MacOS – Macbook Pro early 2012 SSD retire block count

hard drivemacosssd

I've recently bought an OCZ Vertex3 480 GB SSD (VTX3-25SAT3-480G) for a drive upgrade.

This is what I did after I purchased the drive:

  1. Backed up my system with Carbon copy cloner
  2. Installed the SSD drive
  3. Install OSX Mountain Lion (fresh install from USB drive)
  4. Installed some basic apps and tested the speed (500m read, 250m write)
    (I've enabled TRIM via TrimEnabler)
  5. Attach my backup drive (where I backed up my earlier system) and started copying my data (something like 130GB)
  6. OSX turned the screen off after 5 min (not sleep)
  7. Went back to check and the system froze (beach ball + black screen)
  8. Force shutdown pressing the power for 5 sec
  9. Reboot and found out that: my brand new SSD had 19 "retired block" and 3325114 of "total error"

(10?). I've upgraded my firmware from 2.15 to 2.22 after I discovered the 19 bad blocks just to make sure it's not faulty firmware.

enter image description here

I got 0 of both when I first booted into the system, after a forced shutdown, I got 19 bad blocks and a bunch of errors…..

Is this normal? Is there something wrong with my SSD? should I send it for warranty?

SSD info:

OCZ-VERTEX3:

Capacity:   480.1 GB (480,103,981,056 bytes)
Model:  OCZ-VERTEX3                             
Revision:   2.220000
Serial Number:  OCZ-1M53V336YLR07271
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth:    32
Removable Media:    No
Detachable Drive:   No
BSD Name:   disk0
Medium Type:    Solid State
TRIM Support:   Yes
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status:  Verified

Best Answer

The Block count number you have should not be a problem.

Taking some information from The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ

If your SSD has a 20KB block size, that means that there are about about 25,165,824 blocks for a 480GB SDD and thats not including any of the extra storage that some SSD manufactures include. So only haveing 16 bad blocks out all those block does not look like a problem at all, as for a number that would indicate a failing drive, I am not sure what that would be but I can assume that would be the number of extra block the Manufacture provides, once your SSD uses that up, then you start loosing storage capacity.

According to OCZ Product sheet

Vertex 3 2.5” SSD 512GB 480GB VTX3-25SAT3-480G 842024025559

Of Note the 512GB is the Raw Capacity, so it looks like there is 32GB of extra space for block failures, so that works out to about 1,677,721 total extra blocks of storage.

If the drive is causing problems like spinning cursors, slowness or crashes see below for more suggestions.

  1. A possible solution try formatting the SSD 1 more time and try running it with out TRIM enabled or any other 3rd party SSD tools software. See if the drive can work on its own with just a clean install of OS X, with out any weird crashes.

  2. If the drive starts acting up again after the clean install and no 3rd party trim enabler on, it could be that there may be a hardware / software incompatibility between the SATA controller on the Mac and that particular drive. I would try to verify the drive is working OK by placing it in another computer or external hard drive case, etc.

    And also try searching around on the web for issues between MacBooks and your particular brand of SSD.

  3. If the drive is acting weird on all testing computers and interfaces, then you would have a confirmed failed drive and would have an evident need of a getting the drive replaced under warranty.

Note: If your having a rough time with the SSD drive it would not be a bad idea contacting OCZ support and explaining to them the issue you are having, they may already have a solution figured out.

Related Question