Is there a way to check the health of a PCIe SSD?
January 11th, 2014
prozac4312 replied: So this weekend I'm trading a guy on my local Craigslist for his 180GB OCZ RevoDrive...he's going to show me that it's functional when I pick it up...but is that all there is that needs done to check its health--either it works or it doesn't?
From what I understand, an SSD either works or it don’t. Third party information, so correct me if I am wrong anyone…
Just because an SSD works it doesn’t mean it’s problem free,As they say “things aren’t always as they seem”
Ideally you’d wanna have it checked while it’s connected to his PC,Use HDTune Pro and have a look at health
tab,I guess you could ask him to install it and provide you with a screenshot,But if you wanna be
on the safe side,Doing it on the spot is best,Just saying,He might be able to source it from google and then
you’ll get screwed. Check these attributes in particular:
raw read error rate
write error rate
spin/up retry count
reallocated sector count
reallocated event count
current pending sector
reported uncorrectable errors
If they’re all on 0 it’s all good,Otherwise,Better avoid.
Roberto400 replied: Check these attributes in particular
So SSD’s face the same issues as HDD’s?
SmAsHeDr replied: So SSD's face the same issues as HDD's?
Partially yep,An SSD can also have bad sectors,firmware problems or a faulty controller.
Roberto400 replied: An SSD can also have bad sectors.
Really, do they just kinda die out like on flash memory?
Roberto400 replied: firmware problems or a faulty controller.
Wouldn’t these issues prevent the drive from working entirely?
SmAsHeDr replied: Really, do they just kinda die out like on flash memory?
You do know that SSDs are made from flash memory,Right? They have much better longevity
however in compare to flash drives.
SmAsHeDr replied: Wouldn't these issues prevent the drive from working entirely?
Not necessarily,It depends on the severity,And firmware problems can often be fixed with an update (seagate
had tons of those a while back)
Roberto400 replied: You do know that SSDs are made from flash memory,Right? They have much better longevity however in compare to flash drives.
Oh yea, I know the technology is all similar, just didn’t know how much different it was.
SmAsHeDr replied: Wouldn't these issues prevent the drive from working entirely?
Not necessarily,It depends on the severity,And firmware problems can often be fixed with an update (seagate had tons of those a while back)[/quote]
I figured as much, all good information to know.
HDTune doesn’t work well with SSDs. The results from it vary for me compared to stuff like ATTO. Maybe they changed it but who knows. Also, @Roberto400 three those tests are for mechanical drives only. HDTune will run different tests for SSDs compared to mechanical. Even if it did show stuff like the Spin Up/Retry count as ok it wont matter since SSDs don’t spin in the first place. That was just an example. As far as bad sectors go, a few is fine.
Afaik there isn’t a reliable tool to test RevoDrives or other PCI-E drives in general. You could try SSDLife but I’m not sure whether it supports them or not.
Try running Sandra or ATTO and checking whether it performs up to par with it’s benchmarks that you could find online.
To actually answer your question.
PCI_E is a port like any other port, the only difference is data speed transfer, so it doesn’t matter if your plugged into pci or a sata, its only different speed.
Now to check its life get SSDLIFE, or Crystaldisk info, this will show you what condition the drive is in, just make sure TRIM is working.
I hope your running windows 7, it has the best TRIM support.
P.S. Only use the temp version and do not run any cracks for ssd life they are all infected with a trojan.