Hello,

I operate a computer repair shop and back around 2019-2020 I was, for a short time, experimenting with using ADATA SU800 3.5" SATA SSDs as potential replacement drives for clients or if they wanted an upgrade from a mechanical drive. I have since regretted that decision and have moved on to using Crucial branded SSDs primarily, but that's beside the point.

What I am finding is that a higher number than what I would consider normal of these computers that had one of those drives installed in them are coming in for random freezing problems. I personally have a computer that I use in my shop that has one of these drives in it that is behaving the same way. I haven't gotten around to replacing it yet, but it is also experiencing the same problems my clients have been bringing their computers in for.

The freezing is completely random. There is no way to predict when it will occur, nor can I "force it" to happen for diagnostic purposes. When the computer freezes, the mouse cursor will often continue to be operable, but not always. On my particular machine that has one of these drives in it, no BSOD occurs when it freezes, although some of my clients do have BSODs in addition to the freezing. Audio will often continue to play when the computer freezes and if a video was playing, the video often stops playing, but not always. Individual windows cannot be minimized, maximized, moved, or interacted with in any way when it occurs. "Clickable" items on the screen are not responsive. Sometimes, if you're patient and perhaps a bit lucky, the computer will suddenly respond to all of the attempted manipulations you tried while it was frozen. For example, while the computer was frozen/unresponsive, if you tried minimizing the active window or clicking the pause button in a YouTube video or any other action, the computer will remain frozen/unresponsive until sometimes, if you wait long enough, the computer will suddenly respond to all of those actions all at once. The active window will simultaneously pause the video, minimize the window, and whatever else you did all at once. Most of the time, however, the computer will remain unresponsive and you have no choice but to hard shut down the computer and then restart it where it will return to working normally for an unknown amount of time before it happens again. For my personal computer that has this problem, this occurs once per day, everyday. Once it has been hard shut down and rebooted after the first freeze, it typically will behave normally for the remainder of the work day.

I have used ADATA's SSD Toolbox software to check for firmware updates on not only my computer, but the ones of my clients as well, and there are no firmware updates available. I have tried using the Toolbox to scan the drive health, which it reports as working fine. I have tried 3rd party tools such as CrystalDiskInfo and they too report the drive as working fine and still within 95%+/- overall health in nearly all of the cases. When I initially began encountering this problem about a year ago, I had tried things like reinstalling the operating system or experimenting with different operating systems to see if the problem remained and it always did. The problem has always been solved by replacing the ADATA drive with another SSD entirely which, as I said earlier, I have grown partial to Crucial drives and so far, have not had any returns from people that had a Crucial drive installed in place of the ADATA. Out of all of the models that ADATA makes, the SU800 appears to be the most affected.

I guess what I am asking is, what could be causing this problem across so many drives of this make and model? Is this something worth diagnosing and potentially fixing or should I just continue to go about it as I have been and just replace the drives entirely? If it's something that can be potentially repaired, I wouldn't mind spending some time to diagnose it if someone was willing to help me because I don't know enough about troubleshooting the individual components (such as the SSD controller, NAND, etc) on the PCB. I'm also ok with just not worrying about it if it's not worth the time and effort and just simply replace the drive outright as soon as I encounter this issue. I guess I am just more curious as to what is causing this behavior and if it's worth trying to fix it or not.

Thank you for your time.

Typo. I meant 2.5" in the title and throughout the post, but I'm sure you guys realize my mistake.

Show us both sides of the PCB. Alternatively, clone the drive, secure erase it, then clone it back.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Attached:

199 Ultra DMA CRC errors - I wonder what the raw value is?

It's a Silicon Motion controller, but its part number isn't visible. The identity of the NAND flash is obfuscated by Adata's inhouse sh1t, so it could be anything. I saw one review where one version of this SSD used Micron NAND. However, what you see in a review is often not what you get when you actually buy one.

This site claims that the NAND is rebranded Micron TLC:

https://www.techpowerup.com/ssd-specs/xpg-sx6000-lite-256-gb.d174

Manufacturer: Micron
Name: B16A FortisFlash
Rebranded: ADATA 60078032
Type: TLC
Technology: 64-layer
Speed: 50 MT/s .. 667 MT/s
Capacity: 2 chips @ 2 Tbit
ONFI: 4.0
Topology: Floating Gate
Process: 20 nm
Die Size: 58 mm²
(4.4 Gbit/mm²)
Dies per Chip: 8 dies @ 256 Gbit
Planes per Die: 2
Decks per Die: 2
Word Lines: 74 per NAND String
86.5% Vertical Efficiency
Read Time (tR): 76 µs
Program Time (tProg): 820 µs
Block Erase Time (tBERS): 15 ms
Die Read Speed: 842 MB/s
Die Write Speed: 39 MB/s
Endurance:
(up to) 1500 P/E Cycles
(40000 in SLC Mode)
Page Size: 16 KB
Block Size: 2304 Pages
Plane Size: 504 Blocks

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.