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MBP 2013 SSD at 0% Wear levelling count?!

M

mr_ben

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 30, 2015
6
1
Brighton, UK
Hi all,

In the last few days my MBP has started reporting that the SSD is close to failing. Its late 2013 15inch model with an Apple 500GB SSD.

I searched these forums and ran DriveDX that reports the 'Wear Levelling Count' is at 0%, how bad actually is this!?

I use the laptop every day for work, primarily running bootcamp but i cant see that would make a difference.

The service hours are reported as 3577 hours, and the host reads/writes are 7.8TB and 5.6TB respectively. (see attached screenshot).

Is there a fix for this? Is the drive really about to fail with less than 2 years service?!

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Ben
img_6922-jpg.578046
 

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I think it is just the program failing.

Check the speed of your SSD and it will give you an answer (program fail vs SSD fail).
 
Hi there, thanks for the response. I ran the black magic speed test which indicated a read/write speeds of 731/631mb - are those acceptable speeds?
IMG_6926.JPG



I also ran an Auslogic tool in windows and it also reported a wear level problem as shown below:
diskfrag.PNG



Its does all seem consistent but strange?!
 
Speeds are fine by me. Yeah it is strange. :D

From another forum:
It's up to whatever app how they interpret the smart data
more often then not they just set standard alerts of like 10 for everything

My wear leveling count on my M4 is 49
the most important one is
Reallocated_Sector_Ct
and a few with "Fail" "Error" or "Uncorrect" in the names are likely worth watching
Click to expand...

Based on that, your drive is good.
 
So thought I'd post an update to this. I took the laptop into my local Apple store who analysed the SSD and told me it was 'end of life' and needed to be replaced at a cost of £700!!!!!

After a few swear words it appears there is no cheaper option, other than to take the risk and see what happens if i leave it.

Given the laptop is on lease from Apple with only another 12 months to run, and all my data sits on cloud drives, i'm going to take the risk and see what happens.

Quite frankly i'm shocked at the response from apple with a laptop that is only nearly 2 years old and cost over £2k - but i'm unsure of any other course of action.

My previous MBP also had its main IO board fail after 3 years which would have cost £400 to fix had i not sold it on eBay.

With such experiences as this i't doubtful i'll ever buy one again.

One thing i have done is switched to OSX for all day-to-day stuff and only use bootcamp for critical non-mac tasks - just in case it was something to do with Win7!

I'll update this post if there are any developments (or failures!) in the hope its helpful to others.
 
mr_ben said:
So thought I'd post an update to this. I took the laptop into my local Apple store who analysed the SSD and told me it was 'end of life' and needed to be replaced at a cost of £700!!!!!

After a few swear words it appears there is no cheaper option, other than to take the risk and see what happens if i leave it.

Given the laptop is on lease from Apple with only another 12 months to run, and all my data sits on cloud drives, i'm going to take the risk and see what happens.

Quite frankly i'm shocked at the response from apple with a laptop that is only nearly 2 years old and cost over £2k - but i'm unsure of any other course of action.

My previous MBP also had its main IO board fail after 3 years which would have cost £400 to fix had i not sold it on eBay.

With such experiences as this i't doubtful i'll ever buy one again.

One thing i have done is switched to OSX for all day-to-day stuff and only use bootcamp for critical non-mac tasks - just in case it was something to do with Win7!

I'll update this post if there are any developments (or failures!) in the hope its helpful to others.
Click to expand...

Personally I would do the same, I certainly wouldn't be interested in investing £700 on a 2 year old portable, equally I have multiple Mac`s. I am also surprised that the Notebooks leased from Apple and not covered by Apple Care etc.

What may help, it to free up much space as possible, as the controller writes randomly across the array the more free space the chances of EOL for the SSD`s cells will be reduced. You could also "image" the drive with SuperDuper and work off the external HD.

One more point as your are clearly based in the UK, you need to read up on the consumer rights act, I believe that items such as Notebooks are covered for 5 years and Apple have an obligation to comply. For this you can alway consult Citizens Advice, if your Mac falls into this category Apple have no option but to comply with UK consumer legislation, and effect repair or replacement.

Very much in your interest to read this link below;
https://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/

Under consumer law in the UK, consumers are entitled to a free of charge repair or replacement, discount or refund by the seller, of defective goods or goods which do not conform with the contract of sale. For goods purchased in England or Wales, these rights expire six years from delivery of the goods and for goods purchased in Scotland, these rights expire five years from delivery of the goods.

Q-6
 
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mr_ben said:
So thought I'd post an update to this. I took the laptop into my local Apple store who analysed the SSD and told me it was 'end of life' and needed to be replaced at a cost of £700!!!!!
Click to expand...

You can probably get a new SSD from OWC for FAR less than 700 pounds and upgrade your storage capacity on top of replacing the failing drive.

Just make sure you back up regularly, and keep using it until it fails. When you're on the go, save irreplaceable stuff to a cloud server (iCloud, etc.) in case it dies then.

Good luck!
 
Ummm from all the tests and articles I have seen I'm not sure that it is possible to write enough data to completely blow an SSD in 2years - mostly those tests use special apps to hammer the SSD deliberately. So I think you have a reporting/interpretation problem or a SERIOUS issue with something writing to you drive that shouldn't be, or a very unusual use case (but if that was the case I'd expect you to know and understand it).

I don't believe an SSD has been held to be a consumable part in the same way a battery or tyres are so UK Consumer law should apply as stated above, this should be considered a component that has failed, therefore warranty should apply. Equally you say you have leased it so doesn't Apple Care apply if leased from Apple?
 
zorinlynx said:
You can probably get a new SSD from OWC for FAR less than 700 pounds and upgrade your storage capacity on top of replacing the failing drive.
Just make sure you back up regularly, and keep using it until it fails. When you're on the go, save irreplaceable stuff to a cloud server (iCloud, etc.) in case it dies then.
Good luck!
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, the OWC SSD replacements stop at Early 2013 MBP (MacBookPro10,1, MacBookPro10,2), but the OP has a Late 2013 MBP 15" (MacBookPro11,1).
 
simonsi said:
Ummm from all the tests and articles I have seen I'm not sure that it is possible to write enough data to completely blow an SSD in 2years - mostly those tests use special apps to hammer the SSD deliberately. So I think you have a reporting/interpretation problem or a SERIOUS issue with something writing to you drive that shouldn't be, or a very unusual use case (but if that was the case I'd expect you to know and understand it).

I don't believe an SSD has been held to be a consumable part in the same way a battery or tyres are so UK Consumer law should apply as stated above, this should be considered a component that has failed, therefore warranty should apply. Equally you say you have leased it so doesn't Apple Care apply if leased from Apple?
Click to expand...

Agreed, as can been seen my own 2014 13" rMBP has written significantly more data and the "Wear Levelling Count" is 100% as Apple now confirm the drive has issue, to me it`s down to Apple to resolve. I believe the OP is covered by the UK consumer protection act, as the product clearly not fit for purpose.

Q-6
 
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mr_ben said:
Hi all,

In the last few days my MBP has started reporting that the SSD is close to failing. Its late 2013 15inch model with an Apple 500GB SSD.

I searched these forums and ran DriveDX that reports the 'Wear Levelling Count' is at 0%, how bad actually is this!?

I use the laptop every day for work, primarily running bootcamp but i cant see that would make a difference.

The service hours are reported as 3577 hours, and the host reads/writes are 7.8TB and 5.6TB respectively. (see attached screenshot).

Is there a fix for this? Is the drive really about to fail with less than 2 years service?!

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Ben
img_6922-jpg.578046
Click to expand...
5.6 TB written on a new SSD is a joke. Your SSD should be good as new. There has been an extensive SSD test a few years ago where all SSD´s passed the 500.0 TB write mark, some made up to 1.0 Petabyte. This has been well beyond the specifications for some drives. The test lasted several months due to the huge data volumes needed.

Here is just another test I found. In this test the worst SSD started to reallocate sectors ( not failed ) at 300.0 GB, which is over 50 times more than your SSD has written so far.

http://techreport.com/review/26523/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-casualties-on-the-way-to-a-petabyte
 
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CoastalOR said:
Unfortunately, the OWC SSD replacements stop at Early 2013 MBP (MacBookPro10,1, MacBookPro10,2), but the OP has a Late 2013 MBP 15" (MacBookPro11,1).
Click to expand...

That's odd; why haven't they come out with upgrades for those machines?

Did Apple start using a proprietary bus? I thought they were just PCIe.
 
zorinlynx said:
That's odd; why haven't they come out with upgrades for those machines?

Did Apple start using a proprietary bus? I thought they were just PCIe.
Click to expand...
AFAIK Apple uses a proprietary connector and probably proprietary firmware. As of now, there is only one 3rd party 1.0 TB SSD available, well over $1000. OWC announced such SSD´s but they are not ready.
 
Hi all, thanks for the input. Heres a bit more detail I uncovered along the way but left out earlier...

Apple did indeed talk to me about the consumer laws, however, as this is a Business lease, its apparently NOT covered by consumer laws! However, i will read up, so thank you for the steer Q-6.

And the Apple Care that comes default with finance only covers loss or accidental damage, not component failure which is what Apple said this is a case of. I didn't think to go for full cover - which I will do if i buy Apple again.

As its being reported as 0% remaining in all three different tests that have been run, it feels like 'something' is wrong but it could be a red-herring. As its been two weeks since this surfaced, all other stats are fine, its very new and I've not seen any abnormal behaviour, i'm going see what happens..
 
mr_ben said:
Hi all, thanks for the input. Heres a bit more detail I uncovered along the way but left out earlier...

Apple did indeed talk to me about the consumer laws, however, as this is a Business lease, its apparently NOT covered by consumer laws! However, i will read up, so thank you for the steer Q-6.

And the Apple Care that comes default with finance only covers loss or accidental damage, not component failure which is what Apple said this is a case of. I didn't think to go for full cover - which I will do if i buy Apple again.

As its being reported as 0% remaining in all three different tests that have been run, it feels like 'something' is wrong but it could be a red-herring. As its been two weeks since this surfaced, all other stats are fine, its very new and I've not seen any abnormal behaviour, i'm going see what happens..
Click to expand...

I would just keep using it if it works fine. It could be a bug in the drive's firmware that causes it to report incorrectly, which is why every test you ran showed the same result. There is a very, very low chance that you have physically worn the cells out.
 
Well at 1.5%/mth that gives you a life estimate of 5yrs. How much data does DriveDX say has been written to the SSD?

For comparison I've just moved my 512GB Crucial to another machine, it is 6mths old and has 97% remaining. The 1TB Crucial now in this machine is brand new, 100% remaining and has 0.5TB written to it...
 
Well at 1.5%/mth that gives you a life estimate of 5yrs. How much data does DriveDX say has been written to the SSD?

For comparison I've just moved my 512GB Crucial to another machine, it is 6mths old and has 97% remaining. The 1TB Crucial now in this machine is brand new, 100% remaining and has 0.5TB written to it...
 
To keep the SSD discussed, is risky IMO. Whatever the problem is, there is a problem. It is Samsung hardware, so Samsungs SSD life expectations may be appropriate. The drive has written less than 6 TB and is defect.

The SSD of user Aneef has written 2.3 TB and is at 94%. This seems not great to me as well but in an acceptable range. 512 GB Samsungs should be able to write 150.0 TB minimum, smaller drives less.

Hopefully those wear levels are not the price to pay for early PCIe M.2 4-lane SSD´s.

My 2 years old Corsair Force GT 480 GB SATA III has written 22.5 TB and is at over 90%. This translates to a 20 years lifespan before the Corsair's MLC NAND wears out ( assuming the high daily data volume remains constant ). I guess someting else on my SSD will break before.
 
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