Sandisk SSD issue....

[Chuck Wintle]

Last night i checked the health of my sandisk ssd using their program call ssd dashboard. It says the SSD condition is poor with this message....The number of spare blocks has reached the minimum threshold. I think it something to do with the reallocation of blocks when they have begun to fail. Anyways I ran a benchmark test using HDTune and discovered the bench mark was way lower than it should be normally. my question is this....How would spare blocks threshold affect a benchmark? i have no idea myself. Thanks for any and all wisdom on this subject.

[Mike Henderson]

I can't answer your question, but I'd be worried about having the SSD fail and lose my data. I know that testing on the Samsung 850 EVO indicates that a consumer user could essentially never write enough data to have the Flash fail, but I don't know anything about Sandisk. Also, Flash has gotten a lot better - I don't know how old your SSD is but that could affect its expected life.

I suppose if I got that message, I'd replace the drive. SSD's have gotten fairly cheap now. I bought a 500GB Samsung for $129 recently on Amazon (but it went up in price after that).

Mike

[Curt Harms]

I can't answer your question, but I'd be worried about having the SSD fail and lose my data.
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Mike

I love SSDs but data recovery is one downside AFAIK. Mechanical hard drives that become unusable can sometimes have the data recovered though at a price. I'm not so sure about data recovery on an SSD. Given that backup media is increasingly capacious and cheap, good backup software and a backup/sync routine seem like an excellent idea.

[Chuck Wintle]

I love SSDs but data recovery is one downside AFAIK. Mechanical hard drives that become unusable can sometimes have the data recovered though at a price. I'm not so sure about data recovery on an SSD. Given that backup media is increasingly capacious and cheap, good backup software and a backup/sync routine seem like an excellent idea.

Fortunately the SSD has not completely failed so data recovery should be possible and I made a backup of C: drive to a secondary drive in the same computer. my plans is as follows....

Remove defective/failed SSD. :D
Install new SSD into computer. :confused:
Run the repair disk created as part of the backup process to restore backup to new SSD.
Keep my fingers crossed! :D

[Dave Zellers]

Before you start you should make a second backup to something that will be disconnected from the computer during this process.

[Mike Henderson]

Fortunately the SSD has not completely failed so data recovery should be possible and I made a backup of C: drive to a secondary drive in the same computer. my plans is as follows....

Remove defective/failed SSD. :D
Install new SSD into computer. :confused:
Run the repair disk created as part of the backup process to restore backup to new SSD.
Keep my fingers crossed! :D
Many of the programs that clone a drive to a new drive run under Windows. So the best bet is to boot from your existing disk (leave it in the machine) and attach your new disk via a USB to SATA adapter. Then run your clone software with nothing else running. When complete, shut down (the software may shut it down for you) and put the new disk into your computer. Then boot from your new disk.

Samsung has some very good migration (clone) software but it only works when you're cloning to a Samsung SSD. It's free. There are other good cloning software products, some free, out there.

Mike

[The clone software does not change anything on your original drive (it only reads from your original drive) so if it fails (for whatever reason) it does not affect your original drive.]

[Chuck Wintle]

Many of the programs that clone a drive to a new drive run under Windows. So the best bet is to boot from your existing disk (leave it in the machine) and attach your new disk via a USB to SATA adapter. Then run your clone software with nothing else running. When complete, shut down (the software may shut it down for you) and put the new disk into your computer. Then boot from your new disk.

Samsung has some very good migration (clone) software but it only works when you're cloning to a Samsung SSD. It's free. There are other good cloning software products, some free, out there.

Mike

[The clone software does not change anything on your original drive (it only reads from your original drive) so if it fails (for whatever reason) it does not affect your original drive.]
yes that is the process and sandisk products use Acronis drive cloning which I have used in the past. Seems to have worked great from what i remember.

[Chuck Wintle]

Before you start you should make a second backup to something that will be disconnected from the computer during this process.

Thats a good idea!

[Andy Giddings]

Have been using SSD as a main boot drive for about 5-6 years and never had a failure. Wish I could say the same about hard drives. In terms of back up. what works for me is using a cloud based back up service (such as Microsoft OneDrive) for important data that frequently changes. As this synchs the data on a regular basis I never need to worry about triggering a backup. I'm also not using a lot of storage so this is free. Microsoft gives you a Terabyte with an Office365 subscription so space is not an issue if you sub and need more. Pictures, Music and Videos that change less frequently I tend to store on a hard drive and copied to a duplicate. This way if one drive fails, I can use either the other drive or the cloud storage. Most applications I have nowadays are downloaded from the supplier, so if those disappear its easier to download them again rather than back them up.

[Mike Henderson]

yes that is the process and sandisk products use Acronis drive cloning which I have used in the past. Seems to have worked great from what i remember.
If you're now running Win 10 and last used the Acronis clone on Win 7, (maybe even Win 8) make sure you get the new version. The old version will not work on Win 10. It will appear to clone but the cloned drive will not boot.

Mike

[Mike Henderson]

Have been using SSD as a main boot drive for about 5-6 years and never had a failure. Wish I could say the same about hard drives. In terms of back up. what works for me is using a cloud based back up service (such as Microsoft OneDrive) for important data that frequently changes. As this synchs the data on a regular basis I never need to worry about triggering a backup. I'm also not using a lot of storage so this is free. Microsoft gives you a Terabyte with an Office365 subscription so space is not an issue if you sub and need more. Pictures, Music and Videos that change less frequently I tend to store on a hard drive and copied to a duplicate. This way if one drive fails, I can use either the other drive or the cloud storage. Most applications I have nowadays are downloaded from the supplier, so if those disappear its easier to download them again rather than back them up.
Good advice. I use Carbonite and have been very satisfied with them.

Mike

[Chuck Wintle]

Well back to normal on the SSD issue as I received my replacement Sandisk Ultra II 490gb drive. Using the backup feature in windows 7 i restored the new drive to this backup. Took a few minutes for this but all ia well. And the benchmark is right where it should be. :p:D