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Life expectancy and status of old SSD

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c627627

c627627

c(n*199780) Senior Member
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Joined
Feb 18, 2002
I own this older SSD:
http://ocz.com/consumer/agility-3-sata-3-ssd

What is their life expectancy in real life? The computer is on and being used moderately, but every day.
How can you check it other than doing a windows checkdisk, are there utilities of the kind mechanical hard drive manufacturers used to have to scan mechanical disks?
 
OCZ Toolbox I believe shows the SMART data as well as the classic programs used on HDDs.

Life expectancy? Nobody will really know. There have been tests that write several TB /day and they some died in a couple months, others are still going. Assuming you are not close to writing nearly that much, it shouldn't die from too many writes. For example: http://techreport.com/review/26523/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-casualties-on-the-way-to-a-petabyte. There are others like it if you search "ssd endurance testing". Im aware that isn't your drive or controller, but, its all you have to hang your hat on for this question...

... to put it a different way. I wouldn't worry about it until you start showing signs of it going bad. When that is, nobody will know but you.
 
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I am a little worried about it, it starts acting up and I do a full scan and repair from Windows and problems go away...
How is SMART data helpful and what do you mean by "as well as classic programs used on HDDs"
 
Well, in the OCZ toolbox, it shows you the SMART details... life expectancy, bad sectors, etc. If you start seeing a lot of that. Its time to make backups and replace it.

As far as what I meant, by '....classic programs...' is that anything that reads SMART data should be able to retrieve the SMART data off the SSD.
 
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I don't know about life expectancy, but have been confronted with a worrying mode of failure. In my experience, I've had one SSD fail and it was catastrophic. No warning whatsoever. It was the OCZ Vertex 128Gb. I'm still rocking the G1-X25M's.
 
I had a OCZ Vertex2 60GB running the OS in my HTPC.
in under a year, it started running chkdsk while OS was booting and finding errors.
OS would be OK for about a month, then slowly deteriorated, OS lockups, hangs, failure to load OS
RMA'd it and got a new one.
again, about a year later, same thing happened again.
RMA'd again, and they sent me a Vertex3 60 as replacement.

Used the Vertex3 in the HTPC for a while, no real issues, but pulled it out of the HTPC and threw it in my old laptop. Put a pair of Intel G2 X25M 80GB in my HTPC as replacement (wanted more speed/reliability, and space for some games). No problems with the Vertex3 in my laptop, but it doesnt get used much.

if your agility3 fails, I'd probably expect it to be something like this. or a sudden failure mode.
 
Super Nade said:
I don't know about life expectancy, but have been confronted with a worrying mode of failure. In my experience, I've had one SSD fail and it was catastrophic. No warning whatsoever. It was the OCZ Vertex 128Gb. I'm still rocking the G1-X25M's.
Click to expand...

gsrcrxsi said:
I had a OCZ Vertex2 60GB running the OS in my HTPC.
in under a year, it started running chkdsk while OS was booting and finding errors.
OS would be OK for about a month, then slowly deteriorated, OS lockups, hangs, failure to load OS
RMA'd it and got a new one.
again, about a year later, same thing happened again.
RMA'd again, and they sent me a Vertex3 60 as replacement.

Used the Vertex3 in the HTPC for a while, no real issues, but pulled it out of the HTPC and threw it in my old laptop. Put a pair of Intel G2 X25M 80GB in my HTPC as replacement (wanted more speed/reliability, and space for some games). No problems with the Vertex3 in my laptop, but it doesnt get used much.

if your agility3 fails, I'd probably expect it to be something like this. or a sudden failure mode.
Click to expand...

I can third this. I've had these exact same problems with my pair of OCZ Vertex drives. They've always been fixed by a "destructive" flash, but that involves losing all the data on the drive. I got sick of it and upgraded to a Samsung 830, and have had absolutely zero issues since then.
 
Firmware updates are non-destructive.
I backed it up just in case but since this SSD had Windows on it, I used
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
to simply
UNetbootin.exe > SELECT: Disk Image > Click on . . . to browse to iso file > Open > select USB drive letter > OK

Then after booting from USB:


The firmware update was non-destructive, all data was kept in tact.
You seem to be saying that SMART data is useful in determining the overall health of the drive.
Here it is, what can be learned from it?
Also, what does "Send TRIM command to the drive" do?
 

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  • SmartDATA.jpg
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  • TRIM.jpg
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1. Some firmware upgrades are destructive... ;)
2. I can't read the picture of what is on your monitor...take normal screenshots and attach to the forums for all to see.
3. That just TRIMs the drive at your request.
 
So would any modern HDD's be able to survive the techreport stress test? Are modern SSD's more reliable than modern HDD's?
 
To answer the first question... it should. Even though it would take a lot longer to make those writes since they are much slower, there is not a limited amount of writes on a HDD as there is with an SSD.

In my signature is a link that answers that question (the second one). Check it out. :)
 
Its better...thank you! But is there a reason you are not taking a screenshot (not a picture of your monitor - called a screenCAP) and attach it? It is a windows based program.

Anyway, I see zero retired blocks (good), powered on for quite a while (not good or bad but), no reported uncorrectable errors (good). What I do not recall though is the SSD life left... it says zero.... that said, I am not sure what it is based off of. It looks like you wrote on that drive quite a bit though!
 
EarthDog said:
To answer the first question... it should. Even though it would take a lot longer to make those writes since they are much slower, there is not a limited amount of writes on a HDD as there is with an SSD.

In my signature is a link that answers that question (the second one). Check it out. :)
Click to expand...

Wouldn't writing that much data constantly to a HDD tend to heat up the HDD drastically? Especially if it's a 10K RPM or 7200 RPM HDD?

SSD's don't really heat up appreciably if you subject them to long drawn out reads and/or writes do they?

In the long, long run isn't there eventually a limited amount of writes to most any HDD? I know it's always worked out that way
for me;) Although I have one ancient 500MiB EIDE Maxtor that I bought well used, that still works. I don't even think it has any SMART
capabilities either.
 
I took the snapshots with built in app and when I got back into Windows I found only the first snapshot to be on the USB... so I had to use the camera shots I also took, just in case something like this would happen.

So let's talk shop, if anyone knows, please post:
Retired Blocks is what you first look at, is it? What are the acceptable/problematic numbers for that value? What does THRESHOLD stand for?
Same question for Reported Uncorrectable, if that is the second thing you look at?

What is the STATUS value for and I guess it seems that "SSD life left" would be one of the most important values, so what should it be and what is it based off of.

The SSD has been in continuous use for two years and two months. I do power the system down at night. It is on about 18 hours a day.
 
magellan said:
Wouldn't writing that much data constantly to a HDD tend to heat up the HDD drastically? Especially if it's a 10K RPM or 7200 RPM HDD?

SSD's don't really heat up appreciably if you subject them to long drawn out reads and/or writes do they?

In the long, long run isn't there eventually a limited amount of writes to most any HDD? I know it's always worked out that way
for me;) Although I have one ancient 500MiB EIDE Maxtor that I bought well used, that still works. I don't even think it has any SMART
capabilities either.
Click to expand...
It wouldn't be in a runaway heat loop, no. It would only get so hot...

They do tend to get warmer than ambient, sure.

There really isn't a limited amount of writes on a HDD, no.

(This is best left for another thread as we are hijacking C6's with this OT discussion)
 
That's a really high unexpected power loss number at 189. Are you just shutting the PC off directly with the power button or do you have a bad SATA cable or something?

If the drive's already acting up it's probably going to die catastrophically. OCZ drives at the time (maybe they've cleaned up since the Toshiba purchase nowadays but I haven't heard much about that) tended to have weird firmware issues or early failures from using garbage low-grade NAND.

The Vertex2 I had died in real-time, ditching Windows drivers while it was running. A secure erase "fixed" the drive for awhile but it was trashed. Switched to Samsung drives since then and haven't had any issues at all.

I wouldn't count on yours lasting much longer without instability or failure, and I certainly wouldn't trust it or any OCZ drive with any important data.
 
I noticed that value as well and it was alarmingly high... even though this is an older drive... its like once /week it got cut off from power...
 
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