The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

I had trouble with two Intel 600p NVMe SSD devices: read-errors.

It appeared only few tools understand how to get S.M.A.R.T. health information from them, and even then they did not explain the read errors.

I’m going to RMA them, but in case anyone else needs to get health information from NVMe SSD devices, here is which tools do what:

• [Wayback] CrystalDiskInfo version CrystalDiskInfo 8.12.7 ([Wayback/Archive.is] source code) can read the health data, and immediately showed one of the SSDs as bad, but not do a full read-scan of the device.
  The support for NVMe health monitoring via the Intel RST drivers was added in [Wayback/Archive.is] CrystalDiskInfo 8.1.0 Beta2 (found via [Wayback] #1223 (Allow access of NVMe drives behind Intel RST drivers) – smartmontools), and before that other NVMe monitoring code had already been there for quite some time.
• [Wayback] HD Tune version 2.55, though old as in 2008 old, can do a full disk scan and shows the read errors perfectly.
• [Wayback/Archive.is] GSmartControl version 1.1.3 – despite being a few months old – cannot read the health data as it uses a far outdated smartmontools version 6.6:
  

  smartctl 6.6 2017-11-05 r4594 [x86_64-w64-mingw32-w10-b19043] (sf-6.6-1)
  Copyright (C) 2002-17, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

• [Wayback] smartmontools version 7.2 (via command-line tool smartctl) supports reading health data on Windows 10 via the Microsoft NVMe drivers (see [Wayback] NVMe_Support – smartmontools and [Wayback] Changeset 4348 – smartmontools); download via [Wayback/Archive.is] S.M.A.R.T. Monitoring Tools – Browse Files at SourceForge.net. I used this command for it:
  

  smartctl.exe --xall /dev/sdc
  smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-w64-mingw32-w10-b19043] (sf-7.2-1)
  Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
  ...
  Warning  Comp. Temp. Threshold:     70 Celsius
  ...
  === START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
  SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
  - available spare has fallen below threshold
  - media has been placed in read only mode
  ...

• [Wayback] SpeedFan version 4.52 can only read temperature and reference temperature (which seems to be the [Wayback] Intel NVMe Warning Composite Temperature Threshold) likely because it is already 5 years old.
• [Wayback] Intel Memory and Storage Tool (the successor of the – now deprecated, but only Windows < 10 supported – [Wayback] Intel SSD Toolbox) only gets the health status when doing a full diagnostic scan.
  The above two links are to StorageReview as links to the Intel site cannot archived in the Wayback machine nor Acrhive.is due to “you need to sign on“. These are the unarchived Intel links: Intel® Memory and Storage Tool (GUI) (download page) and Intel® SSD Toolbox (download page).

So basically, CrystalDiskInfo and HD Tune are my first line of checking for drive issues, followed by smartmontools to get text output, then by vendor specific tools to assist with the RMA.

In the past, I used another smartmontools wrapper, but it was discontinued and had an even older version than GSmartControl: Source: Closed: HDD Guardian – Home.

On Intel 600p becoming locked in read-only mode after failure:

• [Archive.is] Intel Clarifies 600p SSD Endurance Limitations, But TBW Ratings Can Be Misleading (Updated) | Tom’s Hardware
• [Archive.is] Intel Quietly Increases The 600p SSD Series Endurance Ratings | Tom’s Hardware

Start of Intel RMA procedure via [Wayback] Warranty Information.

My case looks remarkably similar to [Wayback] Full Diagnostic Scan always fails during Read Scan on my SSD 600p Series 256GB – Intel Community.

A few screenshots of the tools I used for health information:

–jeroen

https://gist.github.com/jpluimers/689fdc18e0180b1a8bd6a159d1159f88