That Didn't Last Long: Samsung 960 EVO NVMe Already Fails

[johnc]

What erroneous de-initialization routines? The ones that blacklist queued trim on most samsung ssds because using it will result in data loss when it works just fine with ssds from other manufacturers? Or the speed problem problem that took samsung two tries to (badly) fix with one of their ssds a while back, with who knows what impact to longevity?

I've been burned several times before by samsung drives and their track record is not stellar, their drives may be among the fastest you can buy but I will only buy or recommend samsung drives if there is no other choice. And no, having backups doesn't count when these things always fail at the most inconvenient times.

Yeah I don't exactly get a warm fuzzy about Samsung SSDs anymore. Too many WTFs out there.

[oliw]

Do you really have to RMA? If something failed that quickly for me in the UK it would be going back to the retailer as faulty-on-arrival. We can't be the only country that —for all its faults— cares about consumers' rights.

[AndyChow]

It's got some kind of built-in heatsink

Came here to say this. The sticker on top contains a copper strip, which acts as a heatsink.

[calc]

The Intel 600p also has problems with heat and they didn't even bother with a heatsink/sticker. At idle it runs 60C, its warning log temperature is 70C, and critical is 80C. Don't even need to benchmark the drive for it to start warning that its overheating, wtf. I ordered a m.2 heatsink from China for it but they still aren't easy to get for some reason.

[torsionbar28]

I've been poo-pooed here before for saying this. But I will not trust my data and/or my OS to any solid state drive for at least another 5 years of development and refinement or when even the low end drives have a minimum 5 year no questions asked warranty and replacement. Yes....yes...I know hard drives can fail suddenly way before their warranty runs out or before their rated MTBF. It has happened to me. But I am more than willing to sacrifice speed for durability and value. The cost per megabyte of SSD vs Hard Drive is still ridiculous. And hard drives have had 60 years of perfecting. Not so much SSDs.

Agree with you 100%. The twelve hard drives I have between my workstation and my home server are all spinning platter type. All are either WD Velociraptor, or WD RE4 enterprise drives. Everything is RAID-1 mirrored (using mdadm) so even if I have a failure, no activities are interrupted, no work is lost. And each of these modern platter drives is capable of > 200 MB/s sequential read, so they're certainly not slow.

The real clincher for me, is the workload rating. These WD enterprise drives are rated for 550 TBW per year workload. Most consumer SSD's are only rated for 300 TBW, 180 TBW, or even less, over their entire lifespan! So SSD's, at least the consumer variant, have a looooong way to go before catching up to spinning platters in the longevity dept.

[cjcox]

It didn't catch fire or explode... sounds like a win to me.

[mgmartin]

This article inspired me to re-visit a dead SSD drive I thought died way to early and just out of warranty. After some internet searching, I learned about the Crucial power cycle/fix method. Success.

Sorry your drive died early. But, if it's any consolation, another drive now lives again as a result!

[starshipeleven]

It's got some kind of built-in heatsink: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10754/...pro-ssd-review

Ok, better than bare controller chip at least, but without knowing the temps it reaches, we can't know if it is enough.

On desktops where the SSD is going to see more than "gaming" activity I usually recommend/install the card with a heatsink, even cheapo chinese ones are fine as it's a plain electric board and a piece of aluminum.

[starshipeleven]

I've been poo-pooed here before for saying this. But I will not trust my data and/or my OS to any solid state drive for at least another 5 years of development and refinement or when even the low end drives have a minimum 5 year no questions asked warranty and replacement. Yes....yes...I know hard drives can fail suddenly way before their warranty runs out or before their rated MTBF. It has happened to me. But I am more than willing to sacrifice speed for durability and value. The cost per megabyte of SSD vs Hard Drive is still ridiculous. And hard drives have had 60 years of perfecting. Not so much SSDs.

Bullshit. All storage media can and do suddenly fail and if you were not ready for it you get what you deserve.
RAID was designed for a reason, backups are also mandatory for the same reason: because storage media FAIL.
All storage has way too high reliability for you to rely on its numbers alone to be safe.

And flash memory isn't exactly new tech either, wikipedia states 1980 for the first commercial product with it, so don't try to pull that.

Yeah. SSDs are so great for reliability and saftey of CRITICAL data. Which explains why every corporation and bank and government and university in the world uses tape and hard drives and even Blu Ray discs ( proven to be the most reliable and safe storage) for safety and reliability. Ooooooo but SSDs are soooo fast. And shiny. LOOK....squirrel!!!

Stop being an idiot.
Tape is still in use because it was in use before and is still the media with the highest longevity (30+ years, certified and all), bluray or any other optical media is a plain BAD idea because it de-laminates whenever it feels like it (=data loss) and also when kept at non-optimum storage conditions (temperature and humidity control is key, just like with wine).

SSDs are used in datacenters fine, not for long-term storage as HDDs are still larger and cheaper.

But since even the last HDD manufacturer bought a SSD manufacturer to get off the sinking ship in style, now you know the future what will be.

[starshipeleven]

Agree with you 100%. The twelve hard drives I have between my workstation and my home server are all spinning platter type. All are either WD Velociraptor, or WD RE4 enterprise drives. Everything is RAID-1 mirrored (using mdadm) so even if I have a failure, no activities are interrupted, no work is lost. And each of these modern platter drives is capable of > 200 MB/s sequential read, so they're certainly not slow.

See, this guy made his homework.

The real clincher for me, is the workload rating. These WD enterprise drives are rated for 550 TBW per year workload. Most consumer SSD's are only rated for 300 TBW, 180 TBW, or even less, over their entire lifespan! So SSD's, at least the consumer variant, have a looooong way to go before catching up to spinning platters in the longevity dept.

Well, true, but consumer workloads aren't that demanding usually.
I mean, if you write like 10 GB per day, a 180 TBW drive would die after 50 years.

Writing 10 GB per day is a bit unusual for a consumer PC (even on windows with updates turned on, lol), while yeah, for a database server it's a piece of cake.