5184 Hour SSD Death Rattle! I thought I had seen it all..

[W4GPL]

Sometime yesterday, I noticed my laptop was locking up frequently. I was finally able to capture a 'DID BAD TARGET' seek error in dmesg.. my immediate assumption was the drive was failing. I made a backup of the drive and started considering replacement options.

On a whim, I decided to check to see if the drive had any new firmware updates. It did.. I applied the update and suddenly my problem went away. In disbelief that a firmware update would impact a drive I've had running on the same Linux distribution for almost a year.. I started to do a little research.

Turns out the damn drive starts flapping at 5184 hours! :wtf:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/113641248237520845183/posts/UonYYyeLGbH


smartctl -a /dev/sda|grep Power_On_Hours
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 001 Old_age Always - 5235

What a bizarre little bug.. glad it was resolved with an easy firmware update.

[W4GPL]

More..


Correct a condition where an incorrect response to a SMART counter will cause the m4 drive to become unresponsive after 5184 hours of Power-on time. The drive will recover after a power cycle, however, this failure will repeat once per hour after reaching this point. The condition will allow the end user to successfully update firmware, and poses no risk to user or system data stored on the drive.

[PA5COR]

Looks like someone goofed up in writing the original software...

[ad4mg]

Forced obsolescence? Sells more drives. Odds are that 99% of the owners of these drives are unaware of this 'feature'. I think I've done only one single firmware update on a HDD, ever. I'm curious, which manufacturer and drive model? Is this a SSD?

[W4GPL]

Yeah, it's a Crucial M4-series SSD..


=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Crucial/Micron RealSSD C300/C400/m4
Device Model: M4-CT128M4SSD2
Serial Number: 00000000114708FF4E00
LU WWN Device Id: 5 00a075 108ff4e00
Firmware Version: 000F
User Capacity: 128,035,676,160 bytes [128 GB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 8
ATA Standard is: ATA-8-ACS revision 6
Local Time is: Wed Jul 25 02:31:25 2012 MDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
AAM feature is: Unavailable
APM level is: 254 (maximum performance)
Rd look-ahead is: Enabled
Write cache is: Enabled
ATA Security is: Disabled, frozen [SEC2]

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

I share your cynicism, Luke.. but 5182 hours is only 215 days.

[ad4mg]

Yeah, it's a Crucial M4-series SSD..

I share your cynicism, Luke.. but 5182 hours is only 215 days.

Could be a long time before a casual user reaches 5000+ hours! My laptop, for example, gets an average use of 1-2 hours/day, max. Zero on weekends.

Also, I see 'SSD' in the thread title. Duh! Morning brain fog... :squint:

[W4GPL]

Could be a long time before a casual user reaches 5000+ hours! My laptop, for example, gets an average use of 1-2 hours/day, max. Zero on weekends.I suppose, this is my only & primary computer.. so it's on.. a lot. I purchased the drive in August 2011, not sure exactly when I installed it.

Crucial has a very good reputation, I tend to believe this was simply a failure of QA procedures. It impacted several different drives in the same series..

I was actually quite bummed out -- I'm going to be really sad when this laptop starts to fizzle. I've had it for almost 7 years. It's a tank.. but it can't take anymore RAM upgrades (the BIOS is a 32bit subsystem, so it can only address 3.26GB of RAM).. so I'm stuck in time until I get something brand new. :-| They don't make 'em like the Dell Latitude D820's anymore..

[ad4mg]

I suppose, this is my only & primary computer.. so it's on.. a lot. I purchased it in August 2011, not sure exactly when I installed it.

Crucial has a very good reputation, I tend to believe this was simply a failure of QA procedures. It impacted several different drives in the same series..

I was actually quite bummed out -- I'm going to be really sad when this laptop starts to fizzle. I've had it for almost 7 years. It's a tank.. but it can't take anymore RAM upgrades (the BIOS is a 32bit subsystem, so it can only address 3.26GB of RAM).. so I'm stuck in time until I get something brand new. :-| They don't make 'em like the Dell Latitude D820's anymore..

I can relate, this thing is an Acer Aspire 5000. And, yes, Crucial is a very reputable company. I bought this thing when we were doing the Coors brewery back in '05. Stuffed 2 GB of Crucial RAM in it, and had to replace the battery once. This thing is still sporting the original 60 GB EIDE hard drive, so it could go at any time. When it dies, I doubt I'll buy another laptop. I'm slowly culling my 'stock' of computers here. Used to have 9 of the damn things, 7 PC's and 2 laptops. I've whittled that down to 6... :hyper:

Everyone told me not to buy an Acer back then. "It's a POS!", they said.

[W4GPL]

I've replaced the battery, the wifi adapter [for a better one, not because it failed], and updated to a SSD.. + added some RAM.. but all in all, $300 worth of investments on a $2400 laptop, that is still my primary computing existence. I have a laptop at work, but I leave it at the office. I even use my personal laptop when I travel.

[ad4mg]

I've replaced the battery, the wifi adapter [for a better one, not because it failed], and updated to a SSD.. + added some RAM.. but all in all, $300 worth of investments on a $2400 laptop, that is still my primary computing existence. I have a laptop at work, but I leave it at the office. I even use my personal laptop when I travel.

It must have a SATA interface. I'm not sure anyone makes a SSD for the IDE interface. I think it's a case of "what's the use"? :-D


ETA: Just Googled 'IDE SSD' and there are numerous drives available. Ain't capitalism grand?

[W4GPL]

Yeah it's first generation SATA II chipset from Intel. Very zippy.. putting in a SSD was like buying a new laptop. I can't begin to explain how much of a performance improvement it was. I'll never buy another system with a legacy style hard drive.

[N8YX]

I'm going to be replacing the PATA drives in my station computers with SSDs...and Crucial was the brand I was considering. Have they addressed this particular bugfeature in later versions of the drive, and are only certain sizes/runs affected?

[W4GPL]

M4 2.5" series, all sizes.. I presume they're shipping the new drives with the latest firmware. If not, the upgrade process is painless. And yes, it seems to have fully addressed the issue.

[KB3LAZ]

Could be a long time before a casual user reaches 5000+ hours! My laptop, for example, gets an average use of 1-2 hours/day, max. Zero on weekends.

Also, I see 'SSD' in the thread title. Duh! Morning brain fog... :squint:

I suppose that depends on the person. I never turn my laptop off. Well, that is an exaggeration but almost never. Restarts for updates and such as well as the occasional session of letting it run dead on battery power. Other than that I leave it on. I have always done this with my laptops, desktops as well. Pili hates it.

[PA5COR]

Laptop goes on when i come from bed and after shower i put on the coffeemaker, transceiver and lappie.
Goes in sleepmode when i go off to bed, Acer Travelmate 7720G now almost 4 years old, 4 Gig mem, 160 Gig H.D dual core pentium etc.
Hinges start to fail, so i just leave it open and never close it.
Backups on USB 2.5 Inch H.D.

Last laptop got 4 years before it kicked the bucket...

[NQ6U]

I leave my first-generation MacBook Pro on for weeks at a time without a shutdown or reboot. Ain't Unix grand?

[WØTKX]

My work issued laptop is kind of a tank. Dell Latitude E5400. They are around used now.

With the extra (attached) battery pack it's heavy, but runs 10-11 hours between charges.

My personal laoptop is an HP Pavillion "thin and light", and it's pretty nice. 5-6 hours.


I'm not upgrading to SSD, yet. But it's tempting.