Samsung 990 Pro: SMART value “Health” drops far too quickly for some

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Several users are reporting an issue with Samsung's current SSD flagship, the 990 Pro. As a result, the remaining durability (Health) counter is declining much faster than expected. According to tools, several percent of the durability is already used up after just a few terabytes of data have been written.

A reader drew the editors' attention to the Neowin report in which the author Robbie Khan addressed the problem described from personal experience. His newly acquired Samsung 990 Pro (test) with 2 TB had already lost 1 percent of the durability indicator after just a few days. After only 2 TB of data was written, the value had dropped from 100 percent to 98 percent and a few days later to 95 percent.

SMART Health score is dropping way too fast

The values ​​are based on SMART parameters and are read out by tools such as CrystalDiskInfo or Samsung's own Magician software. The display should show 100 percent with a new SSD and decrease over time depending on the write volume and the Total Bytes Written (TBW) specified by the manufacturer. In the case of the Samsung 990 Pro with 2 TB, which is specified as 1,200 TB TBW, a few terabytes of written data should not actually be noticeable in the display.

Exactly Calculating with the official TBW data, the SMART value “Health” for the 990 Pro should actually only lose 1 percentage point from 12 TB of written data. With the 1 TB model with 600 TB TBW, it would be 6 TB for 1 percent.

Not an isolated case

But this is obviously not unique to Robbie Khan. At the end of December, other users had already reported the same problem in the ComputerBase forum and in another forum. In the first case, the 990 Pro 1 TB had only written around 1.7 TB of data. Nevertheless, the “health status” said only 96 percent of the durability value. In the second case, with the 2 TB model, it was only 93 percent with about 2 TB of data written.

Even worse is the result that Neil Schofield shares on Twitter as a screenshot. His Samsung 990 Pro is at only 64 percent, although only 2 TB and thus only 0.17 percent of the TBW were written.

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The topic is also being discussed on Reddit. There, for example, one commentator reports only 93 percent “life” with only 1.6 TB of written data.

The Reddit user FCS3 has nicely illustrated the nature of the problem on his Samsung 990 Pro with a progress chart from the Hard Disk Sentinel tool. After a good three weeks in use, but with a very high write load of almost 28 TB combined, his 990 Pro is only at 88 percent.

Health history Samsung 990 Pro and 980 Pro in comparison (Image: u/FCS3)

The 980 Pro compared for comparison is still at 98 percent after more than 36 TB write volume. Both SSDs are officially rated at 1,200 TB TBW.

Just a bug or a serious problem?

The question remains, is it just a It is a display error and the SMART parameters are simply read incorrectly for an unexplained reason. In this case, a firmware update for the 990 Pro should help.

If this is not the case, then the affected SSDs would be far less durable than promised by the manufacturer for reasons that are also unclear. Then it would clearly be a guarantee case.

Warranty request unsuccessful

Robbie Khan has already gone through the warranty request (RMA) route with Samsung. However, the agency responsible for this sent the SSD back, as it was said that no error could be found. However, the problem with the SMART display persisted.

The editors are in contact with Samsung and will report here as soon as the manufacturer comments on the problem.< /p>

The community can help

The ComputerBase community can also help with the clarification by having any affected members take part in the following survey and leave a comment under this news in the event of a problem.

The ad of the written data and the health status is very easy to do, for example with the free tool CrystalDiskInfo (download below). As the screenshot shows, the “Overall State” or “Health Status” as well as the “Writes” in GB are relevant.

An example for reading out the SMART parameters with CrystalDiskInfo

The Samsung tool Magician can also be used to display the corresponding Smart parameters. However, according to Samsung's download pages, the 990 Pro is not officially supported by the tool. Incidentally, this also applies to Samsung's own NVMe driver, which has not been updated for almost three years.

Is your Samsung 990 Pro losing percentages too quickly on the SMART parameter “Health”?

  • Yes, in relation to the volume of writing I have already lost too much percentage.
  • No, the values ​​seem to match the writing volume.
  • I'm not sure (feel free to let me know in the comments).
  • Abstain (Show result)

Please log in to vote!

The editors would like to thank the community members “Mummi74” and “Engaged” for reporting this news.

Downloads


  • CrystalDiskInfo Download

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    CrystalDiskInfo is a comprehensive analysis tool for hard drives and SSDs from all manufacturers.

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