Crucial too, changed Controller as well as drastically reducing DRAM capacity on all drive capacities of the MX500 SSD range. Oh, you said Crucial, derp.
 
Low quality post by E.S
Alcje said:
I see a lot of 860 screenshots of cyrstdisk info, I also checked mine. Isnt it strange that on al screenshots the reallocated sector count is 100? Mine the same. How accurate is crystaldiskinfo?
Click to expand...
they change the subject.
why?

SuperConker said:
Look at post #718

That is one of the brand new drives with the SVT03B6Q firmware on them.

And after only one day of use, it has already gotten one bad block on it.
Click to expand...
They hate this post.
So they change the subject.
are they getting paid?
 
Indeed, MX500 products are equipped only 512MB DDR3 and this why I stick to pricier Samsung 870 EVO.

Just bought a brand new 870 EVO 4TB manufactured 2023-July ,product of China. Since recent batches are on the newer firmware SVT03B6Q out of box, I decide to disassemble to find out if any difference exists. Here are the photos shot(appology for these ain't in high res)：
IMG_20230812_133147500.MP.jpg
IMG_20230812_133216201.MP.jpg

IMG_20230812_133315113.MP.jpg


The DRAM remains DDR4-1866 4GB in size(same as 860 pro 4TB),same controller too,but don't know if there is any hardware revision. I think the main reason for firmware branch could be due to V-NAND flashes.(higher level of stacking?) If more advanced or newer process is ultilized for NAND stacking , it could be promising for chances to get rid of the pandemic disaster of previous NAND defect.

Also trying to upgrade firmware of another 870 EVO 2TB manufactured in 2022-April,but the Samsung magician utility reports no update found.
 
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Could you take picture of the whole board (front and back) of this new revision?

Also, i doubt the new SVT03B6Q Firmware is specific to this newer revision of the drive in any way
(i believe they are going to release this new Firmware for all revisions sometime soon).
 
Thanks @ThomasRhin.
The controller and DRAM are indeed the same, but the NAND part number is slightly different.
The older 870 EVO 4TB NAND part number is K9DVGB8J1B-DCK0 according to TPU database.
Your new version lists K9DVGB8J1E-DCK0, one letter different.

It is apparently still V6 (128L), just "revised" whatever that means, so it's unclear what they changed in the flash.
Unfortunately a poster above had this new revision and it still showed reallocated sectors, hopefully that was just a fluke.
 
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It is definitely not a good sign that someone already has one from the new revisions, and it's already gone bad this soon.

I just gave up on the 870 EVO 4TB that i had to replace 3 times (due to them all failing) and just purchased a used 860 EVO 4TB instead.

The used 860 EVO 4TB drive has been working for 9 months now with no errors on it.
 
tpudine said:
Thanks @ThomasRhin.
The controller and DRAM are indeed the same, but the NAND part number is slightly different.
The older 870 EVO 4TB NAND part number is K9DVGB8J1B-DCK0 according to TPU database.
Your new revision lists K9DVGB8J1E-DCK0, one letter different.

It is apparently still V6 (128L), just "revised" whatever that means, so it's unclear what they changed in the flash.
Unfortunately a poster above had this new revision and it still showed reallocated sectors, hopefully that was just a fluke.
Click to expand...
@GabrielLP14 may like to know about this one.
 
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