So bit of background story, first it started with this.
https://hardforum.com/threads/samsung-mlc-850-pro-about-to-die.1985642/
The above thread I made when my SATA samsung 850 PRO started behaving oddly, including been unable to boot, I sent it to samsung for RMA after all the problems and logged errors in SMART. They sent it back saying the drive was not defective.
I then tested it in other machines and sure enough it ran at full speed without any errors, but as soon as back in this machine (even with new sata cable) there was crc errors and much lower read speeds. The samsung 830 from my laptop was the same, errors in this pc, but error free in other devices. Only TLC devices with powerful ECC chips can run in this PC error free (on sata), MLC ssd's are only error free when the sata port is capped to SATA2 mode.
So what I ended up doing was getting a m.2 drive, my theory was I had defective traces for the sata ports on the board.
After about 3 months use on the drive I noticed it had 5 "media and data integrity errors" logged in smart, however no ofdd behaviour on the drive. I carried on using it.
Two weeks ago after been lucky enough to get a RTX 3080 at MSRP, I started work on upgrading windows as these gpus require windows 10 (yes I been on windows 8 that long), part of this process I was backing up my games partition on the m.2 as I was planning to make the windows partition bigger than what it is now.
Then problems started, CRC read error in macrium reflect, retried it numerous times, in the same spot CRC read error. Every time this error was logged, two things happened in SMART.
1 - Media and data integrity errors increased.
2 - Available spare decreased.
I ran chkdsk /r multiple times as macrium suggested, and eventually I was able to do a backup without CRC read errors, but by the end of it available spare was down to a very low numbers and over 50 media and data integrity errors.
I then removed my cpu o/c, set ram to stock, and tried another backup, success again but media and data integrity errors still increasing on the backup.
At this point I removed the drive, did the win10 upgrade on a spare MX500 (which is what I am currently running on). As its a TLC drive there is no smart errors.
So I thought I dont want to send this again for another failed RMA especially as now with brexit samsung have gone from free shipping to customer pays shipping and cheapest quote to just send it is almost £20 and thats uninsured.
I put it in my spare ryzen rig, and ran a macrium backup, I even selected the option to backup empty sectors to force every sector to be read, I was praying for a media and data integrity error, but zero, a flat nothing, did it 3 times.
To me the nightmare scenario is swapping out my board, and even that isnt a sure fix as I simply dont know whats going on here, I have always thought if bad ram is corrupting data, that would result either in silent written corruption or system instability like bsod's or crashing apps. I never thought something like that could actually move SMART counters. However given what happened with my 850 pro it seems a failure external to a drive can actually cause it, and this is now making me think the drive is fine but is something in my main rig causing this problem, but the question is what? I can get smart errors with no overclocking, I have stress tested the ram like crazy, it seems I might have some kind of rare fail condition like a damaged SOC, DMI bus or something.
I welcome any input on this, insight into how smart can increase and so forth and if its still worth trying the RMA, I feel I cant trust a drive with smart errors, and at the same time buying a new drive isnt a solution if the board is the problem.
https://hardforum.com/threads/samsung-mlc-850-pro-about-to-die.1985642/
The above thread I made when my SATA samsung 850 PRO started behaving oddly, including been unable to boot, I sent it to samsung for RMA after all the problems and logged errors in SMART. They sent it back saying the drive was not defective.
I then tested it in other machines and sure enough it ran at full speed without any errors, but as soon as back in this machine (even with new sata cable) there was crc errors and much lower read speeds. The samsung 830 from my laptop was the same, errors in this pc, but error free in other devices. Only TLC devices with powerful ECC chips can run in this PC error free (on sata), MLC ssd's are only error free when the sata port is capped to SATA2 mode.
So what I ended up doing was getting a m.2 drive, my theory was I had defective traces for the sata ports on the board.
After about 3 months use on the drive I noticed it had 5 "media and data integrity errors" logged in smart, however no ofdd behaviour on the drive. I carried on using it.
Two weeks ago after been lucky enough to get a RTX 3080 at MSRP, I started work on upgrading windows as these gpus require windows 10 (yes I been on windows 8 that long), part of this process I was backing up my games partition on the m.2 as I was planning to make the windows partition bigger than what it is now.
Then problems started, CRC read error in macrium reflect, retried it numerous times, in the same spot CRC read error. Every time this error was logged, two things happened in SMART.
1 - Media and data integrity errors increased.
2 - Available spare decreased.
I ran chkdsk /r multiple times as macrium suggested, and eventually I was able to do a backup without CRC read errors, but by the end of it available spare was down to a very low numbers and over 50 media and data integrity errors.
I then removed my cpu o/c, set ram to stock, and tried another backup, success again but media and data integrity errors still increasing on the backup.
At this point I removed the drive, did the win10 upgrade on a spare MX500 (which is what I am currently running on). As its a TLC drive there is no smart errors.
So I thought I dont want to send this again for another failed RMA especially as now with brexit samsung have gone from free shipping to customer pays shipping and cheapest quote to just send it is almost £20 and thats uninsured.
I put it in my spare ryzen rig, and ran a macrium backup, I even selected the option to backup empty sectors to force every sector to be read, I was praying for a media and data integrity error, but zero, a flat nothing, did it 3 times.
To me the nightmare scenario is swapping out my board, and even that isnt a sure fix as I simply dont know whats going on here, I have always thought if bad ram is corrupting data, that would result either in silent written corruption or system instability like bsod's or crashing apps. I never thought something like that could actually move SMART counters. However given what happened with my 850 pro it seems a failure external to a drive can actually cause it, and this is now making me think the drive is fine but is something in my main rig causing this problem, but the question is what? I can get smart errors with no overclocking, I have stress tested the ram like crazy, it seems I might have some kind of rare fail condition like a damaged SOC, DMI bus or something.
I welcome any input on this, insight into how smart can increase and so forth and if its still worth trying the RMA, I feel I cant trust a drive with smart errors, and at the same time buying a new drive isnt a solution if the board is the problem.
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