View Full Version : My new-ish SSD failing or is it W10 again?
Loose rivets
9th Apr 2016, 14:35
System went into one of those "Well, this is embarrassing", and then the light blue screen. This time, shall we check your drive? No. Perhaps I should, as after a while it said it was repairing my drive anyway. A few re-boots later, and working again.
Is it my SSD's little neurons dying, or just W10 being a pain again.
One of the latest tricks is for it to keep going to sleep despite all the normal settings being Never. I think it only happens after I tell it to sleep. Still, this is (yet) another mystery I had resolved to live with.
All since 10, but also a 2 year-old SSD.
I'm sure any utility capable of reading a drive's SMART (http://www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/) data will tell you whether your drive is on its way out. I use CrystalDiskInfo (http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html) which is free.
Loose rivets
9th Apr 2016, 22:18
I think the question would have been better phrased as, does W10 reorganize failed sectors?
As I understand it, the drive's firmware should recognise these sectors and re-map the drive - a surfeit of sectors being part of the manufacturer's deal, but does the OS play a part in all this?
Such is my losing streak a the moment, I'm loath to put this to the test with probing software on a machine I use 10 hours a day. For example, today, having found a classic dry joint in my BMW's key fob, it worked - for one drive, and is now as dead as a Do-do. Ye gods are against me. :{
le Pingouin
10th Apr 2016, 14:27
I wouldn't get overly exercised about it quite yet. A system crash will often result in the filesystem on a drive being in need of a tidy up - for instance if the crash interrupted writing to the drive.
Loose rivets
10th Apr 2016, 22:40
I wouldn't get overly exercised about it quite yet.
Hee hee. Not much fear of that.
Stu666
11th Apr 2016, 19:47
As I understand it, the drive's firmware should recognise these sectors and re-map the drive - a surfeit of sectors being part of the manufacturer's deal, but does the OS play a part in all this?
As I understand it, modern HDD firmware handles bad sectors and remaps as you correctly state, but this should be invisible to the OS. If the OS detects bad sectors, you've got problems, either the HDD firmware can't handle it or has run out of spares.
SSD a bit different and has the ability to evenly distribute wear across the blocks.
Loose rivets
12th Apr 2016, 01:00
It's strange. It'll go for a month sometimes and then there's a cluster of light blue screens contained within a couple of days and then things go back to (moderately) normal.
The chaotic periods can be really tedious, but then, as though corrected by some mysterious force, peace reigns again.
Kaspersky had settled down - until I thought about it - and then it proudly announced it had done some kind of upgrade and the computer needed rebooting. Sometimes several times a day. As mentioned somewhere, my wife, on a different machine, in a different country, with W7 Starter, suddenly had the same problems. The thing is, the orange Kasper screen announces an unsatisfactory state which just might be serious and only used to happen if something was really wrong.
I can no longer be bothered with their, no doubt, excellent service. Always, run their software and send the resultant file to them for analysis. It takes an age to go through that load of cobblers. The only real result has been with Barclays, FireFox and Kasper, where they sent me a fixit file. Barclays gave me £50 for my efforts - and pain. 25 quid each. Gosh, it felt good to be employed again, but one did not let the newfound wealth change my life. :p
FlightDetent
12th Apr 2016, 01:20
How old is the power supply unit in your box?
Loose rivets
12th Apr 2016, 10:31
There are no leaky caps around the CPU, and I'll keep an open mind about power failure*, but it has the look and feel of a commanded shut-down. When I press the power button, it comes back as though it's been sleeping.
I said: System went into one of those "Well, this is embarrassing", and then the light blue screen. This time, shall we check your drive?
Now I come to think about it, I'm not sure the two things were actually connected because when I returned to a working state the 'embarrassing' screen was still there. One of the main things I learned in my electronics days was that coincidences can be bizarrely misleading.
I just get the feeling that reverting to W7 and getting rid of Kasper would allow me to get back to some serious work. As mentioned before, there's a local bloke who makes a good living just formatting drives and reloading W7. I think he listens into the still night air and when he hears that certain kind of scream, he swings Batman style into their homes.
*It was on this forum that someone suggested the electrolytics surrounding the CPU on my old HP. They were oozing and some days later were replaced with bigger hot-running caps. The kind of job only old retired blokes can do cos at minimum wage I could have probably purchased two mother boards. :uhoh:
.
Bushfiva
12th Apr 2016, 10:37
Caps: the problem wasn't size or heat. Industrial espionage led to a new electrolyte formula being extracted from a Japanese company and ending up spread around some Taiwanese manufacturers. Unfortunately for all involved (including consumers), they didn't nick the market-ready version. So a few years back, lots of motherboards started failing when they were around 3 years old. Suddenly, there was a rash of cap replacement kits for various PCs available, so it wasn't a hard job.
And that's why Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers still plaster "caps made in Japan" all over their boxes.
FlightDetent
12th Apr 2016, 14:59
It's a sign of the times, that you'd get proper, solid CAPs if you pay for them and they're usually installed into the "premium" version of things. http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/111/tech_070112_ud_whyusesolid.htm
If you're getting BSODs, it is normally a HW problem. If not for a stack overflow on a driver, which could be then hopefully solved by loading newer or older version of the SW / firmware / BIOS.
If component is failing (thermal wear ..) the BSODs typically present themselves in a regular manner. I understand that is not the case. Graphics card, MB, CPU itself or memory modules all could be the culprits. Another possibility is a damaged / improperly connected wire if the inside of the case had been fooled around with.
With the description you provided, me thinks old PSU with yes - leaked capacitors. It could serve well in normal situations, but enter a disturbance in the power grid (harmonics from oldish dryer, neighbour's bench saw) and the PSU with failed caps will deliver power to the box beyond specs the individual components can handle.
Having said that, troubleshooting electric gremlins is a complex task even with the unit physically at hand, all the above is nothing but a speculation.
Loose rivets
13th Apr 2016, 22:08
Did it again today, while Skyping, and reaching for a site to show a pal something. It's a light blue screen which informs me it is sending a message to . . . It's gone before I can read it. But it then reboots the computer, so not electrical gremlins.
Since I can't snap it, the only way is to have a camera ready, but my efforts on the beach today with the grand-kids show that I could do an oil painting faster than master the new phone. Old one fine. Nikon with a phallic lens, fine, new Samsung S6 is said to be magical, but I just don't want to have to learn something new. Not ever. Not even if it causes me to inherit Texas. I just want things to be the same every day.
I also want women to be rational. :}
FlightDetent
13th Apr 2016, 23:15
No need for camera. Larger cannon required.
Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) - Microsoft Community (http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki/windows_10-update/blue-screen-of-death-bsod/1939df35-283f-4830-a4dd-e95ee5d8669d)
Try this one: http://download.cnet.com/WhoCrashed/3000-2094_4-75205821.html
Loose rivets
14th Apr 2016, 01:44
From your link:
Even the updated Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) in Windows 10 - with its empathetic sad face - isn't especially helpful for general users, who ...
I have to admit I hadn't realised that MS had built a friendlier BSOD. The link goes on to say a total reload is one option. If I did that I'd put W7 back, but I have to confess I'd be sad to lose a few W10 items.
Got frozen to near death on the beach today. When one thaws out I'll get back on the case.
As I understand it, modern HDD firmware handles bad sectors and remaps as you correctly state, but this should be invisible to the OS.They only remap on writes, not reads. Try to read a bad sector, and there's nothing to read from it to remap to a good one.
Some time back, we had a disk fail in a RAID, and the controller then refused to sync from the remaining disk to the new one because the remaining disk had a bad sector. I eventually had to delete all the nonessential files from the RAID and overwrite all the free space with zeros to get the disk to remap to a fresh sector so it could sync up.
Which is odd, because I thought the RAID controller was supposed to scan the disk in the background to check for bad sectors.
crablab
2nd May 2016, 21:41
Which is odd, because I thought the RAID controller was supposed to scan the disk in the background to check for bad sectors.
It is! very strange... Did the controller play up before/after that?
Loose rivets
3rd May 2016, 10:23
As I may have mentioned I've put an SSD in my Vaio. :rolleyes:
That, and a reload make it sparkle. I'd hate to go back to a HD unless it was a good quality one and substantially faster. But on the other hand I don't want to feel continually threatened by all these sub-sub-micron thingies fusing.
I'm not sure about pro drives for laptops. Do the top spec ones have faster more reliable HD's?
crablab
4th May 2016, 08:46
As I may have mentioned I've put an SSD in my Vaio. :rolleyes:
That, and a reload make it sparkle. I'd hate to go back to a HD unless it was a good quality one and substantially faster. But on the other hand I don't want to feel continually threatened by all these sub-sub-micron thingies fusing.
I'm not sure about pro drives for laptops. Do the top spec ones have faster more reliable HD's?
I'd say an SSD would last much longer than a HDD in any case. Plus they're much faster and use less power so take a smaller toll on your system's PSU.
Loose rivets
4th May 2016, 10:22
. . . which is important on a machine that runs hot. i.e. some of the power supply heat seemed to be carried towards the graphics and processor area - so, a little pre heating. The screen off button helps a lot with that.
Following a link on this forum for e-buyer HD's, I did buy a HD for my PC, but I got a WD RED. I suspect mostly because it matches my jumper, because I know little about the advantages in real terms. 24/7, they claim, and not a huge % increase in price. It will go as logical drives E and F, replacing the temporary little drive out of my wife's defunct HP.* The SSD will remain in C and D to keep that pleasing increase in speed.
Now all I need is a new PC. I'll be asking about small cases soon as I need to keep everything miniaturised in this nomadic life of mine. The Hi-Fi amp I just sold weighed in at 56lbs. Those days have gone forever.
*See Graphics failure and Re-Balling. At least we got some use out of the bits when my final heat process incinerated the board. I got it going for a short while. Oh, BTW, there's a chap here in Frinton who has used a hand-held blower and heat shields cut from Coak tins who claims considerable success with re-balling.