SSD SMART error in few months in 2 different NUCs

[rok7]

Hello,

I had this issue on two Intel NUCs (BIOS updated):

- NUC8i3BEH2 (Ubuntu 16.04)

- NUC10i5FNH (Ubuntu 18.04)

They have been running 23h a day for the last 6 months more or less and they both mount a 120gb S3+ SSD. They have been shutdown correctly every day and worked without any issue. Suddenly they showed (within the last month) this error on boot:

"S.M.A.R.T Status Bad, Backup and Replace. Press F1 to Resume…”

Pressing F1 has no effect, system is frozen.. there is no way to skip this and eventually format the SSD using a live, even disabling the SMART check in BIOS.

I know the S3+ SSD is not listed in the compatibility list for the mentioned NUCs, but this issue seems to me very absurd.. Is there anything I can do ? (in addition to return this cheap SSDs )

Thanks

[n_scott_pearson]

Why do you automatically assume that this is the NUCs' fault (and thus absurd)? Have you not thought that maybe, just maybe, the SSDs are, in fact, crap? Boot up and run something like CrystalDiskInfo on these NUCs and check whether the drives are actually predicting their own demise (which is how the S.M.A.R.T. facility works). If you would like help with the interpretation of the S.M.A.R.T. attributes, you can post them here.

All that said, you should not necessarily read anything into the fact that a particular SSD is not in the compatibility lists. Only those drives that Intel received samples are going to be tested and only those drives that actually pass the tests are going to show up in the compatibility lists. Unfortunately, for legal (thank the trolls) reasons, Intel cannot list anything on the compatibility lists that is NOT compatible.

Hope this helps,

...S

[rok7 · Accepted solution]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for your reply, It was not my intention to accuse Intel for this, just trying to understand the root cause..

I returned the SSDs and in the meantime I had the third identical case. I'm believing too that this SSDs are crap, I did not tested with CrystalDiskInfo but tried to format them, with no luck.

Solution for me is.. don't use S3+ SSDs, they may be cheaper but highly unreliable.. their vendor doesn't even provide a management software nor firmware updates.

[n_scott_pearson]

Yea, you don't see S3+ (S3Plus) SSDs outside of Europe, so I expect these will not be on the list for evaluation by Intel. S3Plus needs to send some samples to Intel. AFAIK, we can't get them here in the U.S.

...S