2 SSD drives failed in last 2 months

I've just had 2 Samsung 840 PRO'S fail on me in the past 2 months, one bought from Amazon and the 2nd one from Samsung under warranty, both no where neared filled to capacity, both in the optical drive bay of my P150EM sitting in a caddy and both had no updated firmware on them, (I've only just recently found out that the firmware is updated through Samsung's magician software obviosuly I will update the firmware as soon as I get the next one) Surely it's very abnormal for drives to fail this quickly? From what I know there were some test one that were sent out that failed prematurely however surely drives sold from Amazon should be consumer versions rather than test versions. I'm also aware that some of these drives failed prematurely because they didn't have updated firmware however surely it's not likely that the drives should fail in that short a space of time because just because of the firmware installed? thirdly is there any chance the caddy itself could have caused it to fail? I know that it's not ideal to use a caddy in an optical bay but I have no other slots unless I use the mSATA on the outside of laptop and have it external or should I just look for a new caddy? It seems odd to me that a caddy could actually make 2 drives fail in such a short amount of time, anyway before I claim another drive from my warranty I want to make sure I don't want to be sending a third drive back, any suggestions as to why my 2 failed would be welcome as I'm not a laptop geek and there could well be something I've missed.

 

Firstly I'm quite interested in knowing what drive you put in the main hdd bay, as I'm quite positive that the optical bay is capable of slotting in anything including the 15mm wd green 2.5 drives, and also the sata2 optical bay just simply limits any sata3 drive's speed.

Secondly please do check in your bios that when your drive fails it is not detected, and not detected in any drive bays, if it is still detected please read the third point

Upon knowing that your bios detects your ssd when it fails, Do a screenshot of your programs and features page after restoring the system to the state before it fails, highlight all the freeware that you use not downloaded from trusted sites, personally i only download freeware from CNET, and also see if a traditional drive fails in the optical bay slot, it could be a bad adapter from the optical slot to sata slot, I personally do trust the samsung ssds so I did rule out the possibility of a bad batch, one after another thats been sold to you, one is understandable but two just leaned the odds towards other bad parts

 

Possibly unrelated, but do you have (or did you uninstall already),

KB2778344 and KB2823324?

ALL of the systems I'm responsible for (~100) with the above updates installed (either one or both) had HUGE issues with the HDD's/SSD's not being detected - even at the BIOS stage.


Maybe this is the problem? If you did a 'restore' to your replacement SSD with the above MS updates installed, it could be the 'reason'.

If/when you get a replacement SSD - do a clean install (MS has pulled those updates for now...).


Good luck.

 

Which versions of Windows are the above specific to???

Given your above mention of ~100 computers (desktops and servers, as well as laptops?) I assume this includes Win7/64Pro?

Anyway, my Win7 laptops are up to date and I've not had any issues. So far with 1 Crucial M4 2.5" unit, and 1 Crucial M4 mSATA unit, and 1 Intel 320 2.5" unit.

Is there an easy way for me to do a search on what KB updates are in place on my two laptops???

 

I haven't had any noticeable issues with my 830 in Windows 7 64 bit that I am aware of but I removed KB2778344 and KB2823324 anyways.

Control Panel... Programs and Features... View installed updates...
Find KB, click and Uninstall KB, restart/reboot, and repeat.

 

Thanks for the response David.

What I failed to ask (of tiller) was why he thinks that Microsoft didn't do a good job with these two KB updates. (KB2778344 and KB2823324)

 

OtherSongs,

All versions of Windows: XP, Vista, Win7 and Win8 (x86 and x64 versions where applicable).

Why MS didn't do a better job? Lol... they simply screwed up.


If those updates are on any computer I was working on, I would remove them immediately:

I mentioned that these updates were installed on a clients computer (yesterday) and I would remove them - they thought that I was simply trying to increase my hours on their site but let me uninstall them anyways. The 8344 update took almost 25 minutes to uninstall (during the required reboot) and with both KB's uninstalled, the computer felt like I had just done a clean/fresh install of Win8x64 PRO on it again.

What was their reaction: 'We won't doubt you when you say the system feels sluggish again!).


Btw; that was the first time they had seen such a long reboot time on their system (Core 2 Duo - Sony notebook) since the updates were installed (around Feb 2013) - but after the uninstall; they noticed that the network would 'connect' faster and even the internet seemed more fluid too...


Yes, those KB's affected different computers in different ways - but in all cases (ime) it made the systems much less stable, more likely to BSOD and even made the desktops less power efficient (dropped to idle for much less time than before) and with the notebooks I noticed they had much less battery run time. With my ThinkPAD's, they were even throwing 2100 errors (HDD...) at the BIOS stage - yeah; not the best work MS has done.

 

those patches seems only installed on 32 bit. some of my 32-bit systems failed because of these patches. but i don't find these patches at all on my 64-bit systems.

 

No, they were installed on 32 and 64 bit systems - maybe your 64 bit systems were slow (enough) updating themselves that MS had already pulled them?

 

I did remember when installing language packs it fails constantly until I decided to remove all 57 updates on my win 8 pro, maybe these are causing the problems too....

and.... they removed those two updates for being detected since my last clean install of windows 8, which is 3 days ago, those updates are gone, for good

 

I've checked my updates and I have both of those installed, the 2nd one of which was installed around the time the 2nd drive failed! Having said that are these updates likely to make the ssd fail? I see you've put that the system may not be able to see my ssd but my drive actually isn't working any more, I even took it to my local pc shop and they told me the drive is dead and they couldn't even retrieve my data from it

 

Well, if these MS updates could make ThinkPAD's give HDD error codes at bios/boot time - I wouldn't doubt that they could kill a drive (eventually).

All I know is that after MS Tuesday each month I am extra attentive to how the system 'feels' - if it's sluggish/etc. - then it's time to hit the 'net over the next few days if needed to see if the updates were the cause (as they usually are).

If you still have the drive and original system - put it back in (with the updates removed, of course) and let it sit at the BIOS screen for awhile (1 Hr is not too long). With any luck - you should have your drive and data back.

 

OK looks like I might as well uninstall the updates then, I've noticed my system has become a bit unstable recently with some programs not opening and the system taking a couple of attempts to boot up sometimes (although that could be a power issue) Is there any way I can stop it being installed again though also will I have to reformat windows when I'm finished?

 

make note of the updates you will be uninstalling, uninstall the update, reboot into OS, run windows update and find the ones that you originally uninstalled, right click on those updates and there you can find the option to hide the update

and if you want to restore the update on the left side option bar for windows update you will find the option to restore windows update, thats when you can revert your choice and make the update search able to find those updates again

 

MS13-036: Description of the security update for the Windows file system kernel-mode driver (ntfs.sys): April 9, 2013
"The update that this article describes has been replaced by a newer update. To resolve this problem, install security update 2840149. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
2840149

MS13-036: Description of the security update for the Windows file system kernel-mode driver (ntfs.sys): April 9, 2013


You receive an Event ID 55 or a 0xc000021a Stop error in Windows 7 after you install security update 2823324
Microsoft has released security update 2840149. This security update resolves the issue that was introduced by security update 2823324. Security update 2823324 was replaced by security update 2840149.


I had KB2823324 update installed by Windows Update on 4/10/2013 - fortunately no problems - and the new one - KB2840149 - yesterday.

 

I actually lost contact with my 840 PRO after I had formated the drive and reinstalled Windows. It happened when I installed Samsung Magician. Suddenly the notebook went in to BIOS, and on "boot priority" the SSD was gone. I had to reboot a few times, and then it was back again. Got a semi heart attack by the whole thing. The Magician installation was "corrupted" so I upgraded to v.4.0 and after that everything went smooth. No more strange stuff happening, and its been running for a few weeks now with no issues.

I have no idea what caused it, wether its the drive or the software.
The ratings for the 840 PRO is solid, thats for sure. Not many failures happening.
SAMSUNG MZ-7PD128BW - Newegg.com
SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Newegg.com

 

Thanks

I know I've seen the good reviews, that's partly what made me buy this drive in the 1st place, having 2 of these drives fail on me in a short space of time is making me think it it's probably a problem my end rather than the drives themselves

 

Could it be some incompatibility with your laptop?

Also, I've got the two Windows updates installed, but I don't see any issues - should I uninstall them?

 

It could be that you recieved a SSDs from the faulty batch with wrong firmware. Maybe whoever sold you those SSDs didn`t care to ship the faulty batch back?
AnandTech | Samsung Explains The Firmware Bug Causing The Failures of SSD 840/840 Pro

 

Possibly but I bought the drives from Amazon themselves so I think it's unlikely seeing how many they probably sell, I'll update the firmware software as soon as I get my new drive now anyway

 

It's unfortunate about your luck with SSDs. My first SSD I bought was my Crucial M4 and a year down the road it died on me. I've had my replacement M4 from Crucial for about 6 months now and everything is golden. It drives me crazy using a computer without an SSD at this point. I'll always have one even despite possible reliability concerns lol

 

I just had 2 SSD disk 840 pro which crashed. The first after 4 weeks, the 2nd after 2 weeks.
Both disk were delivered with latest firmware.
I have not tried all the ideas in this discussion yet.

Have anybody tried to re-establish connection to the SSD again with the above hints?

I have the disk placed in a ultra bay in a Lenovo T410s,

 

Just to add a data point -

I ordered an 840 pro 256GB that was shipped from (& 'fulfilled by') Amazon on 9 April, and it came with the latest firmware (DXM04B0Q).

Been working flawlessly in a Toshiba L300 C2D Win 7 x64 laptop since then. 10% (+ factory set 7%) OP.

 

My 840 (120GB) crashed after 4 months, latest firmware. In IDE mode it fails in BIOS, recognized but says it's got 0GB. In AHCI it initializes but Windows freezes in atipcie64.sys when starting.
Uninstalled KB2778344 but no help, doesn't work in another computer either.