NVMe Health and Available spare percent, spare threshold. Are these signnifcant?

[Lorca]

Using Lenovo IdeaPad and Samsung MZALQ512HALU-000L2 NVME drive 500GB NVMe drive:

 

I had some issues earlier where for some unknown reason, a large file of about 550 MB in size could not be moved, renamed, or deleted from C Drive (NVME). I was able to successfully delete the file by using FileShredder. I tried all options, including an app called "Lockhunter".

 

After a reboot, Hard Drive Sentinel (third party drive health manager) reports 99% health. Another third party app called Smartmontools revealed the same data as below. 

 

What's concerning is how little I used my Laptop which is just 6 months old and 2.60TB written. The NVMe drive passed all Windows tests including Lenovo tests. However, I am assuming because the NVMe had to use one of it's spares (10 max) something it dropped the health of the drive by 1%.It will continue to degrade at a rapid rate.

 

I am worried that I will get some pushback from Lenovo if I want to RMA the drive/laptop..

[Electronics Wizardy]

2.6tb is fully normal, I wouldn't worry about this drive at all. 

 

The health is normally just TBW/rated TBW. 99% is fine.

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, Lorca said:

However, I am assuming because the NVMe had to use one of it's spares (10 max)

What are "spares"?

1 minute ago, Lorca said:

I am worried that I will get some pushback from Lenovo if I want to RMA the drive/laptop..

You will not. SSD health is not supposed to be at 100% all the time as the NAND flash degrades over time.

[Kilrah]

6 months to use up 1% = 50 years to reach rated TBW.

[Quackers101]

sso long you have warranty you have warranty. or TBW (terabytes written)

your usage shouldn't matter (even if not good for health).

so long you don't stab it or open it up and break something, or downloading malware.

 

If not you are an SSD crypto miner?! oh no! SSD for days.

Edited September 26, 2021 by Quackers101

[Lorca]

12 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

What are "spares"?

You will not. SSD health is not supposed to be at 100% all the time as the NAND flash degrades over time.

I have no idea, that's why I'm posting. I assume the "spares" are similar to extra blocks or sectors on a HDD that HD manufacturers add should you run into bad sectors

[Lorca]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

2.6tb is fully normal, I wouldn't worry about this drive at all. 

 

The health is normally just TBW/rated TBW. 99% is fine.

I am worried because I've looked online and many users have that their NVMe drives for many years, have more than 80 TB written and haven't used their "spares" and are still at 100% health.

[Lorca]

11 minutes ago, Quackers101 said:

sso long you have warranty you have warranty. or TBW (terabytes written)

your usage shouldn't matter (even if not good for health).

so long you don't stab it or open it up and break something, or downloading malware.

 

If not you are an SSD crypto miner?! oh no! SSD for days.

There was a serious malfunction yesterday and the NVMe health dropped after that. So, yeah. I'm worried. Had I not had the problem, then I would have likely ignored the health drop and attributed it normal wear...until I noticed others with older NVMes and significantly more writes have no NVMe health drops. 

[Lorca]

14 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

6 months to use up 1% = 50 years to reach rated TBW.

My gut tells me my NVMe will fail completely once my warranty expires.

[Electronics Wizardy]

14 minutes ago, Lorca said:

I am worried because I've looked online and many users have that their NVMe drives for many years, have more than 80 TB written and haven't used their "spares" and are still at 100% health.

This really depends on the model of the drive.

 

9 minutes ago, Lorca said:

My gut tells me my NVMe will fail completely once my warranty expires.

As someone with a lot of ssds(>100) there pretty reliable. 

 

But make sure you have backups of your data.

[Lorca]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

This really depends on the model of the drive.

 

As someone with a lot of ssds(>100) there pretty reliable. 

 

But make sure you have backups of your data.

Ha. I don't have that luck.

 

My Samsung NVMe is from a pre-fab Lenovo laptop.

 

While I always have a backup. It's just a PIA to restore each time should the need arise and there's that gap between backups when sheet usually happens. 
Take for example how I wasn't able to delete, rename, copy, or move that file.I was able to run it though. It had the makings of malware, but it wasn't. I spent more than a half an hour. Only File Shredder DoD algorithm was able to remove the file. I lost the file though. After reboot, then HD Sentinel rated the health of the drive as 99% and one "spare" used. 

[Lorca]

Here is another link to evaluate your NVMe SSDs for free.

[Lorca]

I talked to Samsung today and they told me FileShredder isn't meant to be used on NVMes. What happened was Fileshredder basically hammered the shit out of that part of the drive and it resulted in the cells being basically dead or unusable. This forced the firmware to use a "spare" part of the drive to write data to.  

 

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to remove a partially corrupt file from my drive as nothing but Fileshredder worked in SafeMode.

[Lorca]

On 9/26/2021 at 1:55 PM, Kilrah said:

6 months to use up 1% = 50 years to reach rated TBW.

I hope you have been following. What happened to me would result in my NVMe drive being unusable within a few years, regardless of TBW. 

[Quackers101]

50 minutes ago, Lorca said:

I talked to Samsung today and they told me FileShredder isn't meant to be used on NVMes. What happened was Fileshredder basically hammered the shit out of that part of the drive and it resulted in the cells being basically dead or unusable. This forced the firmware to use a "spare" part of the drive to write data to.  

 

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to remove a partially corrupt file from my drive as nothing but Fileshredder worked in SafeMode.

so a SSD or NVME shredder? rip

also the I think samsung included software for NVMe or SSDs that can be used? (maybe not or when the problem occured)

[Kilrah]

5 hours ago, Lorca said:

What happened to me would result in my NVMe drive being unusable within a few years, regardless of TBW. 

Not uncommon, SSDs probably fail due to other causes than TBW like dead controller or physical issues (soldering, heat) most of the time.