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SSD health check utilities?



 
 
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  #1  
Old October 27th 17, 10:39 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Percival P. Cassidy
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Posts: 227
Default SSD health check utilities?

I installed a 128GB mSATA SSD in a ThinkPad T430 to use for HD caching
and for hibernation. HDSentinel shows its health as 82%. SSDLife, on the
other hand, shows it as 100% healthy.

Which should I believe?

Perce
  #2  
Old October 27th 17, 11:14 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Mark Perkins
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Posts: 110
Default SSD health check utilities?

On Fri, 27 Oct 2017 17:39:20 -0400, "Percival P. Cassidy"
wrote:

I installed a 128GB mSATA SSD in a ThinkPad T430 to use for HD caching
and for hibernation. HDSentinel shows its health as 82%. SSDLife, on the
other hand, shows it as 100% healthy.

Which should I believe?


I have sort of the same situation. On this PC, I have a 512GB Samsung
850 Pro. HD Sentinel says 99%, SSDLife says 100%.

Here's the explanation from HD Sentinel (for my drive, not yours):
The health is determined by SSD specific S.M.A.R.T. attribute(s):
#177 Wear Leveling Count


I'm guessing HD Sentinel is more accurate, but it's possible that at
some point they will converge on their assessment and then it won't
matter.

  #3  
Old October 27th 17, 11:40 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Ed Light
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Posts: 924
Default SSD health check utilities?

HD Sentinel is following the life remaining SMART attribute, and as soon
as that's down to 99% it demotes the drive's Health rating.

But life remaining is not an error gauge. The life remaining will go
down and down with time.

I see it as a mistake in the software.

--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.
  #4  
Old October 28th 17, 05:58 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
VanguardLH[_2_]
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Posts: 1,453
Default SSD health check utilities?

Ed Light wrote:

HD Sentinel is following the life remaining SMART attribute, and as soon
as that's down to 99% it demotes the drive's Health rating.

But life remaining is not an error gauge. The life remaining will go
down and down with time.

I see it as a mistake in the software.


HD Sentinel still gives a green checkmark (in its own GUI and for the
overlay icon on the SSD drive in Windows Explorer) regarding the status
of my SSD although it says it is as 98%.

11 months after installing the SSD, HD Sentinel said there were 24
masking & redirects (the wear level count). It was a sudden jump.
Since then (6 months ago until today) there has been an average of 2
counts per month. I was surprised at the sudden jump one year later but
I don't remember if HD Sentinel was running all that time. I might've
done something 6 months ago to my hardware/software platform that go HD
Sentinel to record a big jump. With it progressing since then at 2
counts per month, a year's gradual degradation of 2 counts per month
over the 11 months would explain the value (but not why it was listed as
zero during that 11 months).

Oxide stress limits the number of erase/write cycles so eventually SSDs
wear out. That the SSD eventually catastrophically dies is because of
the technology upon which it is based. However, the life expectancy of
an SSD depends on how may erase/write cycles the manufacturer claims and
is only an estimate. The SSD could catastrophically die earlier or
later. The estimates by these monitoring software don't take into
account the differences in technologies used to produce NAND memories:
SLC, MLC, TLC, and other. I don't seen anything in HD Sentinel that
shows it detected the type of NAND technology employed by the SSD that
is in my computer. It's probably an attribute of the drive that is not
exposed to software query.

SSDs are often gauged to last about 10 years. Yeah, who wants to wait
until the drive catastrophically fails (with the increased slowness dur
to all the masking redirects) just to squeeze out every last minute of
usability. I figure to wait until HD Sentinel alerts me to a problem
with the drive or replace the SSD after 5-7 years barring failure before
then. They'll probably be a cheaper by then at far larger capacities.
  #5  
Old October 28th 17, 07:35 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Ed Light
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Posts: 924
Default SSD health check utilities?

I think I'll replace mine, assuming it hasn't thrown up any concerns, at
15% life.

--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.
  #6  
Old November 13th 17, 01:09 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Yousuf Khan[_2_]
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Posts: 1,296
Default SSD health check utilities?

On 28/10/2017 3:39 AM, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
I installed a 128GB mSATA SSD in a ThinkPad T430 to use for HD caching
and for hibernation. HDSentinel shows its health as 82%. SSDLife, on the
other hand, shows it as 100% healthy.

Which should I believe?

Perce


HD Sentinel tends to be extremely conservative in its assessments,
meaning it puts more weight on the worst case scenarios.

--
Sent from Giganews on Thunderbird on my Toshiba laptop
  #7  
Old November 13th 17, 08:57 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Ed Light
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Posts: 924
Default SSD health check utilities?

HD Sentinel's SSD health rating is misguided. He uses the life remaining
SMART number. So as soon as the life remaining in the SSD is 99%, it
gets derated.

To keep the tray icon from going yellow, when the SSD is selected and
the Overview tab is showing, you can double-click on the Health graph; I
set it to 30/15, so it will get yellow when there's 30% lifespan left.,
red at 15%.

--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.
  #8  
Old November 14th 17, 01:11 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
VanguardLH[_2_]
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Posts: 1,453
Default SSD health check utilities?

Ed Light wrote:

HD Sentinel's SSD health rating is misguided. He uses the life remaining
SMART number. So as soon as the life remaining in the SSD is 99%, it
gets derated.

To keep the tray icon from going yellow, when the SSD is selected and
the Overview tab is showing, you can double-click on the Health graph; I
set it to 30/15, so it will get yellow when there's 30% lifespan left.,
red at 15%.


For me, HD Sentinel says SMART is declaring 98% health (how much
estimated life remains). The tray icon is not yellow. It's green.

When I hover the mouse pointer over the health bar for the SSD (in the
main GUI), the popup help says the thresholds are

Yellow: 50%
Red: 25%

Those must be the defaults because I've never changed them. In fact, I
didn't know they could be changed. Since HD Sentinel is estimating 98%
health for my SSD, the tray icon isn't yellow. It won't turn yellow
until HD Sentinel estimates 50% health.

I did not find a "Life remaining" titled SMART attribute. The only one
that had a matching value of 98 (as shown for the HD Sentinel health
bar's value) was the "Wear levelling count" (177) attribute; however,
98% in the bar graph is likely a composite value using multiple SMART
attributes.

From http://www.cropel.com/library/smart-attribute-list.aspx, there are
several "life" attributes but several do not apply to SSDs. I suspect
your "life remaining" attribute is Media Wearout Indicator (233). My
SSD (Samsung 850 EVO 250GB) is not returning that attribute for
visibility to HD Sentinel. HD Sentinel cannot be using a "misleading"
remaining life attribute to estimate remaining life of the SSD in my
setup since the SSD is not reporting that attribute. It must be using
the other attributes that the SSD does report.

There are green checkmarks next to each SMART attribute that HD Sentinel
does use in gauging remaining life. For my SSD, the green-checked
attributes a

Reallocated Sectors Count (5)
Wear Levelling Count (177)
Used Reserved Block Count (179)
Runtime Bad Block (183)
Uncorrectable Error Count (187)

It is not using some "misleading" guesstimate defined in the firmware on
the drive by the manufacturer.

https://www.hdsentinel.com/help/en/56_attrib.html

I don't see "Media Wearout Indicator" (233) listed as an attribute that
HD Sentinel cares about.

https://www.hdsentinel.com/help/en/52_cond.html

Under Advanced config options, the health calcuation algorithm currently
selected in my setup is "Analyse data field (default)". I did NOT elect
the "Analyse vendor-specific values".

NOTE: I'm using the 5.01 payware version of HD Sentinel. Maybe the
options and algorithms are different (lesser) in the trial version or
DOS/Linux freeware versions.

"He uses the life remaining SMART number." Not in my setup. That SMART
attribute (233) isn't available from my SSD.
  #9  
Old November 14th 17, 06:46 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Ed Light
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Posts: 924
Default SSD health check utilities?

VanguardLH, you're way ahead of me!

Under Advanced config options, the health calcuation algorithm currently selected in my setup is "Analyse data field (default)". I'm using the

more strict for servers setting. Probably why it turned yellow at 99%.

NOTE: I'm using the 5.01 payware version of HD Sentinel.

Same here.

I'm using a Kingston SV300 SSD. HD Sentinel is using 231, Life Left, for
the health in my case. Verified by the author. He's good by e-mail.

Kingston SSD Toolbox shows ok for everything.

HD Sentinel can be optimistic sometimes. A hard drive was going bad but
it didn't say to replace it, thought it fixed it, but I got another
messed up file when I recorded a TV show, so when there's anything that
starts to happen I replace the HD "now".


--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.
 




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