Corrupted SSD?

[EdwardTeach]

On Sunday my computer started having some issues:

-computer takes a very long time to boot (at a guess 5-10min)
- computer is very slow
- none of the windows tools work e.g
-disk management wont launch it stuck loading,
- disk cleanup wont launch
- windows defender cant complete a scan
- some things do work, e.g file explorer and firefox

In file explorer i can see that E drive is recognised as present, but it is not being read properly, e.g unlike my other HD’s it doesnt show the size of the drive/ how much space is free etc.
If i try to open the E drive file explorer stops working, ie it lags until it closed in task manager

Obviously there is major issues with the E drive! I am a bit surprised that it caused such widespread issues beyond not being accessible?

I have removed the E drive and the computer is back to normal.

I have tried mounting the drive in an external enclosure, and connecting via usb. The drive is still not accessible and attaching causes massive lag, e.g the mouse curser moves incredibly slowly

A few questions:

1. Is it likely to simply be a corrupted drive?

1. Is the failure likely to have just been bad luck? My son was playing a lot of minecraft over the half term. I think it was installed on this drive. He had been using minecraft mods. Whilst I would dearly like to blame him, I assume there won't be a causal link?

1. I don't know what was on the drive! I suspect it was just steam and gamepass games, in which case it is not a major issue as they can be downloaded again. However, for peace of mind I would like to know what was on there.

1. Does windows keep a log of folders/ files that I could access?
2. My external drive enclosure idea clearly didn't work - any other suggestions for how I could try and access this drive, or should I just give up on it?

 

[Tetras]

Is the failure likely to have just been bad luck? My son was playing a lot of minecraft over the half term. I think it was installed on this drive. He had been using minecraft mods. Whilst I would dearly like to blame him, I assume there won't be a causal link?

I don't play minecraft, but I can't see why it would be an issue.

Is it likely to simply be a corrupted drive?

It would seem so, what is the drive?

You didn't have a power cut recently?

 

[EdwardTeach]

I don't play minecraft, but I can't see why it would be an issue.


It would seem so, what is the drive?

You didn't have a power cut recently?

Il have to check when I get home, but I think it is a Samsung, it must be 6+ years old.

No power cuts recently.

 

[Snapshot]

We really need to know exactly what the drive is. If, for example, it's an 870 EVO without the latest firmware then it would have been a ticking bomb just waiting to crash.

 

[EdwardTeach]

It was an 870 evo!

1tb 870 evo

What was the issue with them?

 

[mark 11:11]

firmware was making them wear out rapidly i think from memory it was the wear leveling but done completely wrong i think and some ott writes being performed
memory is hazy on this BUT
at the time i had just bought a load of 870 evos but luckily i knew about it and well actually turns out hte ones i had were already on the safe firmware i think i havnt had any die [mine were all 500gb ones which i think had the least problems or at least the least fuss being made]
write amplification thats the word i was looking for however it is probably still incorrect lol
but yeah basically the firmware wore the drives out rapidly unless you knew about it and updated the firmware
i believe the 990 pro has a similar problem which is on brand for me as i have a 990pro as my main drive and a pair of 990 pros waiting for my new build in a few weeks so yeah i need to make sure i sort that out before i end up with dead drives as well
sorry for being crap at explaining things i struggle with it but i think ive got it vaguely right at least

 

[Armadillo]

i believe the 990 pro has a similar problem which is on brand for me as i have a 990pro as my main drive and a pair of 990 pros waiting for my new build in a few weeks so yeah i need to make sure i sort that out before i end up with dead drives as

New ones should be fine out of the box. Unless there was another issue, wear leveling was addressed with an update in 2023 and the drives should all be shipping on much later firmwares now. My 990pro that was made in November 24 already had the current firmware on it according to magician when I installed and checked it in early May. Also unrelated but I just want to say new Samsung magician is awful, old one I used to use with my 850 evo was great, when I wanted to check the firmware of my 990 just in case, the new one was a trainwreck. Wouldn't start, then was hanging on detecting drives and just being a pain. Eventually got it, but seems I'm not alone, no idea how they made it so bad.

 

[Tetras]

i believe the 990 pro has a similar problem which is on brand for me as i have a 990pro as my main drive and a pair of 990 pros waiting for my new build in a few weeks so yeah i need to make sure i sort that out before i end up with dead drives as well

The last I knew (don't know if there's been news since then), 990 Pro had a firmware issue that impacted a bunch of drives and was unrelated to the 870 Evo.

The 870 Evo, it was never revealed by Samsung what the problem was (I don't think they publicly acknowledged a problem), but it is possible that the bad early firmware caused it.

Drives that were impacted were mainly manufactured between 2020 and 2022.

Drives with an updated firmware have survived after the drive was zeroed, but some drives with an updated firmware have also died. The latter drives may have been too badly damaged by extended use of the early firmware, so it isn't clear what that means.

The 870 Evo issues show (in SMART) as bad blocks and reserved blocks being used, with high rates of ECC errors. Some of the first symptoms are taking a very long time to read certain files and a bunch of event viewer errors. They normally start showing bad symptoms around 10 TB of writes, so it is best to update them before that point.

 

[mark 11:11]

yeah i was reading about the 870 issues at the time because i actually bought a load of them at the time lol and remember searching for ones that wernt in a particular date range luckily the 4 ones i ended up with to keep none of them ive had any issues with
il look at the date when i open the pc next but yeah i remember there being a load of this and that and no one knowing what was going on so i avoided those particular dates
the 990 i assumed was similar
it doesnt seem to have affected my c drive but i admit i have made sure the firmware was up to date
ive got 2 brand new 4tb 990s literally sat in front of me so first thing im doing when i plug them in is check firmware etc
so far ive got lucky i guess
again this might be like the other mentioned hardware failures in some threads recently no one seems to actually know exactly all the causes and the reality of how bad it really is
fingers crossed because pretty much all my drives are samsung LOL! i can see me suddenly having like 10 unrelated fails or something now lol

 

[Tetras]

i can see me suddenly having like 10 unrelated fails or something now lol

I think you're good! The firmware updates for the 990 seem to have resolved the issue (haven't heard anything since) and if your 870 Evos are beyond the bad date range you should be fine there too.

 

[Semple]

A few questions:

1. Is it likely to simply be a corrupted drive?
2. Is the failure likely to have just been bad luck? My son was playing a lot of minecraft over the half term. I think it was installed on this drive. He had been using minecraft mods. Whilst I would dearly like to blame him, I assume there won't be a causal link?
3. I don't know what was on the drive! I suspect it was just steam and gamepass games, in which case it is not a major issue as they can be downloaded again. However, for peace of mind I would like to know what was on there.

1. Does windows keep a log of folders/ files that I could access?
2. My external drive enclosure idea clearly didn't work - any other suggestions for how I could try and access this drive, or should I just give up on it?

It could be a dying drive, not necessarily a corrupted drive. A corrupted drive implies that you can reformat it and start from a clean empty drive. If it's dead/dying then formatting won't make any difference.

Playing Minecraft would just be coincidental. He might be mad at you if you've not got a backup of this drive for losing any of his game saves/configs.

If you can mount the drive, you could run something like dir from command prompt and dump out everything to a text file.

 

[Snapshot]

Drives that were impacted were mainly manufactured between 2020 and 2022.

The 870 Evo issues show (in SMART) as bad blocks and reserved blocks being used, with high rates of ECC errors. Some of the first symptoms are taking a very long time to read certain files and a bunch of event viewer errors. They normally start showing bad symptoms around 10 TB of writes, so it is best to update them before that point.

My 2TB 870 was made in 2021-01 so is squarely in the affected range and the Crystal Disk Info shows the damage you describe perfectly. It's been stable since I updated the firmware but I don't use it....