Hi Everyone

I worked on a notebook that had two SSD failures in around one year, and was wondering if anyone could speculate on the root cause.

Here are the details of the last drive after around six months in use:

Name: Micron RealSSD C400 2.5 256GB SATA 6Gb/s SED
Model: MTFDDAK256MAM‐1K12
Firmware: 04TH (*There is a newer version of firmware available: 08TH)

SMART Values

# Attribute Name Value Worst Threshold RAW Status
1 Raw Read Error Rate 100 100 50 5 OK
5 Reallocated Block Count 100 100 10 0 OK
9 Power-On Hours Count 100 100 0 58 OK
12 Device Power-Cycle Count 100 100 0 488 OK
170 New Failing-Block Count 100 100 10 0 OK
171 Program-Fail Count 100 100 0 0 OK
172 Erase-Fail Count 100 100 0 0 OK
173 Average Block-Erase Count 100 100 10 5 OK
174 Unexpected Power-Loss Count 100 100 0 20 OK
181 Non-Page-Aligned Access Count 100 100 0 22,348,264 OK
183 SATA Interface Downshift 100 100 0 0 OK
184 End-to-End Error Detection 100 100 97 0 OK
187 Uncorrectable Errors Count 100 100 0 27,690 OK
188 Command Timeout Count 100 100 0 0 OK
189 Factory Bad-Block Count 100 100 0 84 OK
194 Enclosure Temperature 100 100 0 0 OK
195 Cumulative ECC Bit-Correction Count 100 100 0 62,756 OK
196 Reallocation Event Count 100 100 0 0 OK
197 Current Pending-Sector Count 100 100 0 0 OK
198 Offline scan UNC sectors 100 100 0 0 OK
199 Ultra-DMA CRC Error Count 100 100 0 0 OK
202 Percent Lifetime Used 100 100 0 0 OK
206 Write Error Rate 100 100 0 0 OK

When I imaged the drive it had 6,762 UNC errors spread across the drive, mostly in blocks of 16 sectors:

02 sector blocks of UNC: 1
08 sector blocks of UNC: 35
16 sector blocks of UNC: 405

After I imaged the drive and recovered the data, I zeroed the drive without error and then performed a media scan without error; the drive appeared fine.

I have RMA'd the drive and replaced it. However, given it was the second SSD failure (same model - different firmware version) in the notebook I wonder if there could be a problem with the notebook (for example, dirty power).

Has anyone seen this kind of problem and can speculate on the cause (e.g. faulty NAND chips, firmware bugs, etc)?

Thanks in advance.
Cris

As far as I'm concerned, SSD are still in development stages and the manufacturers are just producing them and letting the end users beta test their various firmware tweaks and storage algorithms.

_________________
Luke
Recovery Force Donor Inventory: 5,000+ Fully Cataloged HDDs & Growing

My opinion: SSD drives are ticking timebombs

Dobre

_________________
Murphy was an optimist

Datarecovery in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany
Datarecoverytools http://www.drtools.eu

And trying to find WHY a SSD died is VERY difficult.

The funny thing is that many users actually think SSDs are more reliable (in every regard) than hard disk drives.

The most outrageous thing in this case is that "Uncorrectable Errors Count" is configured not to trip SMART; I think it is contrary to the purpose of SMART.