SSD Data Corruption

Hardware Hub Storage
1

In all the craze about SSDs and their speed improvements I think I am alone in saying that I will never again put an SSD in any of my systems. I have a trusted SSD ( Samsung 840)  that I put my OS, and a few programs that I use often and I can say the speeds are much faster, and well worth the extra dollar. The amount of data corruption, however, is intolerable. There are way too many instances where something becomes broken or straight up lost.

A few months ago, and this occurred for a few months, Windows would get caught in boot errors from broken programs. Windows would only successfully boot about 1 in 4 times and when it did it would take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour to boot. I finally got those programs re installed and my boot times went back to about 13 seconds. Finding and re installing those drivers took a lot of time from me.

About 6 months ago, I completely lost an Ethernet port driver. Let me tell you: downloading an Ethernet driver over the internet when your computer can't access the internet is a struggle.

Not as big of an issue, but just last week my USB 3.0 ports stopped working. I thought is was maybe just the ports on my case (maybe a wire shorted or something), so I checked the ports on my I/O panel: also didn't work. Turns out my USB 3.0 driver stopped working so I had to download re install that.

Earlier today my computer couldn't find the OS. I had to reset it and it found it the second time, but this problem occurs often.

Every day it seems like some part of some program breaks. Windows logs are filled with instances where a start up program or driver failed to launch. Let me be clear: I also have an HDD in my computer where I have some programs installed and I have never had a major error with anything on it. The problems are completely central to the SSD.

Is there something I'm doing wrong? I heard SSDs fail after several years but this started when my system was about 6 months old; Its only a year old now. Do other people have this issue? Does anyone have any recommendations? 

2

Sounds like it might be time for a secure erase. Just wipe the thing out and start over. If you're using the Samsung Magician software it has a tool that will let you make a bootable flash drive or disc that will do it for you. Once you do that, reinstall OS and start over. If this happens again it may be time to use the awesome warranty that Samsung SSDs have and get it RMA'd.

3

I was originally avoiding wiping the thing and starting fresh. If the nature or physical integrity of the SSD is causing the issues, wiping would take some time and work invested on nothing, but my options are few. I've got parted magic on a flash drive already (friends and family always ask me to fix their computers. I always keep a "fix-it" flash drive with linux, windows, parted magic, malware bytes, and pretty much anything else I might need to work on a computer) I might just try starting fresh again. Sadly the SSD is just about a month over a year old, so I'm probably too late to get it RMA'd. The only thing I can do now is pray my machine turns on every time I hit the power button.

4

I've never played with any storage arrays before, but would 2 SSDs in RAID 0 fix these issues? If it's a hardware issue surely the same pieces of data couldn't be corrupted on two different drives?