SSD Write Endurance 25nm Vs 34nm

[Anvil]

Kingston SSDNow 40GB (X25-V)

362.43TB Host writes
Reallocated sectors : 10
MD5 OK

33.47MiB/s on avg (~44 hours)

--

Corsair Force 3 120GB

01 86/50 (Raw read error rate)
05 2 (Retired Block count)
B1 49 (Wear range delta)
E6 100 (Life curve status)
E7 78 (SSD Life left)
E9 93488 (Raw writes)
F1 124591 (Host writes)

94.06MiB/s on avg (~29 hours).

power on hours : 359

Looking good, the next few hours will tell if there is a difference wrt SF2 based drives on SnB and X58.

I'll update the firmware on the Corsair when it either disconnects or it manages to stay online for more than 33-35 hours. (33-35hours was the maximum on SnB)
The new 1.3.2 fw was released a few days ago, not sure if it helps but it is worth trying.

[Ao1]

Here is a screen shot using GSmartControl. If you hover the mouse over the SMART values info boxes appear. On the SSD Life left it seems to confirm that a value of 10 is a milestone, but it seems it will go to zero once the reserved blocks get used up. (It's the same for SF1 & SF 2 drives)



I’m not sure how to read the retired block rate value, which it states is the estimated remaining life. In the Intel spec sheets they state that out of 4,096 blocks at least 3,936 must be available throughout the endurance life of the product. Maybe that is the value that determins MRB?

[Anvil]

smartctl -t vendor,0x40 /dev/pd0

It was pd0 in my case as well.

E2-E4 immediately changed to (FFFF) or 65536

I'll start the endurance test again shortly.

[Ao1]

65536 is the factory default afaik, so it sounds like you have correctly set the values.

From the product manual that Christopher linked it states:

3. Run the workload to be evaluated for at least 60 minutes (otherwise the drive wear
attributes will not be available).

Only only checked my values after an hour and at that point they had changed from default to the new values.

EDIT:
SMARTMONTOOLS needs to be Version 5.41 to be able to use the Intel reset command.

[Anvil]

I've got 5.42, will check in an hour or so.

[B.A.T]

Anybody wants to bet the m4 goes all the way to 1PB?

Maybe. It's over halfway there.

[Christopher]

I got an error message, but when I looked all the timer values had been reset to 65536.

They've been there for the past 18hrs or so... I swapped the mother board in my SB rig to a H67. The H67 has hotswapping and Advanced LPM on/off options the bios, and I moved the Mushkin to it, with a X25-M system drive. The Mushkin made it overnight, but I'm not expecting any miracles -- the Dell D630 notebook is just too slow, and whether it's on the SnB II or III ports it's just a massive difference from the laptop's SATA II.

The X25s timer didn't seem to reset on power off (and then I cloned an image to it, then tried resetting the timer). My desktop only writes about 2.0 GB a day to the system drive.... Probably not enough to increase the timer on an 80GB, but then I kept getting error messages, so I was surprised it was reset at all.

[Anvil]

No reads yet, will check in 30minutes or so, an MD5 check is due in 4 loops.

CDI_2011-10-02-21-59_E2_E4.PNG

It's already at 105 in 90 minutes
105 / 1024 = 0.1025%

Not sure if one should take the minutes into account.

[Ao1]

In section 3 of the product specs Intel provide some example use cases.

EDIT: I made a calculator with xcel. Just change the figures in red to the correct SMART values and everything else will update automatically.



Intel Drive Wear Calculator.zip

EDIT (changed TiB to GiB)

[Christopher]

Anvil,

Does your Z68 motherboard(s) have hotplugging and Advanced Link Power Management as UEFI options?

EDIT:

I looked at a couple Z68 Asrock manuals and didn't see those items mentioned. I don't know if your X58 has them.

I don't know if they are presently helping me or not, but the Mushkin didn't crash overnight. Unfortunately, I have to take it down for a reboot later, but I'm not getting my hopes up that it will run indefinitely without dropping out.

[Anvil]

On the ASUS I can enable/disable hot-plugging, can't remember on the ASRock.

edit:
Will check on next boot.

Are you saying that disabling Hot-plugging helped?
(mine has been Enabled on the Asus and if it is an option it has definitely been enabled on the ASRock as well)

I'm pretty sure there are no such options on the X58. (Gigabyte X58A-UD7)

The Force 3 has been running for almost 32hours, I'll let it run through the night.

[Christopher]

On the ASUS I can enable/disable hot-plugging, can't remember on the ASRock.

edit:
Will check on next boot.

Are you saying that disabling Hot-plugging helped?
(mine has been Enabled on the Asus and if it is an option it has definitely been enabled on the ASRock as well)

I'm pretty sure there are no such options on the X58. (Gigabyte X58A-UD7)

The Force 3 has been running for almost 32hours, I'll let it run through the night.

I don't know if it has helped yet, just that I've made it further that I did with the other mobo since switching the Mushkin to a secondary.


I looked at the Asrock Extreme 4 Z68 manual and didn't see it. Like my Intel DP67BG, hotplugging is enabled by default and there is no Aggressive LPM.

At this point all I can say is it increases the amount of time between disconnects (for me). Unfortunately I have to take the system down for a few minutes later as I'd like to see how far it gets uninterrupted.

Right now it's only been running non stop for 18hrs. It's actually slightly faster on the H67 as well, 2mb/s faster on average for the last 18hrs.

[Anvil]

EDIT: I made a calculator with xcel. Just change the figures in red to the correct SMART values and everything else will update automatically.

I'll let it run through the night, there virtually are no reads, just the MD5 and E3 is at 0.

@Christopher

I checked on the ASRock and there are no options on LPM or Hot plugging.

On the ASUS Z68 one can Enable/Disable SMART and Hot Plug. (SMART is a global option, Hot Plug is per drive)

[Christopher]

Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 60 Update

05 2
Retired Block Count

B1 21 (Down from 25)
Wear Range Delta

F1 102285
Host Writes

E9 78711
NAND Writes

E6 100
Life Curve

E7 60
Life Left

Average 124.95MB/s Avg

261Hours Work (22hrs since the last update)
Time 10 days, 21 hours

Last 18.85hrs on 6gps port (Biostar TH67+)

11GiB Minimum Free Space 11500 files per loop, 12.9 loops per hour

SSDlife expects 15 days to 0 MWI


EDIT:

The Avg MBs just keeps creeping up. After 20Hrs it's gone from 124 to 125.02MBs. I was kinda under the impression that one Cougar Point chipset was the same as another (and boards too, except H67/P67 video and OC differences, should be very similar -- but aren't), but it just doesn't seem true given both my understanding of the SF2281 issues and my own observations. This uATX Biostar even boots absurdly fast too. If you blink, you'll miss it. The Intel DP67GB ATX is actually far more energy efficient though.

[SynbiosVyse]

This is it, Force 40-A disappeared sometime today. The SMART data is unattainable. The drive is not read by the machine, SSDLife, CrystalDiskInfo, etc.

These are the final stats from Anvil's app:
156.52 hours (since changing to 46%)
240.8065 TiB written
57.86 MB/s
MD5 ok 193/0

[Computurd]

weird, total failure?

[Christopher]

Maybe one day it'll show up in another machine one day and the firmware can be reflashed/secure erase or something?

How many reallocated sectors did it have?

Maybe it's 'panic locked'? Does that happen to 1200s?

So many questions...

[SynbiosVyse]

The last time I had access to the SMART data, it was still at 0 re-allocated sectors. I can try to see if the drive comes back, especially, see if it shows up in parted magic and maybe do a secure erase.

[Christopher]

I mean, based on my recent experiences, you may want to try something as simple as unplugging the drive for a few minutes. I don't know if you have physical access to it or not (you may be remote accessing the testing system - I don't recall if you've mentioned it).

If you remove the power to the drive for a while, on powering it back on, or a manual power cycle -- all could all help as simple as a solution as it is.

The drive has been working flawlessly for quite a while, so I'd be surprised if it was really dead.

Maybe it's just gone on strike due to the harsh working conditions

[bulanula]

My Mushkin has run without incident on my C2D laptop (I think it's the ICH8M). Speeds drop from 123MBs Avg on my 1155 system to 94MBs Avg. I'm using the RST drivers as well.

The Sata II ports on the 1155 rig were good for just as much speed as the Sata III ports, so maybe the much slower laptop helps stability. I couldn't even get my AMD system to boot with the drive attached to a controller... which is strange (it's the 710 SB).

I certainly don't think it's every SF2281 drive, but I think some hardware just doesn't work with the drives due to defect, or of out of spec hardware, or one of twenty other reasons. Until and unless this drive doesn't work with any hardware I have, I won't be giving up on it. So if it's not stable in this laptop, then I get a PCIe Marvel 6G controller. If that doesn't work, then I start thinking about more extreme options.

I think you will end up hitting it against the wall in more extreme cases.

A server was being run with overclocking, and not even known stable overclocking at that? I am not surprised that someone who would be crazy enough to run a server like that was also crazy enough to put Sandforce SSDs in it...

LOL made my day !

I heard that it if you put a SATA bus analyzer in the chain to try and analyze SF stability issues, you end up stopping the instability you're trying to detect. Maybe I can find one cheap on ebay

EDIT
Forget that... they're seriously expensive... who would have thought?

PS
Here is the link to the Intel 320 PDF for enterprise use if you want to see what Intel has to say on the matter of workload timers.
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc...n-addendum.pdf

Seems like the SSD obeys quantum mechanics effects. If it is being watched, it reacts differently. Tell you what this whole SF problem is a complete joke. 2 years and still not fixed is pretty laughable.

This is it, Force 40-A disappeared sometime today. The SMART data is unattainable. The drive is not read by the machine, SSDLife, CrystalDiskInfo, etc.

These are the final stats from Anvil's app:
156.52 hours (since changing to 46%)
240.8065 TiB written
57.86 MB/s
MD5 ok 193/0

Surely this is just the effect of SF controller panic mode.

[Anvil]

Kingston SSDNow 40GB (X25-V)

364.29TB Host writes
Reallocated sectors : 10
MD5 OK

34.75MiB/s on avg (~12 hours)

--

Corsair Force 3 120GB

01 92/50 (Raw read error rate)
05 2 (Retired Block count)
B1 48 (Wear range delta)
E6 100 (Life curve status)
E7 76 (SSD Life left)
E9 97381 (Raw writes)
F1 129780 (Host writes)

93.96MiB/s on avg (~45 hours).

power on hours : 375

[Ao1]

SF provides a number of features that might not always be utilised or configured in the same way. (I.E. temp sensor). LED signals might be combined on one LED to show activity and a fault or they might be on separate LED’s. LED Fault and Activity may be configured as:

 50% duty cycle blink, half-second period (ie HIGH 250msec, LOW 250msec, repeat)
 50% duty cycle blink, one-second period (ie HIGH 500msec, LOW 500msec, repeat)
 50% duty cycle blink, two-second period (ie HIGH 1 sec, LOW 1 sec, repeat)
 50% duty cycle blink, three-second period (ie HIGH 2 sec, LOW 2 sec, repeat)

 Fault: 100% ON

 Activity: 100% ON (valid option only if “ACTIVE” means “PHY Ready”

If the drive has entered a panic condition (or other fault mechanism) the LED activity should behave in one of the ways described above.

A panic condition is related to a serious firmware event. Up to 4 “slots” are available for panic events to be logged. Once all 4 slots are full no further panic condition can be recorded. Personally I would ditch a SSD that entered a panic state.

[Anvil]

When the 4 "slots" are all used, how are they cleared?
User fixable or?

[Ao1]

It requires specialist hardware.

Your Corsair is dead?

[Anvil]

...
Your Corsair is dead?

No, it's doing just fine. (last time I checked)