RE: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD
From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of mike smith Sent: Tuesday, 25 March 2014 4:55 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: Re: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD After reading some technical stuff on SSDs several weeks ago and how they work and wear-levelling and the like I became a bit worried and moved the swap file to a HDD in an attempt to cut down the writes. It's actually a bit worrying how SSDs work when you look into them. Whilst the idea of a really fast swap file is nice, the implementation of SSD's suggest that its a bad combo. Unless you do something like use a dedicated SSD for the swap drive, and eat the cost when it dies. I'm still a bit wary about the integrity of 'dirty' data on the swap file getting written thru to a magnetic drive. Thoughts? Just about every laptop sold today is SSD only – no option to put the swap file on a mechanical drive, and there doesn’t seem to be widespread reports of mass failure of laptop drives. As I mentioned in the previous post (and you can check on the main tech forums like AnandTech etc.), current generation SSDs seem capable of many terabytes of writes. Cheers Ken
Re: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD
On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 3:55 PM, mike smith meski...@gmail.com wrote: Whilst the idea of a really fast swap file is nice, the implementation of SSD's suggest that its a bad combo. Unless you do something like use a dedicated SSD for the swap drive, and eat the cost when it dies. I'm still a bit wary about the integrity of 'dirty' data on the swap file getting written thru to a magnetic drive. Thoughts? In practical terms - how much does your machine swap these days anyway? If you have a good dev lappy you probably have 8-16 GB of RAM. David Connors da...@connors.com | M +61 417 189 363 Download my v-card: https://www.codify.com/cards/davidconnors Follow me on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/davidconnors Connect with me on LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/davidjohnconnors
RE: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD
Hi Greg, Always horrible to hear that. What sort of drive was it? Regards, Greg Dr Greg Low 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913 fax SQL Down Under | Web: http://www.sqldownunder.com/ www.sqldownunder.com From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Tuesday, 25 March 2014 2:00 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Folks, I have a warning post: Since I installed a fresh Windows 7 on an SSD as Xmas I've been suspicious of how one time in 20 it will stop and say Bad boot drive and I have to power off and on again and then it always starts okay. No other symptoms have been observed. Well today, I was shutting down my PC when it blue screened on the way down, it said SERVICE_EXCEPTION. Just to be safe I rebooted it normally to check it was okay. First problem. IE 32-bit shortcut says it's invalid, but I can see the iexplore.exe in the correct place. Double-clicking it does nothing. The 64-bit iexplore.exe tells me The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. Then I notice most of my Start menu All Programs are gone. The Administrative Tools menu is empty. I searched for an hour but none of the advice is relevant or useful. Last known good config recover did nothing. I even thought I had a virus, but found no evidence. Finally I did a chkdsk C: /F and rebooted and I saw about 20 repairs (including iexplore.exe) and now it seems to be back to normal. However I suspect the SSD is about to die unpredictably and all of my mysterious symptoms were side effects. I'm just posting this in case it might be useful for someone in a similar situation. Now I'm going to the shops to get a new SSD and psych myself up for a possible Windows reinstall over the whole weekend. At Xmas it took 4 x 12 hour days to get to a satisfactory working state. Greg K
RE: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD
My guess is a drive based on a SandForce controller. You've described the symptoms I had before my SandForce SDD died a couple of years ago. I was going to replace it with a newer SandForce drive until I Googled a bit and then opted to go with an Intel 510 which used a Marvell controller and have had no problems with it. I'd back up everything you want to keep that is on that drive ASAP. Ben From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of GregAtGregLowDotCom Sent: Tuesday, 25 March 2014 11:26 AM To: ozDotNet Subject: RE: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Hi Greg, Always horrible to hear that. What sort of drive was it? Regards, Greg Dr Greg Low 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913 fax SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.comhttp://www.sqldownunder.com/ From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.commailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Tuesday, 25 March 2014 2:00 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Folks, I have a warning post: Since I installed a fresh Windows 7 on an SSD as Xmas I've been suspicious of how one time in 20 it will stop and say Bad boot drive and I have to power off and on again and then it always starts okay. No other symptoms have been observed. Well today, I was shutting down my PC when it blue screened on the way down, it said SERVICE_EXCEPTION. Just to be safe I rebooted it normally to check it was okay. First problem. IE 32-bit shortcut says it's invalid, but I can see the iexplore.exe in the correct place. Double-clicking it does nothing. The 64-bit iexplore.exe tells me The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. Then I notice most of my Start menu All Programs are gone. The Administrative Tools menu is empty. I searched for an hour but none of the advice is relevant or useful. Last known good config recover did nothing. I even thought I had a virus, but found no evidence. Finally I did a chkdsk C: /F and rebooted and I saw about 20 repairs (including iexplore.exe) and now it seems to be back to normal. However I suspect the SSD is about to die unpredictably and all of my mysterious symptoms were side effects. I'm just posting this in case it might be useful for someone in a similar situation. Now I'm going to the shops to get a new SSD and psych myself up for a possible Windows reinstall over the whole weekend. At Xmas it took 4 x 12 hour days to get to a satisfactory working state. Greg K This email is intended for the named recipient only. The information it contains may be confidential or commercially sensitive. If you are not the intended recipient you must not reproduce or distribute any part of this email, disclose its contents to any other party, or take any action in reliance on it. If you have received this email in error, please contact the sender immediately and delete the message from your computer.
Re: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD
I'd also not trust the backups from now on either. I.e. don't overwrite previous backups with current ones, until you can check that the contents haven't been corrupted already. -- Regards, *Mark Hurd*, B.Sc.(Ma.)(Hons.) On 25 March 2014 14:20, ben.robb...@jlta.com.au wrote: My guess is a drive based on a SandForce controller. You’ve described the symptoms I had before my SandForce SDD died a couple of years ago. I was going to replace it with a newer SandForce drive until I Googled a bit and then opted to go with an Intel 510 which used a Marvell controller and have had no problems with it. I’d back up everything you want to keep that is on that drive ASAP. Ben *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *GregAtGregLowDotCom *Sent:* Tuesday, 25 March 2014 11:26 AM *To:* ozDotNet *Subject:* RE: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Hi Greg, Always horrible to hear that. What sort of drive was it? Regards, Greg Dr Greg Low 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913fax SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [ mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Greg Keogh *Sent:* Tuesday, 25 March 2014 2:00 PM *To:* ozDotNet *Subject:* [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Folks, I have a warning post: Since I installed a fresh Windows 7 on an SSD as Xmas I've been suspicious of how one time in 20 it will stop and say Bad boot drive and I have to power off and on again and then it always starts okay. No other symptoms have been observed. Well today, I was shutting down my PC when it blue screened on the way down, it said SERVICE_EXCEPTION. Just to be safe I rebooted it normally to check it was okay. First problem. IE 32-bit shortcut says it's invalid, but I can see the iexplore.exe in the correct place. Double-clicking it does nothing. The 64-bit iexplore.exe tells me The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. Then I notice most of my Start menu All Programs are gone. The Administrative Tools menu is empty. I searched for an hour but none of the advice is relevant or useful. Last known good config recover did nothing. I even thought I had a virus, but found no evidence. Finally I did a chkdsk C: /F and rebooted and I saw about 20 repairs (including iexplore.exe) and now it seems to be back to normal. However I suspect the SSD is about to die unpredictably and all of my mysterious symptoms were side effects. I'm just posting this in case it might be useful for someone in a similar situation. Now I'm going to the shops to get a new SSD and psych myself up for a possible Windows reinstall over the whole weekend. At Xmas it took 4 x 12 hour days to get to a satisfactory working state. *Greg K* This email is intended for the named recipient only. The information it contains may be confidential or commercially sensitive. If you are not the intended recipient you must not reproduce or distribute any part of this email, disclose its contents to any other party, or take any action in reliance on it. If you have received this email in error, please contact the sender immediately and delete the message from your computer.
RE: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD
I had something similar not too long ago. I have a 128g SSD that all it's had was my Virtualboxes on it. After the same thing happen and after some investigation I removed the SSD for a large Velicoraptor drive. The diffence between the SSD and Velicoraptor is minor in speed but I was sceptical that the SSD wasn't going to hold up. As much as I'd like SSD's I have seen quite few fail over the past 2yrs. The SSD in this machine had been running for easy over 12mths without a hiccup. I moved all my development to a set of VM's so if something goes wrong I can be back up and running in what it takes to bring back a backup. Good luck. From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Tuesday, 25 March 2014 2:00 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Folks, I have a warning post: Since I installed a fresh Windows 7 on an SSD as Xmas I've been suspicious of how one time in 20 it will stop and say Bad boot drive and I have to power off and on again and then it always starts okay. No other symptoms have been observed. Well today, I was shutting down my PC when it blue screened on the way down, it said SERVICE_EXCEPTION. Just to be safe I rebooted it normally to check it was okay. First problem. IE 32-bit shortcut says it's invalid, but I can see the iexplore.exe in the correct place. Double-clicking it does nothing. The 64-bit iexplore.exe tells me The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. Then I notice most of my Start menu All Programs are gone. The Administrative Tools menu is empty. I searched for an hour but none of the advice is relevant or useful. Last known good config recover did nothing. I even thought I had a virus, but found no evidence. Finally I did a chkdsk C: /F and rebooted and I saw about 20 repairs (including iexplore.exe) and now it seems to be back to normal. However I suspect the SSD is about to die unpredictably and all of my mysterious symptoms were side effects. I'm just posting this in case it might be useful for someone in a similar situation. Now I'm going to the shops to get a new SSD and psych myself up for a possible Windows reinstall over the whole weekend. At Xmas it took 4 x 12 hour days to get to a satisfactory working state. Greg K
Re: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD
Chaps, it's a SanDisk 240MB, which is suspicious regarding your comments! I just went up to MSY and got a replacement, a Kingston this time, not another SanDisk. The shop guy said they'll send the SSD back to be analysed and either repaired or replaced. I told him it was my C: drive so I'll have to reinstall before I can give him the old one. After reading some technical stuff on SSDs several weeks ago and how they work and wear-levelling and the like I became a bit worried and moved the swap file to a HDD in an attempt to cut down the writes. It's actually a bit worrying how SSDs work when you look into them. If the C: drive can stay on life support until the weekend I'll be happy. Luckily the main work I'm on at the moment is inside a VM on a HDD D: drive. *Greg* On 25 March 2014 14:50, ben.robb...@jlta.com.au wrote: My guess is a drive based on a SandForce controller. You’ve described the symptoms I had before my SandForce SDD died a couple of years ago. I was going to replace it with a newer SandForce drive until I Googled a bit and then opted to go with an Intel 510 which used a Marvell controller and have had no problems with it. I’d back up everything you want to keep that is on that drive ASAP. Ben *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *GregAtGregLowDotCom *Sent:* Tuesday, 25 March 2014 11:26 AM *To:* ozDotNet *Subject:* RE: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Hi Greg, Always horrible to hear that. What sort of drive was it? Regards, Greg Dr Greg Low 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913 fax SQL Down Under | Web: www.sqldownunder.com *From:* ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [ mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] *On Behalf Of *Greg Keogh *Sent:* Tuesday, 25 March 2014 2:00 PM *To:* ozDotNet *Subject:* [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Folks, I have a warning post: Since I installed a fresh Windows 7 on an SSD as Xmas I've been suspicious of how one time in 20 it will stop and say Bad boot drive and I have to power off and on again and then it always starts okay. No other symptoms have been observed. Well today, I was shutting down my PC when it blue screened on the way down, it said SERVICE_EXCEPTION. Just to be safe I rebooted it normally to check it was okay. First problem. IE 32-bit shortcut says it's invalid, but I can see the iexplore.exe in the correct place. Double-clicking it does nothing. The 64-bit iexplore.exe tells me The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. Then I notice most of my Start menu All Programs are gone. The Administrative Tools menu is empty. I searched for an hour but none of the advice is relevant or useful. Last known good config recover did nothing. I even thought I had a virus, but found no evidence. Finally I did a chkdsk C: /F and rebooted and I saw about 20 repairs (including iexplore.exe) and now it seems to be back to normal. However I suspect the SSD is about to die unpredictably and all of my mysterious symptoms were side effects. I'm just posting this in case it might be useful for someone in a similar situation. Now I'm going to the shops to get a new SSD and psych myself up for a possible Windows reinstall over the whole weekend. At Xmas it took 4 x 12 hour days to get to a satisfactory working state. *Greg K* This email is intended for the named recipient only. The information it contains may be confidential or commercially sensitive. If you are not the intended recipient you must not reproduce or distribute any part of this email, disclose its contents to any other party, or take any action in reliance on it. If you have received this email in error, please contact the sender immediately and delete the message from your computer.
RE: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD
SandForce is not SanDisk (SanForce has been acquired by LSI, anyway). I’m not sure who manufactured for SandForce – they are described as a fabless manufacturing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabless_semiconductor_company company. (that’s not fabulous J ) Look them up on Wikipedia. I don’t know where the components for your particular SanDisk SSD were made. It is interesting that the latest supercomputers, just funded by US government bodies, have been designed to use massive amounts of RAM (SSD) rather than an ever-increasing CPU count. It seems to indicate that there are SSDs and SSDs (and probably, controllers). _ Ian Thomas Victoria Park, Western Australia From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 12:16 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: Re: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Chaps, it's a SanDisk 240MB, which is suspicious regarding your comments! I just went up to MSY and got a replacement, a Kingston this time, not another SanDisk. The shop guy said they'll send the SSD back to be analysed and either repaired or replaced. I told him it was my C: drive so I'll have to reinstall before I can give him the old one. After reading some technical stuff on SSDs several weeks ago and how they work and wear-levelling and the like I became a bit worried and moved the swap file to a HDD in an attempt to cut down the writes. It's actually a bit worrying how SSDs work when you look into them. If the C: drive can stay on life support until the weekend I'll be happy. Luckily the main work I'm on at the moment is inside a VM on a HDD D: drive. Greg On 25 March 2014 14:50, ben.robb...@jlta.com.au wrote: My guess is a drive based on a SandForce controller. You’ve described the symptoms I had before my SandForce SDD died a couple of years ago. I was going to replace it with a newer SandForce drive until I Googled a bit and then opted to go with an Intel 510 which used a Marvell controller and have had no problems with it. I’d back up everything you want to keep that is on that drive ASAP. Ben From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of GregAtGregLowDotCom Sent: Tuesday, 25 March 2014 11:26 AM To: ozDotNet Subject: RE: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Hi Greg, Always horrible to hear that. What sort of drive was it? Regards, Greg Dr Greg Low 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913 fax SQL Down Under | Web: http://www.sqldownunder.com/ www.sqldownunder.com From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Tuesday, 25 March 2014 2:00 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Folks, I have a warning post: Since I installed a fresh Windows 7 on an SSD as Xmas I've been suspicious of how one time in 20 it will stop and say Bad boot drive and I have to power off and on again and then it always starts okay. No other symptoms have been observed. Well today, I was shutting down my PC when it blue screened on the way down, it said SERVICE_EXCEPTION. Just to be safe I rebooted it normally to check it was okay. First problem. IE 32-bit shortcut says it's invalid, but I can see the iexplore.exe in the correct place. Double-clicking it does nothing. The 64-bit iexplore.exe tells me The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. Then I notice most of my Start menu All Programs are gone. The Administrative Tools menu is empty. I searched for an hour but none of the advice is relevant or useful. Last known good config recover did nothing. I even thought I had a virus, but found no evidence. Finally I did a chkdsk C: /F and rebooted and I saw about 20 repairs (including iexplore.exe) and now it seems to be back to normal. However I suspect the SSD is about to die unpredictably and all of my mysterious symptoms were side effects. I'm just posting this in case it might be useful for someone in a similar situation. Now I'm going to the shops to get a new SSD and psych myself up for a possible Windows reinstall over the whole weekend. At Xmas it took 4 x 12 hour days to get to a satisfactory working state. Greg K This email is intended for the named recipient only. The information it contains may be confidential or commercially sensitive. If you are not the intended recipient you must not reproduce or distribute any part of this email, disclose its contents to any other party, or take any action in reliance on it. If you have received this email in error, please contact the sender immediately and delete the message from your computer.
RE: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD
All this talk of Macs, maybe its time you switched to Apple? -Original Message- From: Greg Keogh g...@mira.net Sent: 25/03/2014 10:59 AM To: ozDotNet ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com Subject: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Folks, I have a warning post: Since I installed a fresh Windows 7 on an SSD as Xmas I've been suspicious of how one time in 20 it will stop and say Bad boot drive and I have to power off and on again and then it always starts okay. No other symptoms have been observed. Well today, I was shutting down my PC when it blue screened on the way down, it said SERVICE_EXCEPTION. Just to be safe I rebooted it normally to check it was okay. First problem. IE 32-bit shortcut says it's invalid, but I can see the iexplore.exe in the correct place. Double-clicking it does nothing. The 64-bit iexplore.exe tells me The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. Then I notice most of my Start menu All Programs are gone. The Administrative Tools menu is empty. I searched for an hour but none of the advice is relevant or useful. Last known good config recover did nothing. I even thought I had a virus, but found no evidence. Finally I did a chkdsk C: /F and rebooted and I saw about 20 repairs (including iexplore.exe) and now it seems to be back to normal. However I suspect the SSD is about to die unpredictably and all of my mysterious symptoms were side effects. I'm just posting this in case it might be useful for someone in a similar situation. Now I'm going to the shops to get a new SSD and psych myself up for a possible Windows reinstall over the whole weekend. At Xmas it took 4 x 12 hour days to get to a satisfactory working state. Greg K
Re: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD
All this talk of Macs, maybe its time you switched to Apple? I saw some of *Star Trek Generations* movie on telly last night, and want one of their computers, it does everything, but you till seem to need a keyboard even though you can talk to it. I'd like to be able to sit down at the PC in the morning and say write a web site for selling gumboots and you come back after breakfast and it's ready to deploy. Surely Apple can't be far behind that -- *Greg*
RE: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD
Early generation SSDs had a bunch of issues (I’ve lost several OCZ Vertex SSDs – pity they had such crap controllers). I don’t think you need to worry too much about current generation SSDs. Here’s some stress testing of current SSDs: http://techreport.com/review/26058/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-data-retention-after-600tb 600TB written to these SSDs, and they’re still going. Cheers Ken From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Tuesday, 25 March 2014 3:16 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: Re: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD Chaps, it's a SanDisk 240MB, which is suspicious regarding your comments! I just went up to MSY and got a replacement, a Kingston this time, not another SanDisk. The shop guy said they'll send the SSD back to be analysed and either repaired or replaced. I told him it was my C: drive so I'll have to reinstall before I can give him the old one. After reading some technical stuff on SSDs several weeks ago and how they work and wear-levelling and the like I became a bit worried and moved the swap file to a HDD in an attempt to cut down the writes. It's actually a bit worrying how SSDs work when you look into them. If the C: drive can stay on life support until the weekend I'll be happy. Luckily the main work I'm on at the moment is inside a VM on a HDD D: drive. Greg
Re: [OT] Weird symptoms and SSD
On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 3:15 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote: Chaps, it's a SanDisk 240MB, which is suspicious regarding your comments! I just went up to MSY and got a replacement, a Kingston this time, not another SanDisk. The shop guy said they'll send the SSD back to be analysed and either repaired or replaced. I told him it was my C: drive so I'll have to reinstall before I can give him the old one. After reading some technical stuff on SSDs several weeks ago and how they work and wear-levelling and the like I became a bit worried and moved the swap file to a HDD in an attempt to cut down the writes. It's actually a bit worrying how SSDs work when you look into them. Whilst the idea of a really fast swap file is nice, the implementation of SSD's suggest that its a bad combo. Unless you do something like use a dedicated SSD for the swap drive, and eat the cost when it dies. I'm still a bit wary about the integrity of 'dirty' data on the swap file getting written thru to a magnetic drive. Thoughts? Now I'm going to the shops to get a new SSD and psych myself up for a possible Windows reinstall over the whole weekend. At Xmas it took 4 x 12 hour days to get to a satisfactory working state. Was that because it was Xmas? :) -- Meski http://courteous.ly/aAOZcv Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. Sure, you'll get it, but it's going to be rough - Adam Hills
