I'm not finding anything regarding getting anything back from the SSD. BIOS does not see it, Windows does not see it, and I just installed Magician and that's no good either. I'm guessing the BIOS/OS is TRYING to locate it.... startups with the SSD plugged in takes 8-10 minutes so something is happening somewhere. I just can't figure out how to access/salvage the SSD.

Pity as most reviews point that Samsung SSDs are really good and I'm quite annoyed that the 840 series (non-Pro) only have 3 years warranty while the newer ones go up to 5 years.

I'm not trying to get the last word but I know exactly the "health" of my Samsung 950 PRO M.2 256 GB SSD by using Samsung Magician software included with the SSD. It show exactly how many bytes I've written to the SSD as well as other S.M.A.R.T data and there is a max mumber of bytes u can write - thats degradation but as I said any electronics can drop dead due to many reasons.

As far as I know you this relates to writing to the SSD, you should always be able to read back the data even if you surpassed number of writes. However as I said anything with electronics can drop dead anytime but it seems very strange it correlates with Ice W10 update.

So in short, I disagree with ya... but damn Bruce Springsteen is good (listening to Ghost of Tom Joad)

Basically, it shouldn't have died from "natural causes" just yet. It's my gaming drive so very little gets written on it after the initial install. I'm guessing some freak electrical accident must've been the cause. I **HAD** been binge-watching The Flash after all. I'm starting to get worried about my Cruicial M4 now though. I had always operated under the idea that even with their "shorter lifespans," the average user should see a good 5+ years of service out of these things.

In my opinion no.

Here is the info for my Samsung 950 Pro and I guess your Samsung was pretty close to this specs....



Checking my stats in Samsung Magician I've written 0.5 TB after 6+ months use as an W7 OS disk. Thats very long time until I hit 400 TB writes to my SSD. I will be dead and 6 feet under before that happens

Now he plays "Johnny 99" and are equally good! Sorry for rum induced influenses - but damn he is good

Well, according to the warranty website, the smallest TBW is 35 for a 128GB 750 SSD. That's 11TBW per year over the 3 year warranty period. On a 128GB SSD. That's like filling the SSD then emptying it 88x per year for 3 years. Even for a gaming SSD, I'm quite sure I've not done that much to it.

Now I need to decide what the replacement SSD will be. It'll most likely be another Samsung as they seem to be the leader in this field, maybe an 850 EVO or 850 PRO, 256GB. I'd like the 5-year warranty this time (10-year for PRO).

Given the title of this thread, I timed my system startup with a stopwatch, for what its worth. My system drive is a 500GB SSD. CPU is 8 core FX9590 at 4.7 to 5.0GHz.

I pressed the Computer main power button and pressed the stopwatch start button.

Motherboard BIOS POST: 33 seconds -- lots of hard drives and stuff on my machine. At this point, the Windows 10 software begins Windows Startup activity.

Windows Asks for Password: 45 seconds -- that's 12 additional seconds to above.

At Desktop Ready to Use: 49 seconds -- an additional 4 seconds. A couple programs continue initiating for a few seconds. But, with 8 cores, I can do stuff at this point.

So, all in all, Windows 10 took up 16 seconds. My BIOS and Motherboard took up 33 seconds.

To put it in perspective, I timed Steam startup (Steam on an HD) -- 44 seconds -- now, that's slow

With a clean system, things are noticeably faster. But, I have a lot of stuff. These waits are only "once a day" so, they are very acceptable to me.

Historically, SSDs have high failure rates compared to good Hard Drives. However, we use Samsung SSDs as main system drives in our several computers and have not yet had a failure. A couple machines get used constantly all day -- the others only do "spot duty".

Thanks Allen! Given the title of this thread, Win10 now boots up "acceptably" now. Not bothered to time it but like I said, it's more or less the same as my Win7 boot. My damaged SSD was indeed the culprit.

Can you tell me what Seagate SSDs you are using exactly? I am also thinking, are the speed differences between various SSD types really noticeable in real-world applications? Do I spend the extra money for a 256GB 850 Pro (Read 550MB/s, Write 520MB/s, 100k/90k IOPS) or should I settle for the cheaper 250GB 850 Evo (Read 540MB/s, Write 520MB/s, 97k/88k IOPS)? Will I really miss that 3k/2k IOPS difference for a £36 price difference? Or for £10 more, I could up my capacity to a 480GB SanDisk SSD PLUS (Read 480MB/s, Write 400MB/s) or a 480GB SanDisk Z410 (Read 535MB/s, Write 445MB/s, 35k/69k IOPS)... Capacity is a big thing; I can install more games on it, but I'm not really sure how the difference in MB/s or IOPS affects real-world use.

I posted Seagate SSD in ERROR. I use Seagate HD and Samsung SSD. Sorry. I had Seagate on my mind for another reason.

We have mostly 120GB and 240GB Samsung 840 EVO. My main system uses 500GB 850 EVO for OS and 500GB 840 EVO for games. In summary, I think 120GB works but is marginal for a system SSD (which should be left half empty). 240GB is the sweet spot. 500GB and up is for bragging rights (or for lots of applications that actually need fast drive access).

I truly don't think the speed difference between the fast Samsungs and slow Samsung is worth it -- or even noticeable because start up of the system and games depends on more than the SSD. However, an SSD does give "visibly" faster startup of system and games vs a hard drive (as we know).

Even if something fails, I may not use the warranty (if failure is a couple years down the line).

So, I get the cheap Samsungs.

Thanks for clarifying, Allen. And yes, the Samsung won't be for OS anyway but for games.... or maybe I'll transfer the OS to the new SSD and use the old Crucial for games... I'm not sure yet.

I'm now on Win10 Anniversary Edition (ver. 1607, build 14393.10) and..... my main game at the moment, Stardew Valley, does not run properly on it. It skips between 60 fps where things run smoothly, then goes to 40-44 fps and the game looks and feels very sluggish. I'm reading that this is a known but in the game but the people who report it fail to mention what OS they are running. I'm not having issues with War Thunder on this OS at this moment. Dammit... do I install Win7 or Win10 (non-AE) just to see if Stardew Valley will work? I'm sure it was fine in Win7, before all this crap went down and took the install directory with it!!

HDs are mature tech. They've been around for decades. They still fail, but their reliability is pretty good by now.

SSDs are still new. It's been less than 5 years they've been really consumer-oriented. I think it's to be expected that they have lower reliability. As for the failure modes, yeah, it sucks that unlike an HD that can slowly degrade and give you time to get data off and replace it it seems to have only the "working" and "dead" states, but that's the price we pay for better performance.



The Jedi Master

Hey Ice, did you upgrade the firmware for thisd SSD?? It is a Samsung?? IF so I had done that and when I sent it back in they put in the old Firmware and been running like a champ since then.. so long story short if you upgraded the firmware that could be an issue..

Nope, not updated anything that I know of.

i've never faced this problem of slow boot. it could be a hardware issue. Switch back to 7 can't resolve this problem, you may need to change your mother board to get rid of this problem.

It was confirmed to be a hardware issue, see the posts above.

Well, fun and games comes up again. Opened up the PC today to install a new fan and wondered why it wouldn't boot up. Go to BIOS and discover that the OS SSD (Crucial M4) is now no longer recognized. Tried a new SATA cable on a different SATA port. No go. Tried a different power cable. No go. Unplugged my 850 Evo and plugged the Crucial on that spot, still no go.

[curses and expletives!!]

The disc had no issues at all prior to shut down. I had a few documents and pictures that I had kept on the desktop for easy accessibility.... gone now unless I find some way to put life into the SSD. The biggest annoyance is that I was looking at PCIe NVME or M.2 SATA drives when I was ordering my case fan and decided that I didn't need one yet as I wasn't having issues with my PC. I guess I was tempting fate there.

What is this? Is my PC playing an April Fool's joke on me?

Like I said earlier, the Crucial M4 wasn't showing up in BIOS or in Disk Management in both PCs (new i5 6600K and old i5 750) so it was dead. DEAD. I decided to open up the SSD, just curious to see the inside, nothing burnt or looked worn, so I re-assembled the SSD. 4 screws, one of which was under a warranty sticker... this thing is almost 5 years old so I doubt it was still under warranty.... checked the Crucial website and it said 3 years. So nothing to lose and I'd was able to see the inside of an SSD. Just out of curiousity, I re-connected it to the i5 750 PC, booted it up, and to my surprise, it booted up from the Crucial M4 SSD!! It's ALIVE!!

Plugged it back into my i5 6600K PC and it starts up like nothing's happened. 4 freaking hours of troubleshooting, trying different SATA cables, different power cables, and then it just boots up like nothing's even happened! I do notice my drive letters have been swapped for the E: and D: drives, but that's about it. Ran Samsung Magician... but the new interface gives less info than the old one, but suffice to say, it didn't detect any errors. C-prompt (wmic diskdrive get status) also declares all drives OK.

WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE???!?!!?!!

I'm reluctant to trust this SSD any more... the plan was to "retire" it and put it on my son's PC (the i5 750 one), install Win10 on it, and keep the bare minimum on the drive itself. I think I'll do that sooner (next week) rather than later.

Ran Crystal Disk Info and here's the result:



So the SSD should have YEARS of life left in it, if I've only got it down to 97% in 5 years...

I have seen instances in the past of devices that needed to "discharge" before they would work properly. Unplug it all. Let it sit. Connect it back up to all but the power cord, press the power button. Any charge in the caps should hopefully go away.
Now reconnect as normal and power up. Voila!

It's especially handy on laptops that won't boot. Unplug from power AND remove battery. Press power button (naturally nothing happens). Reconnect battery/power cord, retry.



The Jedi Master

That says % lifetime used!

Surely, if you've used 97% of it's lifespan, it's almost ready for its funeral!!

Indeed!! It would be so funny if my old SSD suddenly powered up....