SSD stops working

[Craftyawesome]

My Samsung 980 has been dropping out on my Dell G15 5515 laptop running windows 10 64 bit. What happens is that my drive randomly stops responding. Explorer locks up if I try to use it and so will other programs expecting to use the drive. It also prevents me from shutting down with the windows menu because it will either get stuck on the shutting down screen or it won't even show that screen at all. I've gotten it to happen somewhat consistently a couple different ways. Sometimes steam game updates that have a lot of disk access will cause it. The other way is that it happens after a few hours of leela training (mostly random read workload). It has also happened with no/little foreground disk usage, but maybe steam was downloading in the background.

 

On the last post I made, I eventually found that hwinfo showed a second thermal sensor (likely the controller temp) that I saw as high as 99C, so I assumed it was just thermal shutting down. So I got a heatsink, but now I've seen it stop working as low as 90C. So I don't think it's a thermal problem.

 

Is there anything software related I should try, or is it just a bad drive?

 

I've tried:
Physically unplugging and reinserting the drive
Trying the chipset drivers from both AMD and Dell
All 4 diagnostic scans in samsung magician. All pass.
Updated drive firmware
Updated BIOS (1.6.0)
Reset bios to optimized defaults
Running the longer scans while downloading a game update. The percentage gets stuck, and the eta decreases until it gets stuck at 0.

 

[Ty2525]

18 minutes ago, Craftyawesome said:

My Samsung 980 has been dropping out on my Dell G15 5515 laptop running windows 10 64 bit. What happens is that my drive randomly stops responding. Explorer locks up if I try to use it and so will other programs expecting to use the drive. It also prevents me from shutting down with the windows menu because it will either get stuck on the shutting down screen or it won't even show that screen at all. I've gotten it to happen somewhat consistently a couple different ways. Sometimes steam game updates that have a lot of disk access will cause it. The other way is that it happens after a few hours of leela training (mostly random read workload). It has also happened with no/little foreground disk usage, but maybe steam was downloading in the background.

 

On the last post I made, I eventually found that hwinfo showed a second thermal sensor (likely the controller temp) that I saw as high as 99C, so I assumed it was just thermal shutting down. So I got a heatsink, but now I've seen it stop working as low as 90C. So I don't think it's a thermal problem.

 

Is there anything software related I should try, or is it just a bad drive?

 

I've tried:
Physically unplugging and reinserting the drive
Trying the chipset drivers from both AMD and Dell
All 4 diagnostic scans in samsung magician. All pass.
Updated drive firmware
Updated BIOS (1.6.0)
Reset bios to optimized defaults
Running the longer scans while downloading a game update. The percentage gets stuck, and the eta decreases until it gets stuck at 0.

 

How much space are you using on the drive? Out of 1tb, how much is left?

[manikyath]

how the heck have you piled up 30k power cycles in 850 hours of using this thing?

 

i mean.. not saying that is the problem, but it almost smells like a power delivery issue there...

[Ty2525]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

how the heck have you piled up 30k power cycles in 850 hours of using this thing?

 

i mean.. not saying that is the problem, but it almost smells like a power delivery issue there...

Just noticed this. Even if it isn't the issue, it is odd that the drive has approximately 29,700 more cycles than it probably should have at this age. 

 

I would confirm the drive is tightly secured in the laptop. The drive shouldn't be able to wiggle at all. 

 

Samsung Magician can update the firmware on the drive in the event there is an update available. If you choose to download their program, that would be a good start to rule out variables aside from ensuring the drive is secured correctly.

 

That will also tell you all ~10 temp sensor readings that the drive has. 90c would throttle it. Wouldn't throttle it that hard, though. It could be possible another sensor is reporting a temp that is higher than 90c. Though I don't think that is particularly likely, you can check it and rule that out. Laptops get hot, it is not uncommon for them to cause drives to overheat. 

 

 

[Craftyawesome]

2 hours ago, Ty2525 said:

How much space are you using on the drive? Out of 1tb, how much is left?

I currently only have 55GB free, but this has been happening while I had >100GB free.

2 hours ago, manikyath said:

how the heck have you piled up 30k power cycles in 850 hours of using this thing?

 

i mean.. not saying that is the problem, but it almost smells like a power delivery issue there...

I think it is counting leaving some sort of idle state as a cycle? The included drive is supposedly over 51k.

2 hours ago, Ty2525 said:

Just noticed this. Even if it isn't the issue, it is odd that the drive has approximately 29,700 more cycles than it probably should have at this age. 

 

I would confirm the drive is tightly secured in the laptop. The drive shouldn't be able to wiggle at all. 

 

Samsung Magician can update the firmware on the drive in the event there is an update available. If you choose to download their program, that would be a good start to rule out variables aside from ensuring the drive is secured correctly.

 

That will also tell you all ~10 temp sensor readings that the drive has. 90c would throttle it. Wouldn't throttle it that hard, though. It could be possible another sensor is reporting a temp that is higher than 90c. Though I don't think that is particularly likely, you can check it and rule that out. Laptops get hot, it is not uncommon for them to cause drives to overheat. 

 

 

I did remove/reinsert the drive earlier and IIRC it felt snug. Although that did make me think of something. The laptop doesn't include the mount for the second m.2 slot. And instead of going through dell support to probably have to pay anyway, I just got a third party one off of amazon. Could the tolerances be just barely off? Maybe I can try to remove the drive and try to shift the mount a fraction of a millimeter closer to the slot?

 

I did update the firmware earlier and run all the diagnostic tests in magician (all passed). It has 8, but only two are non-zero. (It matches what HWinfo shows but in kelvin)

 

smart.csv

[Ty2525]

1 minute ago, Craftyawesome said:

I currently only have 55GB free, but this has been happening while I had >100GB free.

I think it is counting leaving some sort of idle state as a cycle? The included drive is supposedly over 51k.

I did remove/reinsert the drive earlier and IIRC it felt snug. Although that did make me think of something. The laptop doesn't include the mount for the second m.2 slot. And instead of going through dell support to probably have to pay anyway, I just got a third party one off of amazon. Could the tolerances be just barely off? Maybe I can try to remove the drive and try to shift the mount a fraction of a millimeter closer to the slot?

 

I did update the firmware earlier and run all the diagnostic tests in magician (all passed). It has 8, but only two are non-zero. (It matches what HWinfo shows but in kelvin)

 

smart.csv 1.04 kB · 0 downloads

Samsung recommends you only use 70% capacity to ensure healthy and speed of the drive. I would not suspect this to be a large issue. But you said even with 100gb free. But that is 90% usage, not 70%. Between that and higher temps, it could be throttling more than it normally would. 

 

What 3rd party unit did you get? Screenshot of the listing if possible. 

[Craftyawesome]

1 minute ago, Ty2525 said:

Samsung recommends you only use 70% capacity to ensure healthy and speed of the drive. I would not suspect this to be a large issue. But you said even with 100gb free. But that is 90% usage, not 70%. Between that and higher temps, it could be throttling more than it normally would. 

 

What 3rd party unit did you get? Screenshot of the listing if possible. 

A linked it. But if you want a screenshot 

[Ty2525]

7 minutes ago, Craftyawesome said:

A linked it. But if you want a screenshot 

The drive pins should not be visible while it is in the slot. If you can see the pins, the drive is not fully inserted. 

 

If you can see the slot, you will know if the pins are visible or not. Are they? By chance?

[Craftyawesome]

Just now, Ty2525 said:

The drive pins should not be visible while it is in the slot. If you can see the pins, the drive is not fully inserted. 

 

If you can see the slot, you will know if the pins are visible or not. Are they? By chance?

I couldn't see any pins, but I removed/reinserted it anyway to see if that helps this time.

[Ty2525]

1 minute ago, Craftyawesome said:

I couldn't see any pins, but I removed/reinserted it anyway to see if that helps this time.

Just to confirm, the drive doesn't move up or down or side to side? 

 

Note: It shouldn't. 

 

I know I asked if it wouldn't wiggle, but that was misworded. Wiggle implies side to side, not up and down.

[Craftyawesome]

26 minutes ago, Ty2525 said:

Just to confirm, the drive doesn't move up or down or side to side? 

 

Note: It shouldn't. 

 

I know I asked if it wouldn't wiggle, but that was misworded. Wiggle implies side to side, not up and down.

I couldn't move it with the screw down, so that's probably fine.

[Marko Del Vechio]

Hi,

 

The issue as you described happened to one ASUS notebook that was purchased in our store,

After sending it off for an RMA, they diagnosed an issue with the motherboard and it got replaced.

 

We tried several different SSDs and it always did the same thing. SSD disconects and everything freezes.

 

You can try and create Bootable  LIVE WIN10/11 Usb drive and booting Windows from USB drive. Freezes should stop and you can monitor if SSD gets disconnected in that windows environment.

 

If it gets disconnected, time to RMA if still under warranty.

 

Hope it helps.

[Craftyawesome]

29 minutes ago, Marko Del Vechio said:

Hi,

 

The issue as you described happened to one ASUS notebook that was purchased in our store,

After sending it off for an RMA, they diagnosed an issue with the motherboard and it got replaced.

 

We tried several different SSDs and it always did the same thing. SSD disconects and everything freezes.

 

You can try and create Bootable  LIVE WIN10/11 Usb drive and booting Windows from USB drive. Freezes should stop and you can monitor if SSD gets disconnected in that windows environment.

 

If it gets disconnected, time to RMA if still under warranty.

 

Hope it helps.

Hmm. I hope I don't have to RMA the whole laptop. And to clarify, the drive is already secondary, so I don't think a live usb would change the symptoms. 

[Marko Del Vechio]

True, if it was secondary, having a live windows will have no effect.

 

Explorer is known to cr.sh if the disk that is in system randomly disconnects, Explorer is used to access disk and show file information so a suddenly missing disk might cause something like that..

 

Have you check event viewer and windows logs for any particular error, warning, critical log under that timestamp in application and system maps.

 

[Craftyawesome]

1 minute ago, Marko Del Vechio said:

True, if it was secondary, having a live windows will have no effect.

 

Explorer is known to cr.sh if the disk that is in system randomly disconnects, Explorer is used to access disk and show file information so a suddenly missing disk might cause something like that..

 

Have you check event viewer and windows logs for any particular error, warning, critical log under that timestamp in application and system maps.

 

I haven't found anything obviously related other than "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first" which is obviously not the cause.

[Marko Del Vechio]

Than it seems to be a hard lock, where windows stops completely and does not store any logs.

You can also try memtest86 to verify if the ram is working correctly.

I had an issue couple years ago where a notebook was runing fine, until you try to copy a file to a USB or from USB and it would hard lock.

It turned out to be bad ram stick of all things.

 

I guess you tried updating bios and all chipset drivers.

 

Also can try dell diagnostic tool

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-hr/000179493/dell-diagnostic-tools-to-diagnose-and-fix-hardware-problems-on-your-dell-pc-tablet-or-servers

[Craftyawesome]

On 5/15/2022 at 11:37 PM, Marko Del Vechio said:

Than it seems to be a hard lock, where windows stops completely and does not store any logs.

You can also try memtest86 to verify if the ram is working correctly.

I had an issue couple years ago where a notebook was runing fine, until you try to copy a file to a USB or from USB and it would hard lock.

It turned out to be bad ram stick of all things.

 

I guess you tried updating bios and all chipset drivers.

 

Also can try dell diagnostic tool

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-hr/000179493/dell-diagnostic-tools-to-diagnose-and-fix-hardware-problems-on-your-dell-pc-tablet-or-servers

I tried the memory and disk tests in both supportassist and the pre-boot diagnostics and they passed. Memtest86 passed. I'll run memtest86 overnight. If I can't get an error, what do you think is the most likely cause? Mobo, RAM, or the drive itself? Is there any chance the slot is bad? I can try swapping the drives and see if things go worse with the primary drive in the second slot.

 

Also, how often did it happen on the ASUS?

Edited May 18, 2022 by Craftyawesome
pass