MBP 2013 SSD at 0% Wear levelling count?!

[Queen6]

Sorry to hijack your thread, but my 4 month old rMBP 2014 15" has a wear levelling count down to 94%. Should I be worried?

No, your Mac`s SSD is fine, bear in mind that third part applications can be overly pessimistic or optimistic. Personally I took a quick look, then scrubbed the app off my drive as frankly I see little purpose for it being in installed unless you are running a multiple drive arrays (spinners).

n.b. I am not suggesting the application in question is poorly developed, rather that it adds nothing to my usage & workflow on an Apple Notebook.

Q-6

 

[Freyqq]

Wear leveling is counted by the SSD itself. The program just reads it off the SSD. Wear leveling is just set at the manufacturer's set specification of number of writes after which they expect the SSD to potentially fail. These numbers are usually very conservative, and the SSD could keep going for many years without issue.

However, the numbers seem off. The report shows about 5TB of writes. That's way too low to be a concern for any modern SSD. 50TB would even be still probably be within spec, depending on the SSD.

Therefore, you should be fine.

 

[jukown]

Same problem with apple ssd here. Macbook Pro Retina Late 2013 SSD reports problem after 2,5 years of normal use. Smart error - Wear Leveling Count - Drive failing. I am working mainly in bootcamp win7.

 

[Hellhammer]

Wear Leveling Count isn't reported correctly, for some reason (or third-party apps aren't interpreting it correctly). The raw value translates to P/E cycles, so the SMART data suggests you have consumed billions of P/E cycles, which is simply impossible. I suggest you run Apple hardware test in case you want to make sure everything is good.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257

 

[Queen6]

13" 2014 rMBP is now way past 15TB of written data and seemingly has no issues, therefore I have no concerns.

Q-6

 

[jukown]

Wear Leveling Count isn't reported correctly, for some reason (or third-party apps aren't interpreting it correctly). The raw value translates to P/E cycles, so the SMART data suggests you have consumed billions of P/E cycles, which is simply impossible. I suggest you run Apple hardware test in case you want to make sure everything is good.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257

Thank You for reply. Ok, so i made a test with apple diagnostics. No issues found. (see photo)
BUT, in Mac os (same in bootcamp win7) is still SMART error found. (see photo)
When I try to install Mac OSX ElCaptain, it tells me that I can't install becouse of SMART errors on the ssd disk.

 

[Hellhammer]

Thank You for reply. Ok, so i made a test with apple diagnostics. No issues found. (see photo)
BUT, in Mac os (same in bootcamp win7) is still SMART error found. (see photo)
When I try to install Mac OSX ElCaptain, it tells me that I can't install becouse of SMART errors on the ssd disk.

Boot into recovery mode, open Disk Utility and then run First Aid. It will check the disk and try to repair any issues.

 

[jukown]

Done. No erros found, but smart error still there. I think SMART errors are hardware related, so disk utility or other app can't repair it.

 

[Hellhammer]

Done. No erros found, but smart error still there. I think SMART errors are hardware related, so disk utility or other app can't repair it.

Select the drive (500.28GB Apple SSD), not the volume, and try again. SMART values are certainly hardware related, but the thing is that the WLC simply cannot be correct because the raw value is astronomically high.

 

[throAU]

Modern SSDs can do several hundred terabytes of writes without failing, what makes you think it's going to fail?


edit:
http://techreport.com/review/25889/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-500tb-update


All drives tested passed 500 TB of writes. Pretty sure some of them managed > 1 PB of writes.

I wouldn't pay too much attention to utilities that supposedly give you an estimate of SSD life.

Fact is, very few tests have actually been done, but the one listed above showed that every major drive on the market passed 500 TB without any problem.

Note: they were all 240-250 GB drives, too. Larger drives will handle more writes...

 

[jukown]

Select the drive (500.28GB Apple SSD), not the volume, and try again. SMART values are certainly hardware related, but the thing is that the WLC simply cannot be correct because the raw value is astronomically high.

I dont have enabled options if I select the drive. I think the raw value is NOT astronomically high, probably 12,4 TB..

 

[Hellhammer]

I dont have enabled options if I select the drive. I think the raw value is NOT astronomically high, probably 12,4 TB..

As I mentioned, WLC refers to the number of consumed P/E cycles. That means you have overwritten the whole drive 12 trillion times...

Since you have Windows installed already, can you install smartmontools and read the SMART values with it? It can also perform a variety of different SMART tests that could be useful in this case.

Just to add, it's command line so the command you need to run is:

smartctl -a /dev/sda

 

[Wreckus]

Regardless, I'm going to repeat what many people probably said already

Back up all your non-replaceable files such as documents, spreadsheets, photo's, etc.

Even though the drive still be fine, regardless of S.M.A.R.T status, murphy's law is always around the corner and you never know when the drive will kick the computer bucket and stop working.

 

[throAU]

As I mentioned, WLC refers to the number of consumed P/E cycles. That means you have overwritten the whole drive 12 trillion times...

I very much doubt anyone has ever overwritten an SSD 12 trillion times. They will not have had enough power-on time to achieve that.

 

[Howard2k]

I very much doubt anyone has ever overwritten an SSD 12 trillion times. They will not have had enough power-on time to achieve that.

Chuck. Norris.

 

[throAU]

trillions...

 

[mr_ben]

Well, its been 2 and half years since I originally posted this thread and I used the laptop for about another 18 months after the original post. I stopped using Bootcamp totally and apart from not being able to upgrade to OS or reinstall a copy of Mavricks, the laptop and disk worked perfectly.

I stopped using the laptop when a replacement arrived and I'm one now getting around to selling it (will full background of the disk explained) I thought I'd update this thread with my experiences since the problem surfaced in case its useful/interesting for someone else in the future.

 

[jukkhop]

Sorry for necromancing this thread, but was a software workaround ever found for this bug?

I have a 2013 MBP, also with Bootcamp, started reporting "disk failure imminent" about 6 years ago. Needless to say the machine has been working perfectly to this day. Except for the fact that it's stuck on El Capitan because OS upgrade is impossible due to the SMART fail status of the disk.

 

[throAU]

Sorry for necromancing this thread, but was a software workaround ever found for this bug?

I have a 2013 MBP, also with Bootcamp, started reporting "disk failure imminent" about 6 years ago. Needless to say the machine has been working perfectly to this day. Except for the fact that it's stuck on El Capitan because OS upgrade is impossible due to the SMART fail status of the disk.

If your drive is reporting SMART errors and imminent failure you need a new drive. There's no coming back from that. SSDs do have a finite life and if it is reporting SMART errors thats not an OS bug, etc.; that's the drive itself reporting imminent failure.

They do warn quite early, but various SSDs have different failure modes. Some of them go read only. Some of them just suddenly stop without any further warnings. Make sure you have regular backups and prepare to replace your storage.