And here i'am.
The 2023 model i bought recently just hit 99% on crystal disk with just 2 TB of written data.
Is this normal?
Also the full scan with samsung magician took more than 7+ hours to complete (it didn't find anything), while my m.2 970 evo makes it in 40 minutes max. (i know the speed are so different, 500 mb/s vs 3000 mb/s, but i don't think this needed 7+ hours.)
btw I have already sent it back and get another one and see if it happens again.
CrystalDisk:
It shouldn't go down so fast. That is either some error in CDI or the SMART of the drive in general.
What matters for these SATA drives is the Wear Leveling number. That dictates when the life% drops. Here is how it worked for my 850 Evo of just 500GB:
99%, 16 WL, 11100 GB written
98%, 22 WL, 14852 GB written
98% 37 WL, 24806 GB written
Each 650GB written or so, a WL cycle is performed. For larger drives, it should happen less often.
Some data on WL:
Wear Leveling
NAND flash memory is susceptible to wear due to repeated program and erase cycles that are commonly done in data storage applications and systems using Flash Translation Layer (FTL). Constantly programming and erasing to the same memory location eventually wears that portion of memory out and makes it invalid. As a result, the NAND flash would have limited lifetime. To prevent scenarios such as these from occurring, special algorithms are deployed within the SSD called wear leveling. As the term suggests, wear leveling provides a method for distributing program and erase cycles uniformly throughout all of the memory blocks within the SSD. This prevents continuous program and erase cycles to the same memory block, resulting in greater extended life to the overall NAND flash memory.
There are two types of wear leveling, dynamic and static. The dynamic wear algorithm guarantees that data program and erase cycles will be evenly distributed throughout all the blocks within the NAND flash. The algorithm is dynamic because it is executed every time the data in the write buffer of the drive is flushed and written to flash memory. Dynamic wear leveling alone cannot insure that all blocks are being wear-leveled at the same rate. There is also the special case when data is written and stored in flash for long periods of time or indefinitely. While other blocks are actively being swapped, erased and pooled, these blocks remain inactive in the wear-leveling process. To insure that all blocks are being wear-leveled at the same rate, a secondary wear-leveling algorithm called static wear leveling is deployed. Static wear leveling addresses the blocks that are inactive and have data stored in them.
But there might be another potential culprit for these fast drops in life% at just one single WL.
The modern NAND might just be less reliable than the old NAND because of stacking and smaller process manufacturing (?). Samsung says this is still TLC, not QLC. Who knows.