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600p slow, lockups and smart warnings

Torbjorn
Beginner
1,255 Views

Hello.

My aging 600p nvme ssd is starting to act a bit strange and i need some advice.

If i start intel ssd toolbox during normal idle load it shows drive health at maximum and estimated life has gone down to about 80% or so.
But if i start a simple disk benchmark, like crystal diskmark, and put some load on the disk, writes tend to stall (watching in task manager) for a few seconds periodically and when that happens if i refresh the ssd toolbox the drive health bar is now at the bottom and orange/red (down to the warning level).
If i go to smart details i see ID 0 with description "Critical warnings" it now got the text "Contact your reseller or local intel representative for assistance"

BUT the moment the load goes away from the disk it turns back to green again.

I should also mention that i do get occasional very odd lockups, by now i can "feel" when it is about to start and usually (depends on what i was doing and what i had running) i can still access the mechanical disk for a while until windows locks up completely due to boot drive (the 600p ssd) not behaving.

So a very odd problem imho, any advice?

I suspect drive is going bad but not sure.

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BrusC_Intel
Moderator
1,222 Views

Hello, @Torbjorn.

 

Thank you for the details and screenshots.

 

The Critical Warning can be triggered by different events and in this case, judging by the screenshot provided seems to be the SSD temperature, which could be the case since, as you mentioned, it only happens during heavy operations like SSD benchmarking, and the reason for this entire situation could be the drive throttling down to try to cool down.

 

Could it be possible for you to check if the SSD is getting good airflow or testing it on a different computer?

 

I could not find the SMART information attached to the ticket, please let me know if you would like me to take a look at it just in case, or here is more information about the SMART attributes, the thresholds, and what could trigger the Critical Warning:

- Important SSD SMART attributes: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000055367/memory-and-storage.html

 

Regarding the secure erase, I completely understand, and knowing that the issue could potentially be temperature-related, it may not even worth the effort.

 

I will follow-up on the same date November 25th or you can let me know if you would like me to follow up sooner or later.

 

Best regards,

 

Bruce C.

Intel Customer Support Technician

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BrusC_Intel
Moderator
1,238 Views

Hello, @Torbjorn.

 

Thank you for contacting Intel Community Support.

 

We received your thread regarding the behavior of the SSD 600p and Toolbox, I will be glad to assist you.

 

The calculations showed in that section are estimated and may vary depending on the workload being applied and are even less accurate if the workload changes, and it does not reflect actual issues with the SSD.

 

Regarding the lockups or freezing, the recommendation I can provide would be to perform a secure erase or low-level format, this may help the drive perform better, but depending on your system configuration. this could require a lot of work to set up your system from scratch.

- When to Run a Low-Level Format or Secure Erase on Intel® Solid State Drives and Tools to Use: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006198/memory-and-storage.html

 

Additionally, I recommend switching to the Intel Memory and Storage Tool since Toolbox is soon to b discontinued and no longer available:

- Download: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/29915?v=t

- How to get SSD details: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000056580/memory-and-storage/data-center-ssds.html

 

You can provide me with the SMART report so I can confirm the SSD status just in case.

 

I will follow up on November 25th, or you can let me know a different date for the follow-up if additional time is required.

 

Best regards.

 

Bruce C.

Intel Customer Support Technician

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Torbjorn
Beginner
1,230 Views

Screenshot from ssd toolbox with the error in question.
As stated earlier, only happens during heavy disk io for example when running benchmark.
When this happens i can feel the whole computer grinding to a halt until the "hickup" is over and i can see that write speeds has dropped to almost nothing for a couple of seconds.

Torbjorn_1-1605893363393.png

Also write speeds is a bit lower than expected (around 180mb/sec)

But i'm not too worried about that, the hickups and lockup of disk is a much bigger problem.

 

and yes i did consider a secure erase but as you said, that is not particularly fun to do especially on an nvme disk i can't easily plugin to a different computer like with SATA disks.
if it was sata disk i could have plugged disk in to different computer, dump contents of disk to file, do secure erase, then put data back again (or just restore from backup)

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Torbjorn
Beginner
1,232 Views
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BrusC_Intel
Moderator
1,223 Views

Hello, @Torbjorn.

 

Thank you for the details and screenshots.

 

The Critical Warning can be triggered by different events and in this case, judging by the screenshot provided seems to be the SSD temperature, which could be the case since, as you mentioned, it only happens during heavy operations like SSD benchmarking, and the reason for this entire situation could be the drive throttling down to try to cool down.

 

Could it be possible for you to check if the SSD is getting good airflow or testing it on a different computer?

 

I could not find the SMART information attached to the ticket, please let me know if you would like me to take a look at it just in case, or here is more information about the SMART attributes, the thresholds, and what could trigger the Critical Warning:

- Important SSD SMART attributes: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000055367/memory-and-storage.html

 

Regarding the secure erase, I completely understand, and knowing that the issue could potentially be temperature-related, it may not even worth the effort.

 

I will follow-up on the same date November 25th or you can let me know if you would like me to follow up sooner or later.

 

Best regards,

 

Bruce C.

Intel Customer Support Technician

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BrusC_Intel
Moderator
1,200 Views

Hello, @Torbjorn.

 

I wanted to follow up on your ticket to check if further assistance is still required.

 

I will follow up on November 30th or you can let me know if you would like to schedule a different date.

 

Best regards,

 

Bruce C.

Intel Customer Support Technician

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BrusC_Intel
Moderator
1,169 Views

Hello, @Torbjorn.

 

This message is to follow up on your thread to check if I can be of assistance.

 

I previously shared some details regarding the critical warning and SMART information along with some articles and requested the SMART information just to double-check, but there was no confirmation.

 

The thread will be closed right now and will no longer be monitored, if you require further assistance, please open a new thread or contact us via one of the other support methods (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/contact-support.html).

 

If you require any type of assistance from Intel in the future, you can always contact us back.

 

Best regards,

 

Bruce C.

Intel Customer Support Technician

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