Samsung 980 pro RIP... What happened? Can I clone to save data?

[Al2P1]

Almost two weeks ago I log into my pc and when it got to the desktop it froze. I powered off my pc and when I turned it on, it immediately went straight into the bios. My 980 pro wasn't showing up in the boot devices list in the bios. I researched for days and came to the conclusion that it had something to do with windows. That was until a few days ago when I bought a smaller second SSD so I could actually access my pc and try to find the cause of the problem. This is when I randomly decided to preform an error checking on my original SSD and it gave me the "repair this drive" warning. I try to look up ways to fix this and one was updating the firmware of the SSD. So I download the Samsung Magician software to try and update the firmware and see if that fixes anything. Well, it tells me that the drive health on my 980 pro is in Critical condition and it doesn't allow me to update the firmware. This is when I realize that my 980 pro might be done for and was the real reason why I couldn't boot up windows. This would also explain why the drive was stuck in "Read Only" and I couldn't preform the bootrec commands in CMD to fix windows which I thought was the problem. The last thing I do is download the AOMEI Partition Assistant and it also tells me that the SSD health status is bad and I should replace the disk. I also preformed a short and long disk surface test and it shows I have some damaged sectors. So no matter what, I know that I should probably replace the 980 pro.

This leaves me with a couple of questions:

Is my Samsung 980 pro actually broken and unusable?

Can I and should I clone the data on the broken 980 Pro SSD and move it to a new SSD?

Would the bad sectors and the fact that the SSD is "broken" effect the actual data that is on the SSD?

What could have caused this to happen and could it have been the fact that I never updated the SSD Firmware?

Is it normal for a relatively new SSD like my Samsung 980 Pro 2TB which I bought in June last year to all of a sudden fail/break?

Is a software like Samsung Magician good for monitoring my drives and does updating them actually help?

What can I do in the future to help keep my drivers healthy and avoid issues like this? 

If anyone can answer any of my questions, it would mean a lot. If I'm not able to recover anything from my broken 980 pro, it would suck but I can live with it. Thank You  

 

Specs: ASUS Rog Crosshair VIII Dark Hero motherboard and Samsung 980 Pro 2TB SSD.

[Shimejii]

You have to pretty much RMA the drive. As its been reported a few times, This is more then likely a defect in quite a lot of Samsung 970 evo plus, 980, 980 Pro, 870 Evo drives. 

 

As for your data, if you cant get it to read the data to anther drive, you may be SOL. 

[TrigrH]

Quote

Is my Samsung 980 pro actually broken and unusable?

Yes, RMA the drive.

Quote

Can I and should I clone the data on the broken 980 Pro SSD and move it to a new SSD?

I wouldn't clone, I would backup all important files that cannot be required via other means.

Quote

Would the bad sectors and the fact that the SSD is "broken" effect the actual data that is on the SSD?

SSD's don't have "sectors" HDD scanning tools don't work on SSDs.

Quote

What could have caused this to happen and could it have been the fact that I never updated the SSD Firmware?

Defective drive or the firmware maybe.

Quote

Is it normal for a relatively new SSD like my Samsung 980 Pro 2TB which I bought in June last year to all of a sudden fail/break?

Normal? no. Possible? yes.

Quote

Is a software like Samsung Magician good for monitoring my drives and does updating them actually help?

Yes

Quote

What can I do in the future to help keep my drivers healthy and avoid issues like this? 

Update the firmware and periodically check their health in an app like crystal disk info.

[Al2P1]

18 minutes ago, Shimejii said:

You have to pretty much RMA the drive. As its been reported a few times, This is more then likely a defect in quite a lot of Samsung 970 evo plus, 980, 980 Pro, 870 Evo drives. 

 

As for your data, if you cant get it to read the data to anther drive, you may be SOL. 

Thanks for the response. I didn’t know it was a common defect on Samsung drives. Makes me feel a bit better. I’ll try to recover my data and RMA the drive. Do you recommend any other fast and reliable SSDs?

[Al2P1]

22 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

Yes, RMA the drive.

I wouldn't clone, I would backup all important files that cannot be required via other means.

SSD's don't have "sectors" HDD scanning tools don't work on SSDs.

Defective drive or the firmware maybe.

Normal? no. Possible? yes.

Yes

Update the firmware and periodically check their health in an app like crystal disk info.

Thanks for answering my questions. Do I RMA the drive through Samsung or Micro Center where I bought it? Also should I try my luck with another Samsung Drive since this might be a common defect in a lot of the Samsung drives?

[TrigrH]

1 minute ago, Al2P1 said:

Thanks for answering my questions. Do I RMA the drive through Samsung or Micro Center where I bought it? Also should I try my luck with another Samsung Drive since this might be a common defect in a lot of the Samsung drives?

Samsung directly will handle this for you, they might ask you to break the drive physically be ready for that.

[worstalentscout]

6 hours ago, Shimejii said:

You have to pretty much RMA the drive. As its been reported a few times, This is more then likely a defect in quite a lot of Samsung 970 evo plus, 980, 980 Pro, 870 Evo drives. 

 

As for your data, if you cant get it to read the data to anther drive, you may be SOL. 

 

there was a guy on Tomshardware that had 5-6 Samsung SSDs (all same latest model) die on him in a few months !

 

several other people there also reported same problems with Samsung..........

[Wow guy]

On 10/12/2022 at 5:29 AM, Al2P1 said:

Almost two weeks ago I log into my pc and when it got to the desktop it froze. I powered off my pc and when I turned it on, it immediately went straight into the bios. My 980 pro wasn't showing up in the boot devices list in the bios. I researched for days and came to the conclusion that it had something to do with windows. That was until a few days ago when I bought a smaller second SSD so I could actually access my pc and try to find the cause of the problem. This is when I randomly decided to preform an error checking on my original SSD and it gave me the "repair this drive" warning. I try to look up ways to fix this and one was updating the firmware of the SSD. So I download the Samsung Magician software to try and update the firmware and see if that fixes anything. Well, it tells me that the drive health on my 980 pro is in Critical condition and it doesn't allow me to update the firmware. This is when I realize that my 980 pro might be done for and was the real reason why I couldn't boot up windows. This would also explain why the drive was stuck in "Read Only" and I couldn't preform the bootrec commands in CMD to fix windows which I thought was the problem. The last thing I do is download the AOMEI Partition Assistant and it also tells me that the SSD health status is bad and I should replace the disk. I also preformed a short and long disk surface test and it shows I have some damaged sectors. So no matter what, I know that I should probably replace the 980 pro.

This leaves me with a couple of questions:

Is my Samsung 980 pro actually broken and unusable?

Can I and should I clone the data on the broken 980 Pro SSD and move it to a new SSD?

Would the bad sectors and the fact that the SSD is "broken" effect the actual data that is on the SSD?

What could have caused this to happen and could it have been the fact that I never updated the SSD Firmware?

Is it normal for a relatively new SSD like my Samsung 980 Pro 2TB which I bought in June last year to all of a sudden fail/break?

Is a software like Samsung Magician good for monitoring my drives and does updating them actually help?

What can I do in the future to help keep my drivers healthy and avoid issues like this? 

If anyone can answer any of my questions, it would mean a lot. If I'm not able to recover anything from my broken 980 pro, it would suck but I can live with it. Thank You  

 

Specs: ASUS Rog Crosshair VIII Dark Hero motherboard and Samsung 980 Pro 2TB SSD.