4 ms·

I just lost data on a firecuda drive that was a few months old. The lab could not recover the data and also did not tell me the root cause of the drive failure.

I just lost data on a firecuda drive that was a few months old. The lab could not recover the data and also did not tell me the root cause of the drive failure. Compared with my samsung ssds which have (knock on wood) never died in a decade. I know all brands fail but is there something of lesser quality with the firecuda line?

londons_explore 3y ago
From working tangentially in consumer electronics, I can tell you that nearly all failures are design related if you look deep enough. There are some products where some start dying after 1 year, and nearly all of them are dead after 2 years. Other times it's a combination of a bad design and some specific use case. For example "these fail after 3 years if you turn them on and off every day, but don't fail if you leave them running 24x7".
- lelag 3y ago
  Or sometimes they will die if you leave them on for 40000 hours. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32048148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32048148
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Solder joints seem to be a major failure. That'd be mostly fatigue (thermal cycling) and the occasional case of tin whiskers.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Yes, but in turn the failure is because the thermal expansion coefficient of the board and component were insufficiently closely matched (when taking into account the elasticity of the board and component)
    - giantrobot 3y ago
      Lead-free solder is just shittier than leaded solder. You're not wrong about design but better solder would reduce the impact of mismatched thermal expansion properties.
    - jandrese 3y ago
      BGAs and hot chips are a bad combo.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Removing lead from solder should reduce lead poisoning and environmental lead in general, which is good. Unfortunately, lead-free solder is objectively worse than leaded solder in terms of longevity of joints as well as requiring a greater working temperature. Things have gotten a lot better since introduction though.
Modified3019 3y ago
In my view, I do think Samsung’s hardware is generally more reliable, however this gets negated by their dogshit firmware. I’ve had multiple different samsung enterprise and oem drives die because their firmware is full of bugs. Basically one will suddenly decide it hates life and will then only show up as having only 1gb of space and the firmware version set as “ERRORMOD” (“error mode”). This is not a time counter rollover issue as far as I can tell (though samsung has plenty of those too [0]) as there wasn’t anything in my smart logging that would indicate a time value they approached and died. Samsung’s firmware is just super buggy and can get caught in a bad state. You can find business purchasers complaining about these issues as well. [1] Someone once decompiled the firmware of the EVO 840 before they started encrypting it. Have a look at the “Bugs” section to have a laugh: http://www2.futureware.at/~philipp/ssd/TheMissingManual.pdf http://www2.futureware.at/~philipp/ssd/TheMissingManual.pdf So when you see a samsung enterprise/oem drive on ebay with 99% of it’s life left, what you are really buying is a drive with bugs but no way to obtain fixes, since samsung will give you the business version of go fuck yourself by telling you to “contact your vendor”. Part of the problem is samsung cultivates a complete shitshow where vendors will “customize” firmware, so an identical drive from lenovo will need different firmware than one from HP. The other part of the problem is Samsung’s consumer drive branch is basically completely separate from their oem/enterprise branch despite what is mostly the same hardware and firmware. So while the consumer branch has historically had to eventually face the market consequences of gross negligence, the enterprise branch is shielded by misdirection to the vendors. Fortunately mine where quite cheap so not much loss, but still, they lost any illusion of competence over other companies in my eyes. Note there is a collection of samsung firmware here, though it is hardly complete: https://github.com/lolyinseo/samsung-nvme-firmware https://github.com/lolyinseo/samsung-nvme-firmware P.S. Also note there is a poorly documented but common form of ssd “failure” that can happen. If you have a drive suddenly not show up on next boot (especially after power loss), using the power cycling technique can often recover a drive: https://dfarq.homeip.net/fix-dead-ssd/ https://dfarq.homeip.net/fix-dead-ssd/ [0]: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-990-pro-health-dropping-fast https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-990-pro-health-dro... [1]: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/pm9a3-firmware-errormod-related-to-fw-version.36822/ https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/pm9a3-firm...
- 3y ago

londons_explore 3y ago

From working tangentially in consumer electronics, I can tell you that nearly all failures are design related if you look deep enough. There are some products where some start dying after 1 year, and nearly all of them are dead after 2 years. Other times it's a combination of a bad design and some specific use case. For example "these fail after 3 years if you turn them on and off every day, but don't fail if you leave them running 24x7".

lelag 3y ago
Or sometimes they will die if you leave them on for 40000 hours. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32048148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32048148
HPsquared 3y ago
Solder joints seem to be a major failure. That'd be mostly fatigue (thermal cycling) and the occasional case of tin whiskers.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Yes, but in turn the failure is because the thermal expansion coefficient of the board and component were insufficiently closely matched (when taking into account the elasticity of the board and component)
  - giantrobot 3y ago
    Lead-free solder is just shittier than leaded solder. You're not wrong about design but better solder would reduce the impact of mismatched thermal expansion properties.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    BGAs and hot chips are a bad combo.
- toast0 3y ago
  Removing lead from solder should reduce lead poisoning and environmental lead in general, which is good. Unfortunately, lead-free solder is objectively worse than leaded solder in terms of longevity of joints as well as requiring a greater working temperature. Things have gotten a lot better since introduction though.

Modified3019 3y ago

In my view, I do think Samsung’s hardware is generally more reliable, however this gets negated by their dogshit firmware. I’ve had multiple different samsung enterprise and oem drives die because their firmware is full of bugs. Basically one will suddenly decide it hates life and will then only show up as having only 1gb of space and the firmware version set as “ERRORMOD” (“error mode”). This is not a time counter rollover issue as far as I can tell (though samsung has plenty of those too [0]) as there wasn’t anything in my smart logging that would indicate a time value they approached and died. Samsung’s firmware is just super buggy and can get caught in a bad state. You can find business purchasers complaining about these issues as well. [1] Someone once decompiled the firmware of the EVO 840 before they started encrypting it. Have a look at the “Bugs” section to have a laugh: http://www2.futureware.at/~philipp/ssd/TheMissingManual.pdf http://www2.futureware.at/~philipp/ssd/TheMissingManual.pdf So when you see a samsung enterprise/oem drive on ebay with 99% of it’s life left, what you are really buying is a drive with bugs but no way to obtain fixes, since samsung will give you the business version of go fuck yourself by telling you to “contact your vendor”. Part of the problem is samsung cultivates a complete shitshow where vendors will “customize” firmware, so an identical drive from lenovo will need different firmware than one from HP. The other part of the problem is Samsung’s consumer drive branch is basically completely separate from their oem/enterprise branch despite what is mostly the same hardware and firmware. So while the consumer branch has historically had to eventually face the market consequences of gross negligence, the enterprise branch is shielded by misdirection to the vendors. Fortunately mine where quite cheap so not much loss, but still, they lost any illusion of competence over other companies in my eyes. Note there is a collection of samsung firmware here, though it is hardly complete: https://github.com/lolyinseo/samsung-nvme-firmware https://github.com/lolyinseo/samsung-nvme-firmware P.S. Also note there is a poorly documented but common form of ssd “failure” that can happen. If you have a drive suddenly not show up on next boot (especially after power loss), using the power cycling technique can often recover a drive: https://dfarq.homeip.net/fix-dead-ssd/ https://dfarq.homeip.net/fix-dead-ssd/ [0]: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-990-pro-health-dropping-fast https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-990-pro-health-dro... [1]: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/pm9a3-firmware-errormod-related-to-fw-version.36822/ https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/pm9a3-firm...

3y ago