How does the Corsair Toolbox determine device lifetime?

[IndyMike]

I was given a Corsair Force GS 240 Gb SSD as a gift some years ago. It sat in a box until I put together this desktop and used it as the C: drive. From almost the beginning, the S.M.A.R.T. status on the Bios said that it was going bad. The Corsair SSD Toolbox is saying the same thing.

My question is, how does S.M.A.R.T. determine the life of an SSD? Is it the actual hours plugged in (apparently ~3,500 hours), or from the date of manufacture? According to the Serial #, this was built in August of 2016. So, 7 years old now.

 

[neeyik]

That particular SMART attribute is a measure of how program/erase (PE) cycles the drive has gone through compared to the total number it's rated for. That figure is also adjusted on the basis of the number of usable blocks remaining in the NAND flash.

Lots of SSDs can be used well past their PE cycle rating, but it depends on how many blocks are kaput -- that's indicated by the Retired Block Count. You can see that it's still indicated as being okay with your drive (a value of 100 is the best it can be), but depending on how heavily the drive has been used and what environmental conditions, the blocks could be good for another couple of years...or just a couple of months.

 

[IndyMike]

That particular SMART attribute is a measure of how program/erase (PE) cycles the drive has gone through compared to the total number it's rated for. That figure is also adjusted on the basis of the number of usable blocks remaining in the NAND flash.

Lots of SSDs can be used well past their PE cycle rating, but it depends on how many blocks are kaput -- that's indicated by the Retired Block Count. You can see that it's still indicated as being okay with your drive (a value of 100 is the best it can be), but depending on how heavily the drive has been used and what environmental conditions, the blocks could be good for another couple of years...or just a couple of months.

It is the OS drive, so it gets that IO. But I've only used it for a few months so far. One of the first things I did was reduce the number of Defrag runs in the Task Scheduler to once a month from whatever the default was. Seems like it was running far too often.
I will probably just replace the drive and see if the performance of the machine improves. Currently, it seems to pause every minute or so for a second.

 

[neeyik]

The formula for calculating the SSD Life Left value goes something like this:

SSD-L-L = what is the minimum value between A and B?

Where A = maximum value between % of unused PE cycles remaining and the number 10
and B = (100 x currrent number of spare blocks) / original total number of spare blocks

At the start of the life of an SSD, the number of spare blocks will barely have changed, so B ends up being very close to 100, as will term A as the % of unused cycles will be 100% (and since this is much bigger than 10, the max calculation will pick 100). So the formula then tries to pick the minimum between 100 and 100, which is...100!

However, since you've got a SMART reading of 1, this means either B =1 or A = 1, or both. Given that you've said you've only used it for a couple of months, even working as a boot drive, it's unlikely to have gone through all of its PE cycles in that time. This points the finger at one of two causes -- either the NAND flash used to make the drive was pretty defective to begin with or the SMART reading is faulty.

Either way, your solution is very sensible -- much easier to replace the drive (especially since even 1 TB SSDs are pretty cheap now), rather than take any risks.

 

[Nelson28]

I was given a Corsair Force GS 240 Gb SSD as a gift some years ago. It sat in a box until I put together this desktop and used it as the C: drive. From almost the beginning, the S.M.A.R.T. status on the Bios said that it was going bad. The Corsair SSD Toolbox is saying the same thing.

My question is, how does S.M.A.R.T. determine the life of an SSD? Is it the actual hours plugged in (apparently ~3,500 hours), or from the date of manufacture? According to the Serial #, this was built in August of 2016. So, 7 years old now.

View attachment 89224

The Corsair Toolbox uses S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) data to gauge your SSD's health. Think of SMART. like a built-in health check for your drive.

It monitors various factors like the number of read/write errors and reallocated sectors, giving a clearer picture of the SSD's lifespan.

Looking at your SMART attributes, while some seem okay (Power on Hours at 3529 and Drive Power Cycle Count at 118), others like "Reported Uncorrectable Error Count" at 99 and "Reallocation Event Count" indicate potential problems.

These errors likely explain why both the Corsair Toolbox and BIOS report the SSD's health as failing.

Although the drive's age (manufactured August 2016) might be a consideration, SMART data offers a more detailed picture of the SSD's current health. It's best to back up your data as soon as possible and consider replacing the SSD to avoid potential data loss.