Ok, bit of a story here but I’ll try to keep it brief.
A few days ago one of my desktops (openSUSE 42.1 Leap) started to behave erratically - several disk errors being displayed at boot, and I usually ended up in grub-rescue mode.
After a few failed rescue attempts the whole thing just crashed and I decided to just wipe the disk and start fresh (my data is on another drive anyway).
The OS disk is a Samsung 850 EVO SSD drive (250Gb).
So here’s the problem: I can’t install anything on that disk anymore. Here’s what happens every time:
I boot openSUSE 42.2 Leap live from USB flash drive (or DVD, same thing further on)
Start install procedure and fill in all the data
During “copying system files” and “installing packages” it always
hangs, at random percentages
Now I’ve run a few tests on this disk with Gparted (badblocks, blkid…) and no errors are found. Haven’t run a full read-write test with badblocks yet 'cause it seems to run for days on end… Only 10% after 7 hours or so.
Deleting and creating partitions isn’t a problem, but everytime I try to install an OS on it - tried 42.1 & 42.2 + GeckoLinux - it just ‘hangs’.
I’ve seen sort of this on the SSD of my server at the time 13.2 was released. Tried everything, new partition tables, MBR, GPT. In the end it appeared to be the controller inside the SSD that had gone bonkers.
This is quite new hardware.
I have a Samsung 850 pro ssd, which seems to have a longer lifetime, but anyway.
I don’t think that it is a good idea to run badblocks on that disk, at least not in write mode.
Because the blocks may (and usually will) not be physically located one after another, even if it may appear like that to the file system.
The reason is that the controller of the ssd usually will try to write the blocks such that wear is more or less the same to all storage of the ssd (wear-leveling).
And running badblocks on a ssd in write mode will just cause further wear, without providing much clues.
I think this will be very different compared to running badblocks on a conventional hard disk drive.
When the ssd ‘thinks’ that almost all memory on the ssd is allocated, then the write rate breaks down.
You could try two things:
Firstly, you could create one large partition on that disk taking the whole disk space (using e.g. gparted).
Now if the disk is /dev/sdX, then that partition is /dev/sdX1.
Mount that partition.
Then (as root) run
fstrim -v /dev/sdX1
in order to tell the controller of the ssd that all the space on the ssd isn’t allocated.
Perhaps this already helps.
Secondly, (as root) run
smartctl -a /dev/sdX
where again /dev/sdX points to your ssd.
You will get more information about the health of your ssd by that.
Whenever anyone deploys a new SSD,
One of the first things that should be done is to inspect the Arch Linux Wiki on SSD drives.
It’s kept very current on developments.
One of the things that caught my eye is that Samsung has a long history of issues with SSD drives for various models.
Currently there is a recommended firmware upgrade to support booting from USB drives which sounds like it applies to you.
You could update the BIOS and SSD’s firmware, if new new versions are available.
Running badblocks in write mode is quite safe. I have run it on many SSDs and USB flash drives. Always got the right answer in terms of “broken or not”.
10% of a 250 GB hard drive in 7 hours indicates an error. That is enough of an answer.
Most likely, the SSD is defective. There is some chance that the motherboard and the SSD don’t understand each other or that motherboard’s controller is malfunctioning. You can check this by attempting to install 64 bit Windows, by running Samsung’s Magician, by using the SSD on another motherboard, by installing another similar drive from Samsung on the same motherboard.
The chance that something else is broken, like a cable or power supply, is very small.
I wouldn’t trust that SSD any more, even if a firmware update or some sort of reset brings the functionality back. Return if you can.
Arch wiki is indeed a very good resource and often appears highly on Google searches. Not sure if it fully applied to my case as it’s not a USB drive.
Also, just went through my purchases and this drive is slightly less than a year old - might as well try to return it…
For the moment I replaced it with another (Samsung) SSD which went without any problems, hope this one lasts longer
