SSD Write Endurance 25nm Vs 34nm

[Anvil]

Kingston SSDNow 40GB (X25-V)

624.44TB Host writes
Reallocated sectors : 05 21
Available Reserved Space : E8 99
POH 5640
MD5 OK

33.28MiB/s on avg (~49 hours)

--

Corsair Force 3 120GB

01 95/50 (Raw read error rate)
05 2 (Retired Block count)
B1 66 (Wear range delta)
E6 100 (Life curve status)
E7 10 (SSD Life left)
E9 685054 (Raw writes) ->669TiB
F1 911725 (Host writes) ->890TiB

MD5 OK

106.92MiB/s on avg (~49 hours)

power on hours : 2613

[B.A.T]

Todays update.
Kingston V+100

And again it dropped out.....

Intel X25-M G1 80GB
232,3221 TiB
20205 hours
Reallocated sectors : 00
MWI=139 to 137
MD5 =OK
48.59 MiB/s on avg


m4
225.8037 TiB
826 hours
Avg speed 80.70 MiB/s.
AD gone from 232 to 224.
P/E 3969.
MD5 OK.
Reallocated sectors : 00

[Christopher]

Samsung 830 64GB Update, Day 37
FW:CXM02B1Q

GiB written:
234126.89

Avg MB/s
118.88, up from 69.34

PE Cycles
14109 Can't power cycle the drive until I return home on Sunday night.

Reallocated Sectors
40960
20 Blocks, holding steady

899 Hours




Notice the write count from yesterday is quite a bit higher after the SE erase. Today's write count still has 3 hours left in the day. It was averaging around 5000GB per day recently.

So I had to leave town unexpectedly to attend a funeral, and I'll be back on Sunday night. Until then, I won't be able to power cycle the drive to get PE cycles. Unlike some people I could name (...cough... Ao1), my drive doesn't update PE cycles while powered.

But a new drive gets thrown in the torture chamber this Sunday! A joyous occasion.

The increase in speed after the FW upgrade + SE is remarkable. Not only that, but it seems that the drive isn't degrading in speed as it did before.

[minpayne]

@B.A.T

The MWI of the M4 is really funny - It's a linear rotation between 0 and 255 and the next exhaustion of MWI would be at 7680 P/E I wonder if Crucial would honor the RMA when then engineers see a positive value (between 0 and 100) ^^ Do you think the 0009 firmware has improved the wear leveling algorithm for real, compared against the previous one tested with 0002?

When would you do a data retention test?

[Ao1]

I lost around 4 hours due to Window’s auto rebooting after an update

Host writes: 9,205 GiB
MWI: 72
P/E Cycles: 1,011
POH: 137


Edit, looks like the rest helped the M/Bs

[B.A.T]

@B.A.T

The MWI of the M4 is really funny - It's a linear rotation between 0 and 255 and the next exhaustion of MWI would be at 7680 P/E I wonder if Crucial would honor the RMA when then engineers see a positive value (between 0 and 100) ^^ Do you think the 0009 firmware has improved the wear leveling algorithm for real, compared against the previous one tested with 0002?

When would you do a data retention test?

I don't know. It might have. Fw 0009 writes slower than 0002 but the WA on the 0002 was 1.09 and for 0009 it is so far 1.02.
I had an involuntary retention test during christmas. All ssd were without power for 12 and 24 hours due to a storm and powerloss.

[Christopher]

I don't think WA was ever really a problem with the M4, even with the earliest FW (0001). In fact, even on a sector-aligned XP setup, the M4 seemed to have really good WA. Obviously, I don't recommend running a drive like that, but I did, and it was pretty amazing.

The increase in read speeds with 0009 is certainly worth it, even it WA actually increased over earlier FWs. My M4 was running 0001FW and the upgrade to 0009 was incredible. The drop in write speed is certainly a good trade-off for the increase in read speeds.

The 830 on with it's new FW seems to be unassailable now. It's been two days, and there has been no slowdown like there was on 01B1Q. If anything it's even faster over time, not slower. I expect it should hit 10000GB today, and possibly more tomorrow. While it's not as fast as it should (and could be), I can't complain. I can't believe that there have been no more reallocations. It should have popped a couple more blocks by now, but it's been holding steady for quite a while at 40960.

[Christopher]

Samsung 830 64GB Update, Day 38
FW:CXM02B1Q

GiB written:
241217.21

Avg MB/s
120.54, up from 118.88

PE Cycles
14109 Can't power cycle the drive until I return home on Monday night.

Reallocated Sectors
40960
20 Blocks, holding steady

915 Hours




I can't be picky about when I get in updates way up here in the middle of nowhere. Just getting my remote desktop app working consistently is hit or miss.

Everything seems good with the 830 today, but I really wish I could get those extra 20MB/s I'm missing on the average. Every once in a while, for a few seconds every three loops, instantaneous speed jumps up to 160MBs for a short time.

[Anvil]

Kingston SSDNow 40GB (X25-V)

627.04TB Host writes
Reallocated sectors : 05 21
Available Reserved Space : E8 99
POH 5663
MD5 OK

33.09MiB/s on avg (~72 hours)

--

Corsair Force 3 120GB

01 92/50 (Raw read error rate)
05 2 (Retired Block count)
B1 64 (Wear range delta)
E6 100 (Life curve status)
E7 10 (SSD Life left)
E9 691605 (Raw writes) ->675TiB
F1 920442 (Host writes) ->899TiB

MD5 OK

106.91MiB/s on avg (~72 hours)

power on hours : 2636

Getting close to 900TiB
I'll let it run until WRD stops decreasing before doing the data retention test.

--

[adrianu]

I am using my 830 for normal work for more than a week now, Total LBA'a written is ~255 GiB, 177 raw value is 7. What is kinda strange for me the 235 value, which is "POR Recovery Count" according to the Samsung SSD Magician. Strange that Christopher has only 31 for the same SMART record. Anyone knows what "POR Recovery" means?

Thanks!

Forgot to write that my 235 value is 16.

[Christopher]

I am using my 830 for normal work for more than a week now, Total LBA'a written is ~255 GiB, 177 raw value is 7. What is kinda strange for me the 235 value, which is "POR Recovery Count" according to the Samsung SSD Magician. Strange that Christopher has only 31 for the same SMART record. Anyone knows what "POR Recovery" means?

Thanks!

Gsmartcontrol reports that attribute as super capacitor health, though everything else refers to it as POR recovery. I dd some research and could not determine what is was.

[Anvil]

POR looks to be related to caching (DRAM) and so the capacitor is part of that subsystem.

I would't worry at all, if it reaches some threshold it would be something to look out for though.

[Christopher]

I think the 830 is pretty good drive. Assuming the drive does well in the endurance test, the combination of features, speed and the super capacitor make for one hell of a drive. It's could end up like the Intel 320 series, except fast.

I wonder if 235 attribute is actually the 830's "unsafe shutdown" equivalent. I won't be able to test that until I get back, but perhaps Ao1 or Anvil could try unsafely shutting an 830 down and see if 235 increments.

[johnw]

I do not think the 830 has a supercapacitor. The way gsmartcontrol works is if it does not have a specific model in its database, it uses entries from a similar model. In this case, another SSD that did have a supercapacitor used that same attribute number for its supercapacitor health.

I cannot find any documentation on the SMART attributes for the consumer 830, but I did find a datasheet on the PM830

http://www.samsung.com/us/business/o...30-mobile.html
http://www.samsung.com/us/business/o...I_Spec_0.2.pdf

ID Attribute Name
5 Reallocated Sector Count
9 Power-on Hours
12 Power-on Count
177 Wear Leveling Count
179 Used Reserved Block Count(total)
181 Program Fail Count(total)
182 Erase Fail Count(total)
183 Runtime Bad Count (total)
187 Uncorrectable Error Count
190 Airflow Temperature
195 ECC Error Rate
199 CRC Error Count
235 POR Recovery Count
241 Total LBA Written

[Christopher]

I was pretty sure that it did have a supercapcitor -- or perhaps several smaller capacitors. But I could be wrong -- I usually am.

I seem to recall seeing the capcitor on a PCB shot of the 830 -- I wasn't just going by what GSmartControl said. The Magician software refers to the attribute in question as POR recovery count as well. As I said before, I'm away for a couple days, so I can't test this, but I believe that POR count might actually increment with unsafe shutdowns. I believe that attribute has increased on my drive a few days ago when I was SEing the drive and updating the FW, at which point I had to remove and reconnect the drive to SE it. I can check the SmartLog when I get back to see when it increased.

EDIT
No supercap/cache protection system on the 830 - consumer or OEM. Their 825 eMLC drive does have some kind of system on it. I had seen a picture of the PCB and saw what I thought was some kind of capacitor system, but it isn't. I bought a 120GB 320 because I didn't have a G3 Intel aside from the 311, and I know it has a couple caps on it instead of one "supercap". But that got me thinking, if the 830 ended up being that robust and that fast with cache protection, that there wouldn't really be a reason to get a 320 anymore. I'm still impressed by the 830, even with the initial problems I had, and the drive has operated flawlessly if not always as fast.


I've been looking back at the smart data every day, and I think that 235 is basically unsafe shutdown count. I went and back and looked at the SMART screen pictures, and for the two weeks I was gone at the end of December it was at 18. Then the day I did the FW update it increased to 31 from 21 -- I roughly had to cycle the drive by unplugging it about 10 times that day.

[Ao1]

Host writes: 9,730 GiB
MWI: 66
P/E Cycles: 1,206
POH: 162
MB/s: 6.09

[Ao1]

[B.A.T]

Todays update.
Kingston V+100
331.6785 TiB
1856 hours
Avg speed 29.95 MiB/s
AD still 1.
168= 1 (SATA PHY Error Count)
P/E?
MD5 OK.
Reallocated sectors : 00


Intel X25-M G1 80GB
235,0894 TiB
20228 hours
Reallocated sectors : 00
MWI=137 to 136
MD5 =OK
47.50 MiB/s on avg


m4
229.9788 TiB
850 hours
Avg speed 82.57 MiB/s.
AD gone from 224 to 221.
P/E 4052.
MD5 OK.
Reallocated sectors : 00


Windows update rebooted sometime during the night so all ssd have been idling for a few hours. Otherwise they are OK.

[Anvil]

B.A.T,

I never thought the Kington V+100 would turn out to be the slowest drive in the test, still no fw updates?

@Ao1
Did you back up the drive
Estimated lifetime : 14 days, is that a new feature in HD Sentinel?

[B.A.T]

I checked during Christmas but nothing has been released. it's painstakingly slow but not much I can do about it.

[Ao1]

No, but my replacement 830 has just turned up.

The relocation event ties in exactly with an increase in write speed. The relocation occured during idle time following the Windoze update. I thought the increase was due to the idle time, but the drive has still maintained faster speeds a day later. I therfore suspect that both read and write speeds will be impacted before the sectors get relocated, and I would guess that this is exactly what caused Christopher’s drive to slow down.

[sergiu]

@Ao1 @Anvil
HDDSentinel is calibrated for specific numbers of bad sectors. It declares SSDs/HDDs almost dead if bad sectors value increases over a specific point

[Christopher]

No, but my replacement 830 has just turned up.

The relocation event ties in exactly with an increase in write speed. The relocation occured during idle time following the Windoze update. I thought the increase was due to the idle time, but the drive has still maintained faster speeds a day later. I therfore suspect that both read and write speeds will be impacted before the sectors get relocated, and I would guess that this is exactly what caused Christopher’s drive to slow down.

I do believe that the Samsung doesn't flag as early as some drives would, which could help explain the reduction in read and writes, but it isn't that alone. Plus, the 830 still hasn't flagged anymore blocks as bad for some time now, even though it probably should have . It's been stuck at 20/40960 for far longer than I think it should, especially since I think some of the blocks have to be marginal now. The drive was flagging a block or two every couple days since 6 Dec I think -- but not in the past week.

[Ao1]

Christopher I might be completely wrong in my assumption. Let me try to better explain where I was coming from. With a HDD I believe numerous attempts will be made to read/ write to a sector before it is finally marked as being defective and relocated. My assumption was that before failing sectors were relocated it might be feasible that read/ write performance would suffer. Once the sectors were relocated read/ write performance would revert back to normal. This seemed logical to what I could observe on my drive, but in truth I don’t know if or how bad the impact might be on performance before the sector was taken out of the equation.

How many sectors on your drive got relocated in one hit?

You really have to admire how the Intel drives have performed in this test. They may not be the fastest but they are the best engineered by a long shot IMHO.

[Ao1]

@Ao1 @Anvil
HDDSentinel is calibrated for specific numbers of bad sectors. It declares SSDs/HDDs almost dead if bad sectors value increases over a specific point

Hi Sergiu, I believe you are correct. It’s not the P/E cycle depletion per se but the amount of relocated sectors. I will look into it and get back to you to confirm.