840 PRO crapped out?

[TheUnk]

So out of nowhere my PC starts freezing randomly.

Windows 7 then starts giving a BSOD when starting, can't get to desktop in safe mode or anything. "Unmountable boot volume" or something like that. I run the Windows 7 repair from the DVD. It tries but then says it can't repair.

Reinstalled Windows on a new drive. The old one shows up but it shows as 0 used and 0 free space. Looks like the partition is completely borked. I create a new partition and reformat and it seems to be functioning OK.

So I'm trying to decide if I should try and use this HD again for my OS or not.. I've only had it for about 8 months. Was it the drive that caused this or maybe something else?

I was just going to do an exchange RMA with Samsung but holy crap their website is absolute garbage. RMA forms that always result in "Page not found" when you submit. "Request Service" links that list your registered hardware but nothing else from there except "Buy accessories". It's a complete shit show.

 

[Cerb]

And you know the cherry on top? Samsung's online support used to be worse. They really need to need to get their act together, as they try to dominate the Western markets. This has a been a sore point of Samsung at least back to the era 40GB/platter Spinpoints, just by my personal recollection.

You should be able to get somewhere emailing or calling them, if the site is broken, though. I've never had them try to avoid an RMA request, though I have had to occasionally research and do a little phone tag to get there over the years.

I'm not trying to say I-told-you-so or anything, I think the 840 Pro is a fine SSD, and Samsung has always been good about RMAs, once started; but this is one of the reasons I ike Crucial and Sandisk offering good SSDs at good prices (and conditionally, Kingston, though they made a bad move with the V300). A small portion of them will fail during expected service life, or end up unpredictably incompatible with your other hardware, and sometimes, one of your drives is part one of those statistics.

 

[hhhd1]

What does the SMART data say ?

 

[TheUnk]

In the Samsung Magician, all the rows in SMART have an "OK" status.

 

[schmuckley]

I'd secure-erase and reinstall.
Are you running high bclck on anything?High pcie?

 

[Morbus]

Are there any reallocated sectors? Maybe some crucial file got corrupted with one of those reallocations? I doubt it though.

 

[hhhd1]

In the Samsung Magician, all the rows in SMART have an "OK" status.

would be better to copy&paste it, cause the 'ok' isn't accurate always.

you can copy/paste from CrystalDiskInfo software

 

[Charlie98]

Exactly what happened to my 840Pro... working away on the desktop and *boop!* it froze and that was it. I couldn't even get Acronis to see it to wipe it and try over. Odd thing was, just that AM I ran the Magician cleanup and peeked at it with Crystal Disk... everything fine.

My RMA experience was also identical to yours... the website wouldn't allow me to go into the RMA process to start an RMA... I finally called and got it returned... in record time. I mailed it on Monday, I had a brand new... refurb 840Pro by Thursday.

What did I do? I can't trust it. I had gotten a Plextor to fill in the breach, so I stuck the refurb in my daughter's 7-year old laptop... a $200 drive in a $100 computer.

 

[tweakboy]

So out of nowhere my PC starts freezing randomly.

Windows 7 then starts giving a BSOD when starting, can't get to desktop in safe mode or anything. "Unmountable boot volume" or something like that. I run the Windows 7 repair from the DVD. It tries but then says it can't repair.

Reinstalled Windows on a new drive. The old one shows up but it shows as 0 used and 0 free space. Looks like the partition is completely borked. I create a new partition and reformat and it seems to be functioning OK.

So I'm trying to decide if I should try and use this HD again for my OS or not.. I've only had it for about 8 months. Was it the drive that caused this or maybe something else?

I was just going to do an exchange RMA with Samsung but holy crap their website is absolute garbage. RMA forms that always result in "Page not found" when you submit. "Request Service" links that list your registered hardware but nothing else from there except "Buy accessories". It's a complete shit show.

there you go. I was right.

 

[Koslov_]

No matter how good their drives are, I'm boycotting Samsung. Their RMA are a joke. Bad warranty support, no money from me. I hope more people would do the same so they could understand the message.

 

[TheUnk]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(2) Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Model : Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series
Firmware : DXM05B0Q
Disk Size : 256.0 GB (8.4/137.4/256.0/256.0)
Buffer Size : Unknown
Queue Depth : 32
# of Sectors : 500118192
Power On Hours : 1690 hours
Power On Count : 475 count
Host Writes : 739 GB
Wear Level Count : 7
Temparature : 27 C (80 F)
Health Status : Good (100 %)
Features : S.M.A.R.T., 48bit LBA, NCQ, TRIM, DevSleep

-- S.M.A.R.T. --------------------------------------------------------------
ID Cur Wor Thr RawValues(6) Attribute Name
05 100 100 _10 000000000000 Reallocated Sector Count
09 _99 _99 __0 00000000069A Power-on Hours
0C _99 _99 __0 0000000001DB Power-on Count
B1 _99 _99 __0 000000000007 Wear Leveling Count
B3 100 100 _10 000000000000 Used Reserved Block Count (Total)
B5 100 100 _10 000000000000 Program Fail Count (Total)
B6 100 100 _10 000000000000 Erase Fail Count (Total)
B7 100 100 _10 000000000000 Runtime Bad Block (Total)
BB 100 100 __0 000000000000 Uncorrectable Error Count
BE _73 _56 __0 00000000001B Airflow Temperature
C3 200 200 __0 000000000000 ECC Error Rate
C7 _99 _99 __0 000000000001 CRC Error Count
EB _99 _99 __0 000000000017 POR Recovery Count
F1 _99 _99 __0 00005C6655F8 Total LBA Written

 

[Emulex]

EB _99 _99 __0 000000000017 POR Recovery Count <-- how many times you've reset or lost power to the ssd for samsung. very relevant!

 

[mistag]

Had the same problem with the 840 pro last week and found this thread .. thought I'd share how I got the drive working again to save myself the re-format trouble

Windows saw the two volumes (boot and data) but explorer gave some errors when trying to read the data partition. A system recovery with chkdsk didn't work as windows could not even see it.

Acronis refused to read it. I managed to confirm that the drive at least appeared to still have the data by using GetDataBack eval version. A scan of the drive confirmed the partitions still there and showed all the files.

Whipped out a copy of the minitool partition wizard (www.minitool.com) and ensured the partitions were active. This was the only tool that allowed me to run a chkdsk on the drive and sure enough, errors in the allocation table. After allowing it to repair, problem solved - drive boots again.

Don't give up if Windows recovery/repair won't run a chkdsk for you

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Wey-ull, Pil-grums!

It's time to flip in my hot-swap HDD and make another clone of my 840-Pro.

Never had a problem with it, but when I see stuff like this, I'm going to update my clone of the Sammy-840-Pro.

Just like the other members of the European Union and our own Homeland Security, after yesterday's Paris attack.

Better not take any chances! :biggrin:

 

[aviator79]

Had the same problem with the 840 pro last week and found this thread .. thought I'd share how I got the drive working again to save myself the re-format trouble

Can you please provide a Screenshot of "Crystal Disk Info" (Portable version would suffice) or any other SMART tool.
The OP posted his and I saw this:
"C7 _99 _99 __0 000000000001 CRC Error Count"

This is most likely caused by a faulty Cable. CRC Errors can be a huge pain for the system but are rarely caused by the drive itself.

 

[schmuckley]

could be bad 5v regulation from PSU,too.
especially if it's SuperFlower/Rosewill.

 

[cytg111]

EB _99 _99 __0 000000000017 POR Recovery Count <-- how many times you've reset or lost power to the ssd for samsung. very relevant!

I am having the same smart readings .. and i've lost power to the machine many times (circumstances out of my control) ... Is that a bad thing? .

http://imgur.com/Q71w9uj

looks bad but the health status says green, everything good to go (Magician 4.5)

 

[dclive]

I am having the same smart readings .. and i've lost power to the machine many times (circumstances out of my control) ... Is that a bad thing? .

http://imgur.com/Q71w9uj

looks bad but the health status says green, everything good to go (Magician 4.5)

Looks OK. But I'd get the latest 4.9.x Magician and look again, check for firmware updates, etc.

 

[mikeymikec]

Mine says 00000000001C for POR Recovery Count (also a 840 PRO, 256GB). How should one interpret the raw values?

 

[Elixer]

I don't see how they compute the POR Recovery Count, since, on a machine that is on 24/7, with UPS, that value is at 10.
I admit, I didn't pay attention to that value when I first got the SSD, so, it might have always been at 10 though.

 

[mikeymikec]

CrystalDiskInfo won't let me plot a history graph based on that value so I can't check whether it has changed over time.