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

[SPDIF]

Yep another one that bites the dust, sadly enough. Like i said, they should recall all of them made in 2021...

 

[moonboots808]

Same story here they all fucked up my prox servers with a few single noncollectable sector each

 

[defjukie]

Thank you to the users with advice following my previous post.

I subsequently tried a Full Scan in Samsung Magician and it couldn't repair the single red square it found (one square isn't too bad I guess).

I also get a "Defects have been detected in this device" in the Extended SMART Test too with "Failing LBA" show on the side of the menu (image of this attached below). Yet Short Scan works fine and tells me "The drive is in good condition."

I started the RMA process with Samsung. They want me to test the drive on another device. And also to format it and test again.

I don't have another PC on hand right now (either way, would another device change what Samsung's software itself is doing and telling me?). So I will have to leave it until I figure something out in that respect or the drive just fully fails (easier to return to retailer at that point I suppose). Still have 13 months of warranty left at the moment.

 

[SPDIF]

You have a high number ECC error rate, that's why they ask you to test on another system. This fault also can happen with a bad SATA cable, power issues and problems with the OS, like bad drivers. They just want to be sure there's no problem with your Computer. They asked me this also in some cases.

No friend or computer store that can help you test on different PC?

Anyway keep a close eye if you see defects or errors going up.

Did you try a new SATA cable already? Are the contacts clean? You can clean the contacts on the drive with a cotton swap and IPA.

 

[xorbe]

This fault also can happen with a bad SATA cable

I had a faulty sata cable go bad and also cause corrosion on the motherboard/drive connectors. The cable seemed like pure copper connectors!! Surprising that it lasted as long as it did, until the "no device" message one day. Classic copper patina.

 

[Sora]

I flashed my 870 EVO drives before I ever saw any problems. Are they still doomed?

There was never a firmware update for the sata drives to migitate the problem, if its going to happen it will happen regardless of it.

 

[EeK]

Found out about this thread (and the issue at hand) thanks to a fellow Redditor who directed me here after having shared my experience in the Ubiquiti subreddit.

Literally all SSDs that I own are made by Samsung (850 PRO, 960 PRO, 970 EVO, 980 PRO, 990 PRO - all purchased brand new between 2017 and 2023), and I haven't had issues with any of them until now.

My most recent purchase, from a couple months ago, is a 2TB 870 EVO (production date 2023 09 18), for use with a Ubiquiti UniFi Dream Machine Pro (UDM-Pro) router. I turned that router into a makeshift NAS by installing Samba to it, and having the 870 EVO act as a network shared drive, through Samba share.

A few days ago, the share drive suddenly disconnected. I believe it's something to do with the UDM-Pro, and not the drive itself, but still want to make sure that none of my drives are faulty or affected by the bug.

What should I be looking for? Apologies for not reading all 46 pages, but I couldn't find any compiled info in the OP or a list of affected devices/firmwares in the most recent pages, and I'm looking for guidance.

 

[Shrek]

I had a SSD recently go into read-only mode, and at first it wasn't at all obvious; things booted and seem to run. Only when I tried to delete something did I start to notice something was up; things just failed to delete, Windows didn't actually complain.

 

[SPDIF]

If you want to know sure that it is not your SSD; Connect it to the computer with a SATA cable directly and check it with Samsung Magician or Hard Disk Sentinel.

Hard Disk Sentinel should show something like this if your SSD is in good condition. In the picture below from an 870 EVO 1TB.

 

[CiTay]

Normally you read out the SMART data with CrystalDiskInfo in Windows, that program provides 90% of the screenshots you see in this thread, including my initial one. In the program's menu under "Function" -> Advanced Feature -> Raw Values, select "10 [DEC]" to have human-readable values, and you can press CTRL-S to save a screenshot.

Then it's like i write in the first post:
Check your 870 EVO SSDs for these things:
Elevated "Reallocated Sector Count", "Used Reserve Block" and "Runtime Bad Block" count - first warning sign
Non-zero "Uncorrectable Error Count" and "ECC Error Rate", and especially if those two keep rising when you read/write files. Definitely affected then!

Or just upload the screenshot here and we can tell very quickly if it's affected or not.

 

[SPDIF]

I learned over the years that crystaldiskinfo sometimes can give very unreliable and wrong info. This are the parameters with a green point that are very important to check;
You can find the same list in Samsung Magician, with i also trust more then CrystalDisk. You can get a free copy of Hard Disk Sentinel to test your SSD.

Most of them should be zero during normal use, except for Wear leveling count with goes down with use.
If you post a screenshot of it, we can tell you if it is bad or not. But the program also will tell you already, CrystalDisk sometimes says it's good while the drive clearly is BAD!

ECC rate you will have more with bad SATA cables or connection.

 

[CiTay]

CrystalDisk sometimes says it's good while the drive clearly is BAD!

Well known fact, that's why we only look at the data it reads out, and for that it's as reliable as any other program. The "Health Status" value doesn't catch certain defects. But really, any program that can read out SMART data will do. It's just that CrystalDiskInfo is by far the most commonly used one. Doesn't mean that others are bad.

 

[SPDIF]

Best is still to use Samsung Magician, the program specially made for it to check and update. I personally use both Sentinel and Magician to be sure.
Crystal is done in my book, until they fix that. For people not technical they falsely think all is okay, while it's not and can loose data.

 

[Sora]

ECC rate you will have more with bad SATA cables or connection.

ECC errors can throw with bad sata drivers causing port resets too, i have 6 of them on an ssd from opening Crucial Executive with a RSTe 5.x driver that did not occur with 6.x or MS native ahci drivers.

 

[wvcaudill2]

Hey everyone, its been a few weeks since I've posted on here but honestly, I just got busy with life and didn't have time to continue troubleshooting a failed SSD. So long story short, I never sent the drive back to Samsung. I may try again at some point in the future but since I removed it from its enclosure as part of my earlier troubleshooting efforts I think its highly unlikely I could get the RMA approved again. Oh well.

In any case, I'm back and wanted to update yall on my progress. I downloaded a custom Xubuntu distro that included some DR tools such as DMDE and HDDSuperClone. With Xubuntu I was able to immediately see and navigate through the failed 4 TB drive with no issue! HOWEVER, the one 7zip protected archive file I was looking for could still not be found. I fired up DMDE and some HDDSuperCLone tools to try to investigate further.

I first tried "SCSI Passthrough" to Scan the Device. I've pasted a few lines of the log file below, but I only ran it to 1% or so as it was just all errors.

# warning log
# cluster size is 256
ERROR 0 26ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 256 31ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 512 47ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 768 47ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 1024 27ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 1280 31ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 1536 47ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 1792 27ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 2048 51ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 2304 27ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 2560 43ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 2816 27ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 3072 35ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 3328 27ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 3584 35ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 3840 39ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 4096 35ms e=0x0 s=0x0
ERROR 4352 35ms e=0x0 s=0x0

Then I switched to DMDE and did a full scan of the drive.

Investigating the partitions:

Finally, I investigated the files themselves. Still could not find the one protected archive file. It should've been saved to my Desktop folder. I checked in the multiple version of the Desktop folder shown below but again everything is there except the one file.

I am certainly no expert at data recovery, so I am wondering based on these screenshots, if anyone could recommend me next steps? I've seen mention in this thread by @CiTay of being able to use a failed drive by remapping bad sectors. Is this something I could try to get the drive bootable and hopefully find my file? Should I now try to clone this drive to a new drive? If so, would this give me a usable OS that I could continue on with without worrying of file issues or corruption? Or would it be best to install a fresh OS and just move over all of my recovered files from the failed drive?

As always, I appreciate everyone's help and feedback!

 

[CiTay]

Should I now try to clone this drive to a new drive? If so, would this give me a usable OS that I could continue on with without worrying of file issues or corruption? Or would it be best to install a fresh OS and just move over all of my recovered files from the failed drive?

If you have a bunch of errors, the cloning would probably not finish, unless it has an option to ignore any errors. But usually, the cloning software i tried (a customer of mine had a failing Kingston A400, one of the worst SATA drives ever), whenever they can't copy something, they do a few retries and then the whole cloning process is aborted with an error.

Plus, if you clone it, then not in the hopes of booting the OS off of the new drive. Well there's a chance, but it's also possible that some critical files are damaged, or that the cloning doesn't work in the first place. It would be more of a case of, now at least it can't get any worse (like it could on the Samsung). And once you cleared the Samsung of any files, it can actually go to work an remap sectors. Because like i said, to this day i'm using my 870 EVO 4TB that failed almost 2 1/2 years ago. I'm using it all the time for downloads, extracting files, moving files around, you name it. After it had initially remapped the bad sectors, it has been completely reliable again.

The 7zip archive you're looking for, your best bet to find it would've been looking directly at the Samsung in whatever rescue tools you got there. "Recuva" for Windows is also a good tool (v1.53.1087 is the best, the last one without telemetry). Because the way SSD controllers deal with potentially deleted files etc., even if you do a "sector copy"-based cloning, you will never get the same content of the empty space again on the new SSD, it's not like cloning a hard disk.

I would do a fresh install to a new drive, then copy the files over. Even though i'm positively surprised of how well my failed 870 EVO held up (flawlessly really, since the fateful days), i would not go so far to use it as my OS drive.

 

[chrcoluk]

Best is still to use Samsung Magician, the program specially made for it to check and update. I personally use both Sentinel and Magician to be sure.
Crystal is done in my book, until they fix that. For people not technical they falsely think all is okay, while it's not and can loose data.

Magician will also report a drive good with reallocated sectors. Its not going to be programmed to cost Samsung money.

What windows is lacking and needs is a tool that can initiate SMART self tests (only vendor tools I have found can do this but they will only work on supported SKUs) also to read the SMART log, both of these things now trivial to do on BSD and linux even on NVME now.

 

[SPDIF]

At least Magician is way better then CrystalDisk. That's why nowadays i use a paid program that never had me let go down. But for people not technical like us i would recommend Magician or the free trial of Sentinel.

We always look to the Smart table because we know what to look for, in that case CrystalDisk does a good job showing the smart table clear with bad points.
If Samsung Magician does it bad, well that not our problem but theirs. In any way Samsung does not accept failures shown by other program's. If the user looses data by Magician, it's on Samsung to find a solution for the customer.

Their latest updates with version 8.1 does a good job, at least they still work on it to make it better!

 

[tekbro]

So I have bought a Samsung 870 EVO internal SSD. Production date is 2023/07.
- Should I upgrade its firmware or does it already have the latest one?
- How to upgrade the firmware if I don't have a Windows OS?

 

[bluestang]

So I have bought a Samsung 870 EVO internal SSD. Production date is 2023/07.
- Should I upgrade its firmware or does it already have the latest one?
- How to upgrade the firmware if I don't have a Windows OS?

You can download an ISO with FW for the drive on Samsung's site. Put it on a USB drive using something like RUFUS and update the FW by booting to the USB.

Tool & Software Download | Samsung Semiconductor USA

Access a diverse range of software for your products, including Samsung Magician, specifically designed for Samsung memory items. Find relevant tool and software information, and download options here.

semiconductor.samsung.com

 

[P4-630]

- How to upgrade the firmware if I don't have a Windows OS?

You need Samsung Magician.

Windows, Mac and android:

Tool & Software Download | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Download various software related to your product, including Samsung Magician, designed for use with Samsung's memory products, and find related information.

semiconductor.samsung.com

 

[bluestang]

You need Samsung Magician.

Windows, Mac and android:

Tool & Software Download | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Download various software related to your product, including Samsung Magician, designed for use with Samsung's memory products, and find related information.

semiconductor.samsung.com

No you don't. Read my post before yours.

 

[tekbro]

Thanks. Do you know whether it's necessary or best-practice to upgrade the firmware right after installing the SSD on the machine? I fear I may be doing something unnecessary and risk bricking the device.
On the other hand, this line seem to be suffering from some sorts of issues which was the main point of this thread. So it appears upgrading is better than not.

Another question, what do they mean by this on this page:
*The 870 EVO model will be manufactured with a revised V6 process starting November 2022

 

[SPDIF]

Best way is to use Samsung Magician, no hassle with anything and ISO files. Most likely your SSD has nothing new at moment, drives from that date can't be updated and has latest already.
Only older drives from around 2020-2021 can be updated. Newer ones can't be updated, and has latest firmware already.

Iso to download don't have all the firmware updates available for all drives, Samsung Magician does.

That message just means that they will use newer type of NAND memory on the drive.

Always take a backup to be sure before doing firmware updates. Some can be destructive, but then Magician will warn you about that.
But as said earlier, your drive won't have any updates available...

 

[tekbro]

Best way is to use Samsung Magician, no hassle with anything and ISO files. Most likely your SSD has nothing new at moment, drives from that date can't be updated and has latest already.
Only older drives from around 2020-2021 can be updated. Newer ones can't be updated, and has latest firmware already.

Iso to download don't have all the firmware updates available for all drives, Samsung Magician does.

That message just means that they will use newer type of NAND memory on the drive.

Always take a backup to be sure before doing firmware updates. Some can be destructive, but then Magician will warn you about that.
But as said earlier, your drive won't have any updates available...

Thanks!
About this "TurboWrite" technology, according to this review video, for a 500GB 870 EVO SSD, if you write more than 22 GB to it, the write speed drops from 530 to 300 MB/s !
Is this temporary? Meaning after a while that the fast buffer's content gets written to flash cells, does write speed return to the rated ~500 MB/s?