During the operation of any drive, various types of errors may appear over time. While some can simply interfere with work, others can completely damage the disk. That is why it is recommended to periodically scan disks. This will allow you not only to identify and fix problems, but also to copy the necessary data to reliable media in a timely manner.

So, today we will talk about how to check your SSD for errors. Since we physically cannot do this, we will use special utilities that will diagnose the drive.

Method 1: Using the CrystalDiskInfo utility

To test the disk for errors, we will use free program. It is quite easy to use and at the same time fully displays information about the status of all disks in the system. It is enough just to launch the application, and we will immediately receive all the necessary data.

In addition to collecting information about the drive, the application will conduct a S.M.A.R.T analysis, based on the results of which you can judge SSD performance. In total, this analysis contains about two dozen indicators. CrystalDiskInfo displays the current value, worst case value, and threshold of each indicator. Moreover, the latter means minimum value attribute (or indicator) at which the disk can be considered faulty. For example, let's take an indicator like "Remaining SSD resource". In our case, the current and worst value is 99 units, and its threshold is 10. Accordingly, when the threshold value is reached, it’s time to look for a replacement for your solid-state drive.

If during analysis disk CrystalDiskInfo detected erasing errors, software errors or failures, in this case it is also worth thinking about the reliability of your SSD.

Based on the test results, the utility also gives an assessment technical condition disk. In this case, the assessment is expressed both as a percentage and qualitatively. So, if CrystalDiskInfo rated your drive as "Fine", then there is nothing to worry about, but if you see the rating "Anxiety", which means we should expect the SSD to fail soon.

Method 2: Using the SSDLife utility

SSDLife is another tool that will allow you to evaluate the performance of the disk, the presence of errors, and also conduct S.M.A.R.T analysis. The program has a simple interface, so even a beginner can understand it.

Like the previous utility, immediately after launch SSDLife will conduct an express check of the disk and display all the basic data. Thus, to check the drive for errors, you just need to launch the application.

The program window can be divided into four areas. First of all, we will be interested in upper area, which displays an assessment of the condition of the disk, as well as the approximate service life.

The second area contains information about the disk, as well as an estimate of the health of the disk in percentage terms.

If you want to get more detailed information about the status of the drive, then press the button "S.M.A.R.T." and get the results of the analysis.

The third area is information about the exchange with the disk. Here you can see how much data was written or read. This data is for informational purposes only.

And finally, the fourth area is the application control panel. Through this panel you can access the settings, reference information, and also restart the scan.

Method 3: Using the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic Utility

Another utility for testing is the company's development Western Digital, which is called Data Lifeguard Diagnostic. This tool supports not only WD drives, but also other manufacturers.

Immediately after launch, the application diagnoses all disks that are in the system? and displays the result in a small table. Unlike the tools discussed above, this one displays only the condition assessment.

For a more detailed scan, just double-click with the left mouse button on the line with the required disk, select the desired test (quick or detailed) and wait until the end.

Then, by clicking on the button "VIEW TEST RESULT"? you can see the results, where it will be displayed brief information about the device and condition assessment.

Conclusion

Thus, if you decide to diagnose your SSD drive, then there are quite a lot of tools at your service. In addition to those discussed here, there are also ones that can analyze the drive and report any errors.

The solid-state drive has a fairly long service life thanks to wear-leveling technologies and reserving a certain space for the needs of the controller. However, during long-term use, in order to avoid data loss, it is necessary to periodically assess the performance of the disk. This is also true in cases where you need to check a used SSD after purchasing it.

Checking the status of the solid state drive is done using special utilities, working on the basis of S.M.A.R.T. data. In turn, this abbreviation stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology and translated from English means self-monitoring, analysis and reporting technology. It contains many attributes, but here greater emphasis will be placed on parameters characterizing the wear and service life of the SSD.

If the SSD has been in use, make sure that it is detected in the BIOS and directly by the system itself after connecting it to the computer.

Method 1: SSDlife Pro

SSDlife Pro is a popular utility for assessing the health of solid-state drives.

Erase Fail Count shows the number of unsuccessful attempts to clear memory cells. Essentially, this indicates the presence of broken blocks. The more given value, the higher the likelihood that the disk will soon become inoperable.

Unexpected Power Loss Count– parameter showing the number sudden outages nutrition. Is important because NAND memory is vulnerable to such phenomena. If a high value is detected, it is recommended to check all connections between the board and the drive, and then perform recheck. If the number does not change, the SSD most likely needs to be replaced.

Initial Bad Blocks Count displays the number of failed cells, therefore it is a critical parameter on which the further performance of the disk depends. Here it is recommended to look at the change in value over time. If the value remains unchanged, then most likely everything is fine with the SSD.

For some drive models, the parameter may appear SSD Life Left, which shows the remaining resource as a percentage. The lower the value, the worse condition SSD. The disadvantage of the program is that viewing S.M.A.R.T. available only in the paid Pro version.

Method 2: CrystalDiskInfo

Method 3: HDDScan

HDDScan is a program that is designed to test drives for functionality.

If any parameter exceeds valid value, its status will be marked with "Attention".

Method 4: SSDRready

SSDReady is software tool, which is designed to estimate the operating time of an SSD.

Method 5: SanDisk SSD Dashboard

Unlike the software discussed above, SanDisk SSD Dashboard is a proprietary Russian-language utility designed to work with solid-state drives from the manufacturer of the same name.

Conclusion

Thus, all the methods discussed are suitable for assessing the overall performance of an SSD. In most cases, you will have to deal with the SMART data of the disks. To accurately assess the performance and remaining life of a drive, it is better to use proprietary software from the manufacturer, which has the appropriate functions.

June 19, 2010 at 1:03 pm

How I ruined an SSD in two months

• Computer hardware

Epigraph

“Never trust a computer that you can’t throw out the window.”
Steve Wozniak

Two months ago I installed it in laptop SSD disk. It worked great, but last week it suddenly died due to cell depletion (I believe). This article is about how it happened and what I did wrong.

Description of the environment

• User: Web developer. That is, such things as virtual machines, eclipse, frequent updates repositories.
• OS: Gentoo. That is, the world is often “reassembled.”
• FS: ext4. That is, a journal is being written.

So, the story begins in April, when I finally got around to copying the partitions to a 64GB SSD broom, purchased back in September. I deliberately do not tell the manufacturer and model, because I haven’t really figured out what happened yet, and it doesn’t really matter.

What did I do to make it work longer?

Of course, I studied numerous publications on how to take care of SSD drives. And this is what I did:

• Delivered noatime for partitions, so that when accessing a file, the record of the last access time is not updated.
• I increased the RAM to maximum and disabled swap.

I didn’t do anything else, because I believed that the computer should serve the user, and not vice versa, and unnecessary dancing with a tambourine is wrong.

S.M.A.R.T.

Three days before the fall, I became concerned with the question: how do I know how much happiness I have? I tried the utility smartmontools, but it displayed incorrect information. I had to download Datasheet and write a patch for them.
After writing the patch, I dug up one interesting parameter: average_number_of_erases/maximum_number_of_erases = 35000/45000. But after reading that MLC cells can only withstand 10,000 cycles, I decided that these parameters do not mean exactly what I think they mean, and I gave up on them.

Chronicle of the Fall

Suddenly, inexplicable things began to happen while working, for example, new programs did not start. Out of curiosity, I looked at that same S.M.A.R.T. parameter, it was already 37000/50000 (+2000/5000 in three days). It was no longer possible to restart; the file system of the main partition could not be read.
I started from the compact and started checking. The check showed a lot of broken nodes. During the repair process, the utility began testing for bad sectors and marking them. It all ended the next day with the following result: 60GB of 64GB were marked as bad.

Note: In SSD hard drives, a cell is considered broken if it cannot be written to new information. Reading from such a cell will still be possible. Using this, run the utility badblocks in read-only mode, it is unlikely to find anything.

I decided to run the flashing utility, because it not only flashes, but also reformats the disk. The utility started formatting, groaned and reported that the reasonable permissible amount had been exceeded bad sectors, and also that there are failures, so it is not possible to complete the formatting.
After this, the disk began to be identified as a disk with a very strange name, model number and size of 4GB. And, in the future, no one sees it except for specialized utilities.
I wrote a letter in support of the manufacturer. They recommended that I reflash it, and if it doesn’t work, then return it to the seller. The warranty is still 2 years old, so I'll give it a try.
I'm finishing up this section thanks to Steve Wozniak, who taught me how to make periodic backups.

What happened

To be honest, I don’t know myself. I assume the following: S.M.A.R.T. I didn’t lie and the cells were really worn out (this is indirectly confirmed by the backup that I made two days before the fall; when unpacking it showed that the creation dates of some files had been reset). And when checking for bad sectors, the disk controller simply allowed all cells to be marked as bad, in which the permissible number of write cycles was exceeded.

What to do if you have an SSD

Windows

Install Windows 7, everything is optimized for such disks as much as possible. Also install a lot of RAM.

MacOs

Most likely, only those computers that will be immediately sold with SSD are optimized.

FreeBSD

Install 9.0. Read tips for Linux, think about what you can do with them.

Linux

• Install kernel 2.6.33, which has optimization for such disks in the form of the TRIM command.
• Increase memory so that you can safely disable swap.
• Set for mounted partitions noatime.
• Used file system, made on the copy-on-write principle or an unjournaled file system (for example ext2).

  At the moment, copy-on-write FS is quite difficult to use. ZFS currently only works through FUSE. And nilfs and btrfs swear when mounting that their format has not yet been finalized.

• Turn on NOOP IO Scheduler it will allow you not to perform unnecessary useless actions for the SSD.
• Conceptually correct, but it will not help the disk much - transferring temporary files to tmpfs.
• For systems that write intensively to the log, it should be stored in a different location. This is mainly true for servers for which the log server can be raised without any problems.
• Get S.M.A.R.T. utilities that correctly display the state of the SSD disk, so that you can periodically monitor the disk.
• Just spare the disk. And for the gentushniks, this additionally means not “reassembling the world.”

Questions for the habra community

• Is it really possible to kill MLC cells in 2 months? Of course, I understand that I didn’t spare the disk, but I didn’t do anything supernatural, I just worked as usual.
• Is this a warranty case?

UPD: The disk I had was Transcend TS64GSSD25S-M.
UPD2: The comments are very good reviews O Intel SSD and SAMSUNG. In addition, people are surprised how you can kill an SSD with a broom so quickly. Believe me, I was perplexed in exactly the same way. However, it is possible that this is a hastily tailored SSD series and can be killed quickly.
UPD3: In the comments and

Subject SSD drive ov is gaining popularity every year, which is due to reasonable price on these devices and the speed of their operation. However, users are often interested in the same questions: “How long can an SSD hard drive last?”, “How to assess the condition of an SSD?”.

How to find out how long an SSD drive will last?

On the Internet you can find dozens of programs that are designed to work with SSD drives. Among them, the following are especially popular: EaseUS Partition Master, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition and SSD-LIFE. The first two are ideal for testing a disk, and with SSD-LIFE you can find out the age of the device and its condition. The utility does not need to be installed. Just download and run the file. The software has a Russian-language interface and works free of charge, although paid version there is also. Let's consider SSD testing disk using the example of the SSD-LIFE program.

After starting the program, click on the “SMART” button and wait until the disk is scanned for errors and damage.

Under the health line, the operating time of the disk and its estimated failure date will be indicated. Above you can see the overall rating of the disc.

You can also find out how much longer the SSD will work using Hard programs Disk Sentinel. It differs from the previous one in a more detailed interface. There are tabs for disk operating time, number of starts, temperature, errors, warnings.

You can also use other programs to test SSDs.

Since the SSD drive has a certain amount cycles of recording information, many users believe that once they are exhausted, the disk will become unusable. This is actually a myth. To dispel it, we will carry out precise calculations.

Let's say you have a 120 GB disk. The number of write cycles for this volume is 3000 (according to the manufacturer). Every day you use an example of 20 GB of data, write it down and erase it. In this mode, the disk can operate for 49 years (in theory) or 18 thousand days. However, if we assume the presence of 5-10 flaws and the load on the controller, then such a disk can only work for 8 years without problems. Where does this figure come from? We convert the disk volume into terabytes and divide by the number of megabytes used daily and for another 365 days. For example, 64,000 (120 GB): 20: 365 = 8.7 years.

Thus, the disk will function normally for the calculated years. However, once the number of provided write cycles is exhausted, the disk's performance will deteriorate. It won't fail.

Tip: if you use an SSD drive as a system drive, you do not need to transfer the page file or browser cache to other drives. An SSD drive is needed to speed up the system, and scattering files around only slows it down. But if you download movies in gigabytes, it is better to choose an HDD drive for this purpose. Otherwise, the quality life of the SDD disk will be reduced by several years.

Good afternoon.

The speed of the disk determines the speed of the entire computer as a whole! Moreover, surprisingly, many users underestimate this point... But the loading speed of the Windows OS, the speed of copying files to/from a disk, the speed of launching (loading) programs, etc. - it all depends on the speed of the disk.

Nowadays there are two types of disks in PCs (laptops): HDD ( hard disk drive - familiar hard drives) and SSD ( solid-state drive- newfangled solid state drive). Sometimes their speed differs significantly (for example, Windows 8 on my computer with an SSD starts in 7-8 seconds, versus 40 seconds with an HDD - the difference is colossal!).

And now about what utilities and how you can check the speed of the disk.

One of best utilities to check and test drive speed (the utility supports both HDD and SSD drives). Works in all popular Windows OS: XP, 7, 8, 10 (32/64 bits). It supports the Russian language (although the utility is quite simple and easy to understand even without knowledge of English).

Rice. 1. CrystalDiskMark main window

To test your disk in CrystalDiskMark you need to:

• select the number of write and read cycles (in Fig. 2 this number is 5, the optimal option);
• 1 GiB - file size for testing (optimal option);
• “C:\” - drive letter for testing;
• To start the test, simply click the “All” button. By the way, in most cases they always focus on the line “SeqQ32T1” - i.e. sequential writing/reading - therefore, you can simply select a test specifically for this option (you need to press the button of the same name).

The first speed (Read column, from English “read”) is the speed of reading information from the disk, the second column is writing to the disk. By the way, in Fig. 2 SSD drive was tested ( Silicon Power Slim S70): read speed 242.5 Mb/s - not the best indicator. For modern SSDs optimal speed the speed is considered to be no lower than ~400 Mb/s, provided the connection is via SATA3* (although 250 Mb/s is more than the speed regular HDD and the increase in speed is visible to the naked eye).

* How to determine the mode SATA work hard drive?

From the link above, in addition to CrystalDiskMark, you can also download another utility - CrystalDiskInfo. This utility will show you SMART disk, its temperature and other parameters (in general, an excellent utility for obtaining information about the device).

After starting it, pay attention to the line “Transfer mode” (see Fig. 3). If this line displays SATA/600 (up to 600 MB/s), it means the disk is operating in SATA mode 3 (if the line displays SATA/300 - i.e. maximum throughput 300 MB/s is SATA 2).

AS SSD Benchmark

Author's website: http://www.alex-is.de/ (download link at the very bottom of the page)

Another very interesting utility. Allows for easy and quick testing hard drive computer (laptop): quickly find out the read and write speed. No installation required, use as standard (as with the previous utility).