Help interpret Crystal Disk (bad health) - Windows Bootcamp on Mac

Susie101

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Apr 9, 2015
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I am running Bootcamp on a MacBook Pro retina and Crystal Disk says my hard drive health is "bad." I was first aware of an issue with my hard drive when Windows popped up with a "Windows detected a hard disk problem" message. I am trying to understand what exactly is wrong, and how likely my hard drive is to fail in the near future. Apple wants to charge me $30 for an online chat because warranty's expired. They haven't been helpful with other computer problems I've faced so I would rather get outside opinions.

If anyone can help interpret the Crystal Disk data, I would greatly appreciate it (on display bad part is listed as; ID = AD, Attribute Name = Vendor Specific, Current = 99, Worst = 99, Threshold = 100, Raw Values = 0B4D0BE70B8E). Here is the detailed printout:

OS : Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)
Date : 2015/04/08 21:55:31

-- Controller Map ----------------------------------------------------------
+ Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller [ATA]
+ ATA Channel 0 (0)
- APPLE SSD SM0512F ATA Device

-- Disk List ---------------------------------------------------------------
(1) APPLE SSD SM0512F : 500.2 GB [0/0/0, pd1]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) APPLE SSD SM0512F
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Model : APPLE SSD SM0512F
Firmware : UXM2JA1Q
Serial Number : S1K5NYADB26885
Disk Size : 500.2 GB (8.4/137.4/500.2/500.2)
Buffer Size : Unknown
Queue Depth : 32
# of Sectors : 977105060
Rotation Rate : ---- (SSD)
Interface : Serial ATA
Major Version : ATA8-ACS
Minor Version : ATA8-ACS version 4c
Transfer Mode : SATA/600 | SATA/600
Power On Hours : 4547 hours
Power On Count : 5308 count
Temperature : 47 C (116 F)
Health Status : Bad
Features : S.M.A.R.T., AAM, 48bit LBA, NCQ, TRIM
APM Level : ----
AAM Level : 8000h [OFF]

-- S.M.A.R.T. --------------------------------------------------------------
ID Cur Wor Thr RawValues(6) Attribute Name
01 200 200 __0 000000000000 Read Error Rate
05 100 100 __0 000000000000 Reallocated Sectors Count
09 _99 _99 __0 0000000011C3 Power-On Hours
0C _94 _94 __0 0000000014BC Power Cycle Count
A9 253 253 _10 03BA29001E00 Vendor Specific
AD _99 _99 100 0B4D0BE70B8E Vendor Specific
AE _99 _99 __0 0000006193AE Vendor Specific
AF _99 _99 __0 0000007AAC61 Vendor Specific
C0 _99 _99 __0 000000000021 Unsafe Shutdown Count
C2 _53 _53 __0 00460011002F Temperature
C5 100 100 __0 000000000000 Current Pending Sector Count
C7 200 199 __0 000000000000 Vendor Specific
F0 100 100 __0 000000000000 Vendor Specific

-- IDENTIFY_DEVICE ---------------------------------------------------------
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
000: 0040 3FFF C837 0010 0000 0000 003F 0000 0000 0000
010: 5331 4B35 4E59 4144 4232 3638 3835 2020 2020 2020
020: 0000 0000 0000 5558 4D32 4A41 3151 4150 504C 4520
030: 5353 4420 534D 3035 3132 4620 2020 2020 2020 2020
040: 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 8010 4000 2F00
050: 4000 0200 0200 0007 3FFF 0010 003F FC10 00FB 0110
060: FFFF 0FFF 0000 0007 0003 0078 0078 0078 0078 0E00
070: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 001F 050E 0006 0044 0040
080: 01FC 0039 746B 7F01 4163 7469 BC01 4163 407F 0003
090: 0010 0000 FFFE 0000 8000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
100: 70A4 3A3D 0000 0000 0000 0008 6003 0000 5002 5386
110: 5558 4D30 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 4018
120: 4018 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0029 0000
130: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
140: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
150: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
160: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0001
170: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
180: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
190: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
200: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 4000
210: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0001 0000 8188
220: 0000 0000 103F 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
230: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0800 0000 0000 0000 0000
240: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
250: 0000 0000 BF3F 3F3F 3F3F 1E3F

-- SMART_READ_DATA ---------------------------------------------------------
+0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8 +9 +A +B +C +D +E +F
000: 28 00 01 1A 00 C8 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 33
010: 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 32 00 63 63 C3
020: 11 00 00 00 00 00 0C 32 00 5E 5E BC 14 00 00 00
030: 00 00 A9 13 00 FD FD 00 1E 00 29 BA 03 00 AD 36
040: 00 63 63 8E 0B E7 0B 4D 0B 00 AE 22 00 63 63 AE
050: 93 61 00 00 00 00 AF 22 00 63 63 61 AC 7A 00 00
060: 00 00 C0 12 00 63 63 21 00 00 00 00 00 00 C2 22
070: 00 35 35 2F 00 11 00 46 00 00 C5 22 00 64 64 00
080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 C7 1A 00 C8 C7 00 00 00 00 00
090: 00 00 F0 22 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0A0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0C0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0F0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
100: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
110: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
120: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
130: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
140: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
150: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
160: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 5F
170: 03 00 01 00 02 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
180: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
190: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1A0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1C0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1F0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 FD

-- SMART_READ_THRESHOLD ----------------------------------------------------
+0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8 +9 +A +B +C +D +E +F
000: 28 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 00
010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 00 00 00 00 00
020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 0C 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
030: 00 00 A9 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 AD 64
040: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 AE 00 00 00 00 00
050: 00 00 00 00 00 00 AF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
060: 00 00 C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C2 00
070: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C5 00 00 00 00 00
080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 C7 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
090: 00 00 F0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0A0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0C0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0F0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
100: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
110: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
120: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
130: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
140: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
150: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
160: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
170: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
180: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
190: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1A0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1C0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1F0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 9E

 
Welcome to Tom's Hardware, Susie!

I strongly recommend you to back up the data from that same drive somewhere else ASAP! I'd also recommend you to try using a couple of other third-party utilities to test the drive and compare the results. Here's a thread with some suggestions: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1926483/ssd-diagnostic-tools.html
If the other results show that the SSD is bad, then I'd suggest you to contact Apple support and ask for an RMA on the SSD.

Keep me posted though! :)
SuperSoph_WD
 

Susie101

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Apr 9, 2015
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Hi SuperSoph - thanks for the welcome. I tried SSDLife which says my disk is healthy so now I'm super confused. It also says "unfortunately, it's not possible to display accurate health drive values, since your model of SSD drive does not provide detailed wear out information."

When I check the SMART the row with ID AD seems to have similar information as what Crystal Disk displayed. (ID = AD, Name = unknown attribute, Value = 63, worst = 63, threshold = 64, RAW value = B4E0BE80B92). Since SSDLife isn't able to give a precise number, does that mean Crystal Disk is likely more accurate? I know I got the popup "Windows has detected a hard disk problem" a few days ago. Today Crystal Disk status changed from healthy to bad.

I've had my MacBook Pro for over a year now so don't think the RMA process is available for me. :( Would be glad if anyone has insights, I will be trying to get in contact with Apple tomorrow once their normal business hours start.



 
Well, in this case, you are most probably dealing with a faulty SSD, indeed. I'm afraid there's not much you can do about it, except save your data. :( Despite everything, do contact Apple about this and check the warranty coverage for your Mac computer. Another thing you could try until tomorrow is going to your SSD manufacturer's website and check the warranty of the SSD itself. They might have a web platform where you could type the serial number of the SSD (you can check the diagnostics/testing utilities, they should display it) and see if it's still covered by the OEM warranty. Drives rarely have have less than 2 years limited warranty, so there's still hope to get a replacement by the manufacturer or the OEM.

Good luck! Hope I was helpful!
SuperSoph_WD
 

Susie101

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Apr 9, 2015
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OK - so I believe I have a Samsung SSD, but is there any way to determine the model without taking apart the laptop? Samsung doesn't seem to have a web platform where you can put in the serial number (which I have) - you need to first register by model type...



 


Go to Disk Utility on your Mac computer, here's a link that explains where you can find it: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=0TwzQp
Once you open the Disk Utility, at the the bottom there should be a Disk Description where the SSD should be listed with it's model number.

SuperSoph_WD
 

Susie101

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Apr 9, 2015
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Well I got a blue screen error this morning, does this confirm my SSD is failing on me?

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 34
BCP1: 0000000000000107
BCP2: FFFFFFFFC0000420
BCP3: 0000000000000000
BCP4: 0000000000000000
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\040915-11185-01.dmp
C:\Users\Van\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-27768-0.sysdata.xml
 
@Susie101, I would expect that Apple's tech support would be used to dealing with people who describe their problems in terms of beeps, balloons and beachballs rather than bits and bytes, so I think you are right to hang onto your cash. That said, I don't understand what is happening with your SSD, but FWIW I've attempted to analyse the data.

CrystalDiskInfo is assessing the health of your drive by examining the Current and Worst normalised values and determining whether any of them have fallen below their Threshold. As you can see, this is the case with attribute AD (99 < 100). I don't know the meaning of this attribute (and apparently neither do CDI or SSDLife), but FWIW it appears that the raw value consists of 3 hexadecimal values.

0B4D0BE70B8E -> 0x0B4D / 0x0BE7 / 0x0B8E

The serial number (S1K5NYADB26885) does look like a Samsung number, so you could try Samsung's SSD SMART tool (Magician). However, I haven't used it, so I don't know how useful it would be. An alternative that is well supported by the Linux community is smartctl (GSmartControl is the Windows version).

As for the apparently different output from SSDLife compared with CDI, the two sets of data are actually the same. CDI is reporting the Current, Worst and Threshold values in decimal format whereas SSDLife is reporting them in hexadecimal (100 = 0x64, 99 = 0x63).

In fact CDI displays the actual data reported by the drive in two 512-byte blocks. If you carve out the data, they look like the following. Notice that columns 3 and 4 contain the normalised values while columns 5 - B are the raw values (low byte first). Column 0 is the attribute ID. Column 1 denotes the attribute type, so it appears that attribute AD is somewhat special.

SMART_READ_DATA

00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B

01 1A 00 C8 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
05 33 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
09 32 00 63 63 C3 11 00 00 00 00 00
0C 32 00 5E 5E BC 14 00 00 00 00 00
A9 13 00 FD FD 00 1E 00 29 BA 03 00
AD 36 00 63 63 8E 0B E7 0B 4D 0B 00
AE 22 00 63 63 AE 93 61 00 00 00 00
AF 22 00 63 63 61 AC 7A 00 00 00 00
C0 12 00 63 63 21 00 00 00 00 00 00
C2 22 00 35 35 2F 00 11 00 46 00 00
C5 22 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
C7 1A 00 C8 C7 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
F0 22 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

SMART_READ_THRESHOLD

00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B

01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
05 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0C 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
A9 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
AD 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
AE 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
AF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
C2 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
C5 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
C7 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
F0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

FYI, here is another user that is experiencing the same problem:

http://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/2yxh1m/late2013_macbook_pro_13_retina_ssd_issues/

Attribute 173 (= 0xAD) is identified (by smartctl) as "Wear_Leveling_Count", but IMO this doesn't make sense.

The user states that the attribute began life with a value of 200 and has now fallen to 68.

Its raw value is 0x0EE40F7D0F34, which again appears to have 3 similar parts, namely 0x0EE4 / 0x0F7D / 0x0F34.

This means that a raw value of 0x0F34 corresponds to a loss of 132 points (200 - 68), which works out to 29.5 counts per point (= 0x0f34 / 132). Your own data corresponds to 29.3 counts per point (= 0x0B8E / 101). That is, every time the raw value increases by about 30, the normalised value drops by 1. The consistency in the results appears to confirm my assumptions as to the structure of this attribute, whatever it is.

Your temperature attribute (00460011002F) appears to be indicating that the current, max, and min temperatures for the current power cycle are 47C (= 0x2F), 70C (= 0x46) and 17C (= 0x11). Perhaps 70C could be a cause for concern.

 
I've had a few more thoughts about this problem.

In that other thread smartctl is telling us that the AD, AE, and AF attributes have the following meanings:

AD/173 Wear_Leveling_Count -OS-CK
AE/174 Host_Reads_MiB -O---K
AF/175 Host_Writes_MiB -O---K

The attribute type designators are defined as follows:

P prefailure warning
O updated online
S speed/performance
R error rate
C event count
K auto-keep

Your AD attribute has the following raw components (hexadecimal / decimal):

0x0B4D / 0x0BE7 / 0x0B8E = 2893 / 3047 / 2958

I suspect that these may be the minimum, maximum, and average (current?) values for the attribute.

Manufacturers of NAND flash memory specify a number of Program/Erase (P/E) cycles for their chips. This number is typically of the order of 3000 or 5000, and represents the number of times each memory cell can be erased and reprogrammed before it wears out. The SSD's flash controller tries to ensure that each memory cell is subjected to the same number of P/E cycles by using a wear leveling algorithm. ISTM that the min, max and average values of the AD attribute may be reflecting the spread of P/E cycles over the entire NAND array. So the attribute begins life with 0 P/E cycles (normalised value = 200), hits the wear-out threshold at 3000 P/E cycles (normalised value = 100), and bottoms out at a normalised value of 0 at 6000 P/E cycles.

Therefore it would appear that your SSD is worn out. But how does this correlate with attribute AF, Host_Writes_MiB? According to smartctl the raw value represents the total data written to the drive over the SATA interface, expressed in MiB. In your case this is 7.7TiB.

0x7AAC61 MiB = 7.7 TiB

http://www.google.com/search?q=0x7AAC61+MiB+in+TiB

The capacity of the drive is 500GB, so this means that the drive's capacity has been rewritten approximately 17 times:

0x7AAC61 MiB / 500 GB = 16.9

http://www.google.com/search?q=0x7AAC61+MiB+%2F+500+GB

So how is it possible that an essentially uniform wear leveling algorithm has resulted in 3000 P/E cycles when the total number of write cycles from the host is only 17?

SSDs do normally write more data internally than they receive externally. This is called Write Amplification. However this ratio is usually less than 2:1 whereas the ratio in your case is about 176:1 (= 3000 / 17).

ISTM that, either smartctl has defined the attributes incorrectly, or the firmware has some kind of bug. Certainly there is nothing in any of the other attributes that would suggest that there are any errors of any kind. ISTM that your SMART data are telling us that your drive is old and tired, but perfectly healthy.
 
It appears that my bytes have scared off the OP. :-(

For the benefit of anyone who cares, the 3 threads that I have been analysing, including this one, share some common factors. Each person was using Windows, either Win7 or Win8. The SSDs were Apple's OEM version of a Samsung design (SM0512F and SM0256F). All reported exceeding the threshold for SMART attribute AD/173 (Wear_Leveling_Count ?), yet all had low hours, low writes, and zero errors. This would raise the question, is Windows in some way responsible for prematurely wearing out the SSD, if indeed that is what is happening, or is Mac OS simply keeping quiet about a problem that is present under all platforms? I would ask this question at Apple's forums. If there is a problem, then I expect that SM0128F and SM1024F SSDs would also be affected.