Storage M.2 Health?

[Dawelio]

Hello everyone,

So I'm currently in the plans of changing my PC and a few components. One component I've started to think of is my current Samsung 970 Evo 2TB M.2 SSD.

Although due to the amount of money they cost, I'm wondering if there's a way to perhaps look to see how "healthy" my drive is? Maybe there's no need to replace it and it will do just fine for another year.

I haven't done anything heavily onto it, mostly just web browsing, Netflix, Youtube, forums, Spotify etc. And at times some Photoshop CS6, but other than that, nothing really. So if you look at it that way, I'm thinking it can't be as stressed out as if you were literally like transferring huge files on a daily basis.

I've also reinstalled Windows a couple of times, just to get a "fresh start" every now and then. Not sure how much this (would) effect the drive though.

So I'm just wondering if anyone has any tips on how to check health status on my drive and perhaps some info on what to look at/for specifically?...

Thanks!

 

[ignsvn]

Generally today's storage drives have this S.M.A.R.T reporting system, and to read them you need install software like Sentinel (or in case of Samsung, they have their own Samsung Magician software). Some general monitoring software like HWiNFO can also report those.

The number you want to see is usually called "Drive remaining life", and is in %

Today's solid state drives will usually last for around 10 years depending on usage pattern (but please Google to get more accurate info)

 

[Dawelio]

Will/would something like CrystalDiskMark do the same?....

 

[tinyitx]

In Samsung Magician, check the ''Drive Health'' to see if it is ''Good''.
CrystalDiskInfo calls it ''Health Status''. It should be ''Good 100%''.

Also, check TBW (TB written). For your 970 Evo 2TB, it is 1200TBW. I do not think it will ever come close to this value.
For my 970 Evo 1TB, it has 600 TBW rating. After roughly 2 years of 'normal usage', both Samsung Magician and CDI report only 1.6 TB written, which is well below the rated 600.

(Also, read that a recent Win10 update bug enables auto defrag for you in the background. Of course, this is no good and harmful to a SSD. Just have to go in to disable it manually. Double check to make sure you do not have this issue.)

 

[Dawelio]

In Samsung Magician, check the ''Drive Health'' to see if it is ''Good''.
CrystalDiskInfo calls it ''Health Status''. It should be ''Good 100%''.

Also, check TBW (TB written). For your 970 Evo 2TB, it is 1200TBW. I do not think it will ever come close to this value.
For my 970 Evo 1TB, it has 600 TBW rating. After roughly 2 years of 'normal usage', both Samsung Magician and CDI report only 1.6 TB written, which is well below the rated 600.

(Also, read that a recent Win10 update bug enables auto defrag for you in the background. Of course, this is no good and harmful to a SSD. Just have to go in to disable it manually. Double check to make sure you do not have this issue.)

Thanks for your reply dude! Much appreciated!

Samsung Magician is "Good" and CDI says "Good - 99%". So I think I'm all good for a few more years atleast... Magician also reports a wopping 38,6TB written.

 

[ignsvn]

yeah.. my 860 Evo SSD is at 97%.. I really don't bother

 

[inSparks]

IIRC HWINFO64 also reports drive SMART status

 

[BirdofPrey]

You'd almost have to purposely try to wear out your drive to exceed the write limit. Normal usage, won't come close to the write limit before the march of technology has rendered it obsolete a couple times over and you're looking to upgrade speed and capacity anyway.

 

[Dawelio]

You'd almost have to purposely try to wear out your drive to exceed the write limit. Normal usage, won't come close to the write limit before the march of technology has rendered it obsolete a couple times over and you're looking to upgrade speed and capacity anyway.

True and fair enough. I think that I'm honestly just more a little scared that it might just die on me and then I loose everything...

 

[BirdofPrey]

Well you should always be doing regular backups regardless of what you're using as storage in your PC.

 

[inSparks]

True and fair enough. I think that I'm honestly just more a little scared that it might just die on me and then I loose everything...

Drives can die even regardless of their usage. That's the nature of electronics. You absolutely can reuse it but if you're scared of losing data you should already have backups, and if you don't you should in future.

 

[Dawelio]

Well you should always be doing regular backups regardless of what you're using as storage in your PC.

Drives can die even regardless of their usage. That's the nature of electronics. You absolutely can reuse it but if you're scared of losing data you should already have backups, and if you don't you should in future.

Yeah, I'm fully aware that drives and electronics in general can die out on you.

When it comes to regular backups etc, I'm a complete newbie to this whole area. Could anyone perhaps get me some starters on what to get? Is just a normal SSD inside the PC enough or should it be external? Should/would an small home server be better off or no?...

 

[inSparks]

Yeah, I'm fully aware that drives and electronics in general can die out on you.

When it comes to regular backups etc, I'm a complete newbie to this whole area. Could anyone perhaps get me some starters on what to get? Is just a normal SSD inside the PC enough or should it be external? Should/would an small home server be better off or no?...

Backups should be completely independent of the system. Best practice would be to back up to an external drive (or more if the data is important enough!) and store them independent to the system and each other. If you back up say, once a week or so, then if worst comes to worst you're only losing a week's worth of work. Once a month is fine for a lot of people though.

 

[ignsvn]

Drives can die even regardless of their usage. That's the nature of electronics. You absolutely can reuse it but if you're scared of losing data you should already have backups, and if you don't you should in future.

I actually encountered this recently.

I have a 64 Gb Adata SSD. It's more or less 7 years old, but was in active usage only for a year or so, after which I switched to a 128 Gb one. I put it back into its original packaging & never touched it until a few days ago (I am currently building a Linux HTPC).

Was quite shocked to learn that the motherboard failed to detect the drive. I tried every SATA ports (MSI B450I Gaming AC) without success. Luckily it's just an OS drive, so no data is lost.

I believe my case is just a blip or anomaly in the overall SSD life statistic, but yeah it happens sometimes.

 

[Dawelio]

I actually encountered this recently.

I have a 64 Gb Adata SSD. It's more or less 7 years old, but was in active usage only for a year or so, after which I switched to a 128 Gb one. I put it back into its original packaging & never touched it until a few days ago (I am currently building a Linux HTPC).

Was quite shocked to learn that the motherboard failed to detect the drive. I tried every SATA ports (MSI B450I Gaming AC) without success. Luckily it's just an OS drive, so no data is lost.

I believe my case is just a blip or anomaly in the overall SSD life statistic, but yeah it happens sometimes.

You were quite lucky then, although 7 years old, then it was more or less on the brink of it's lifespan as well. Would've been much worse if the drive in question was just year or so old.

 

[ignsvn]

You were quite lucky then, although 7 years old, then it was more or less on the brink of it's lifespan as well. Would've been much worse if the drive in question was just year or so old.

It's surprising because it was only used for around 1 year, and spent the rest 6 years in my cabinet ? but yeah I was lucky that it has no important data.

 

[BirdofPrey]

I've had a RAID-5 array fail after just a couple months.

Anyway there's plenty of free and cheap paid options for backup so just poke around. The one that comes with Windows is serviceable.
You can backup to an external USB drive, but I prefer to use a network drive, personally. Don't have a home media server, but that's a good place to backup too (though the server should also have it's data backed up externally)

 

[inSparks]

I've had a RAID-5 array fail after just a couple months.

Anyway there's plenty of free and cheap paid options for backup so just poke around. The one that comes with Windows is serviceable.
You can backup to an external USB drive, but I prefer to use a network drive, personally. Don't have a home media server, but that's a good place to backup too (though the server should also have it's data backed up externally)

Absolutely. Having multiple backups is best practice and external drives are the cheapest way to achieve this without trusting other companies with your data. Obviously the challenge then becomes keeping track of them in order to keep secure control of the data.

 

[Dawelio]

Anyway there's plenty of free and cheap paid options for backup so just poke around. The one that comes with Windows is serviceable.
You can backup to an external USB drive, but I prefer to use a network drive, personally. Don't have a home media server, but that's a good place to backup too (though the server should also have it's data backed up externally)

Right, so what options are the best to go for really?...

Absolutely. Having multiple backups is best practice and external drives are the cheapest way to achieve this without trusting other companies with your data. Obviously the challenge then becomes keeping track of them in order to keep secure control of the data.

Personally I'm a very private person, as such I use Firefox over Chrome etc for example, due to the simple reason of not liking Google tracking you everywhere etc.
Might sound paranoid etc, but as with a VPN, you should have your right to privacy and your personal life. And this shouldn't be considered an "okay" thing to just let the tech giants collect from and about you, to then use you as a product of theirs, when you get nothing and they generate billions of dollars. As in the end, you are the product.

A little sidetrack there, but just wanted to give a bit of a back story regarding my thinking, in regards to different options and specifically which companies to trust.

Hence why I've leaned towards a personal home server, as as far as my knowledge goes, and please do correct me if I'm way off here, isn't that connected to your own private home network, that you can then backup your PC with regular intervalts. All in order to have all of your stuff backuped, just in case something might say goodbye when you least notice it?...

Now this thread has gone a bit from my original question regarding health for my M.2 NVMe drive, onto potential backups, due to it's relevant.
Since I'm the owner of this thread, I just wanted to point this out, so no one feels like it's been hijacked or so in any way.