Is my Samsung 830 SSD knackered?!

coopsjc21

coopsjc21

coopsjc21

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Hi
Sorry for the long post, but I’ve tried many fixes for this and wanted to document it all.

I have a home built system, built around 2008, Core2Duo, Asus P5Q pro, 8gb Corsair ddr3, Asus 4850 (I think), Samsung 830 ssd (sata1, ahci), WD 4tb hdd (sata2) (vids, music etc), dvd-rom (sata4). Initially had Win 7 home x64 on the ssd, but got the free upgrade to Win10 last year, all working ok, no issues.

About a week ago had the odd system freeze, it would lock up and not budge, had to hard reset. This happened a few times and I couldn’t find a fix. Then it refuse to boot altogether. Decided a re-install of o/s would be easiest.

I disconnected the 4tb hdd, started up with a usb drive in with Win10 setup on it, formatted the ssd, started installation, it took about 8 hours though.. then failed just after the “expanding windows files” bit, can’t remember the error message.

Ok, rebooted, tried again but this time with retail Win7 x64 disc, took forever again, then failed again. Several attempts later with various errors (at one point it wouldn’t format the ssd at the start of installation) and I gave up.

I installed my old 320gb hdd and installed Win7 on that. Connected the ssd to sata6, went into Windows disk management, found the ssd, it was listed as ‘Raw’, tried to format it to NTFS, but it refused to format it.

A couple of attempts later, playing with various settings it still wouldn’t format. I ran DiskPart, ran the clean command etc, eventually got it formatted to NTFS after much fiddling. Copied some files to it, working fine as a storage drive.

Rebooted, ssd to sata1, boot to Win7 cd, started install... nope, “windows could not be installed”.

Back to the 320gb hdd Win7, wouldn’t format again, DiskPart formatted eventually. More failed attempts at installing.

I’ve made sure it’s an MBR drive. I’ve ran Samsung Magician software and it’s says the ssd is working ok. Did an erase & factory reset on it through Samsung software, tried installing... failed. This last fail I saved the error message, it was “windows could not set the offline locale information” (precious install errors were different).

Any thoughts? Basically every attempt to install Win7 (and Win10) fail, the ssd has trouble formatting unless done in DiskPart, bios recognises it ok, Samsung Magician says it’s ok, reset to factory settings, no luck. It works ok as a storage drive though.

Ive formatted & re-installed Win7 on this drive in the past without problems.

My next two options I’ll try when I get home Friday are, 1) reset the bios 2) run the Win7 installer from the hdd and try to install it to the ssd (connected as a second drive) from there.

Pete
 
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Half asleep here and only scanned your post but have you tried re-setting write values in parted magic?

Maybe the drive is read only now?
 
Thanks for replies.

PiKe said:
Tried a different sata cable?
Click to expand...

Yep. Same issue. Might try different sata ports though, I’ve only tried installing Win while it’s been connected to sata1, it’s always been on sata1 though so should be ok.

APM said:
Half asleep here and only scanned your post but have you tried re-setting write values in parted magic?

Maybe the drive is read only now?
Click to expand...

Not sure how to do that, but when I had it as a storage drive next to the Win7 hdd I copied files to it & installed Samsung Magic to it ok, so don’t think it’s read only, I’ll check though.
 
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I've had similar issues before and sorted it out using parted magic,could be worth a quick search for you if nothing else pans out.
 
Wow,is it?

If you can access a linux machine try gparted first,should be free.

Or even burn an install iso or a usb stick for a linux distro,maybe fedora or ubuntu then you can use that to boot up into linux without actually installing it and hook your drive up and see what gparted says about it.
 
Yep, tried various stuff in Diskpart, including those.

Don’t currently have access to a Linux machine, but will consider trying that.

Should have an hour or so spare tomorrow to have another go, if not then Saturday, will post back what happened.
 
A few links that may help,could be worth a few reads before trying anything on your drive though.

http://www.stevenmaude.co.uk/posts/securely-erasing-frozen-hard-disks-with-hdparm

https://grok.lsu.edu/article.aspx?articleid=16716

https://serverfault.com/questions/712849/how-to-unlock-a-ssd-disk-with-hdparm

what you want to check is if your drive is locked,if it is performing the tasks specified there could sort you out.

I've got a text file somewhere with the process I used a few times,I'll see if I can find it tomorrow.
 
Quick update.

I'm in the process of downloading Linux (Ubuntu) to boot from usb and give gparted a try. I've also found an older but free version of parted magic to try.

In the meantime I've booted back into Windows 7 on the hdd, connected the ssd. I used diskpart to try the "clean all" command, that took over 24 hours and still hadn't finished. In disk management I tried formatting the ssd to nyfs some more, but it kept failing. I then tried formatting to exfat and it worked fine. I tried this a few times and it formats to exfat fine every time, but not ntfs.

Also tried running a performance benchmark on the ssd through Samgsung magician while it was formatted to exfat, it seemed to get stuck and not progress past 3% of the test.
 
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Ran gparted from the Ubuntu usb, managed to find the ssd, create a partion & format to ntfs.

It showed this after I finished, not sure if it’s of any concern?


 
No luck with all of the above. So I booted again to Win7 hdd, ran Magician software and tried the SecureErase again, this time it worked, I was able to format the drive to NTFS. Tried installing Win7 to it from the hdd but it failed. Rebooted and tried installing Win7 from cd on start up. It seemed to install it ok, but wouldn't boot up?

I changed the SATA cable again and tried a 3rd cable, this time it installed Win7 and has booted... problem fixed?! The original SATA cable and the 2nd one I tried both work fine as they are now being used on the hdd and cd drive (they were the skinny type cables, now using the slightly wider type cable). Could that have been the problem all along? I don't see why because I used those from when I first got the drive and never had issues before.

Anyway, sorted now, thank you for the help. I'm tempted to format & re-install again just to see what happens.
 
Did you not try the Samsung secure erase? That seems pretty good at reviving troublesome Samsung SSDs.
 
Yep, did all of that because it said it was in a frozen state, but it didn't seem to help before. It asked me to do it again today so I did it again. I wonder if the first secure erase I did didn't complete for some reason, I'm sure it did though.
 
Still under warranty? Given the number of issues you've had with it, I'd say it's done.
 
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