iMac fusion drive issues - SSD overheating?

[rworne]

Late 2013 iMac 27" with 3TB fusion drive.

Crazy problem here. iMac crashed tonight then would not boot up for nearly 10 minutes. Just before this happened, DriveDx showed a temperature problem with the SSD portion of the fusion drive. The mechanical drive is perfectly fine.

It's up again after being powered down for a while, but it's getting hot again. (See attached screenshot).

Looks like I might have to replace it, since the wonky behavior affects the rest of the system as long as it's there.



I'm looking for other suggestions to check. It's odd that the SSD is running so hot, there's nothing running that would run up the system temperature, and there's no mechanical parts (like bearings) to fail. I manually turned up the fan and it roars away, so the fans are working.

Any ideas?

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

What does the first window show when you click on the Drive Dx icon in the Menu Bar? Will show SMART Status which never lies. Suggest you will be in the market for a replacement Flash portion., When I had that model determined if the Flash Drive failed, either replace it with a 256/512GB blade drive, or use an OWC Envoy Pro as an external Blade drive in a caddy.

 

[rworne]

hat does the first window show when you click on the Drive Dx icon in the Menu Bar? Will show SMART Status which never lies. Suggest you will be in the market for a replacement Flash portion., When I had that model determined if the Flash Drive failed, either replace it with a 256/512GB blade drive, or use an OWC Envoy Pro as an external Blade drive in a caddy.

First window reports no issues (all green). 83.3% Lifetime left, due to the wear leveling count. All other indicators are 100%. Last night the status was yellow.

Found out another issue, an external drive is barfing out I/O errors which caused the lockups - the computer returns to normal operation with it disconnected. However, it's been running for most of the day now with no external drives connected and the temperature is still abnormally high for the SSD. Perhaps its really nothing, and the external crapping out is the real culprit. It's a Seagate, I should have known better. it comes up 100% clean with SMART, but it refuses to complete any test and it throws I/O errors for the hell of it.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

83% is getting down somewhat and what does SMART Status actually say? On my iMac reads 'Advanced SMART Status Okay'. Are well Seagate explains a lot. I have come to the conclusions using three external backups with SuperDuper, you know to be sure to be sure to be sure, in the long run it is cheaper to use SSD as externals.

Have found OCZ, OWC and Kingston V300 the best SSDs and the worst G Skilled and Hitachi.

 

[rworne]

83% is getting down somewhat and what does SMART Status actually say? On my iMac reads 'Advanced SMART Status Okay'.

Mine says the same. Based upon my iMac's behavior last night, I'm guessing the external Seagate caused some I/O errors and hung up the SATA bus. This in turn freaked out DriveDX.

The temperature and wear level indicators I mentioned earlier are true values. Computer has been idle and asleep for most of the day and the Temp is at 57% and now that I have been using it for an hour or so, it's at 23% now..

in the long run it is cheaper to use SSD as externals

Ah, but this is a 4TB drive with the entire iTunes library on it - and it was about 90% full. I have another copy of everything on the RAID box we use as the media server, and iTunes Match has me covered for the music. That would be quite pricey to set up as SSD. I'd love to get rid of the internal drives on this thing and go full SSD.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Well if the bucks are available you could get a large blade drive and replace the 128GB blade.

I believe over the past five years, both Seagate and WD platters are a lottery. Lots of tickets sold and not many winners!