SSD vs. SATA Drives

[Kathy Stevens]

Fair warning – we just lost a less than one year old Western Digital Blue 2TB solid-state drive.

The entire drive was wiped out.

Following the disaster, we read the fine print of CCleaner and its specifically says not to use the app on SSD drives.  Apparently, a high level of read writes to a SSD drive wipes them out.

After recovering the system, we ran Wondershare Recoverit to try to recover the files on the damaged drive. The result was the identification of 1,647,965 “damaged files”. And essentially none of the damaged files were recoverable. We recovered our data files from external backup.

It had been our practice to use laplink’s PCmover Ultimate each time we replace an aging workstation with a new PC. The result was we transferred an incredible amount of garbage – some of the dating back nearly 20 years – to the new machine.

We replaced the damaged drive with another Western Digital Blue 2TB SSD that we had on the shelf and recovered the operating system using HP’s recovery software. We then updated Windows 10 and installed all of the software that we use from the original CDs.

We are now awaiting the delivery of a new WD Black 2TB Performance SATA hard drive. Once it arrives, we will mirror the current SSD C drive onto the new SATA drive and then replace the SSD with the replacement drive.

In our situation, SSD drives simply do not hold up.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

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[Kirsty]

There should be a 5-yr warranty on your drive WD Blue 2TB SSD. I suggest you contact the company you purchased it from.

Most people I’ve heard on AskWoody say that SSDs are more reliable, as there’s no moving parts.

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[anonymous]

Been using ccleaner on ssd drives every week for years and haven’t lost one yet. Do you use Drive Wiper, Secure Deletion or Wipe Free Space? If not, maybe you just got a lemon from WD

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[Paul T]

Kathy Stevens wrote:

Apparently, a high level of read writes to a SSD drive wipes them out

Once again, SSDs do not have short lives due to excessive writes.
The SSD Endurance Experiment: Two petabytes

cheers, Paul

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Cybertooth

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[Paul T]

And the moral of the story: Backup regularly.

cheers, Paul

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JohnW, Ascaris

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[anonymous]

IMHO, I would never use the WIN DeFrag, ccCleaner, or any such software on my SSD for the very reason you write about. It follows the old adage that “you can fix things until you break them.” The less you twiddle with things, the less likely you are going to encounter issues. Plus, Carbonite is cheap in comparison to losing every file you have.

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[anonymous]

“… we read the fine print of CCleaner and its specifically says not to use the app on SSD drives…”

I found the following,
https://support.piriform.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040276031-CCleaner-and-solid-state-drives-SSDs-

It says, “CCleaner for Windows is compatible with SSDs, but we don’t recommend secure overwrite procedures, such as those available in Drive Wiper.”

I’m not defending CCleaner but rather accuracy.

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Cybertooth

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[anonymous]

To add to my previous post (on CCleaner), the machine I’m writing this on has a 256gb Samsung 840 Pro (with 13.8tb written according to the Samsung Magician software) running Win 7 Pro x64.This drive has the OS, my programs, and my “important” data.

I run CCleaner on it every evening before turning it off; I’ve never used the wipe function.

The machine also has a 1tb WD SATA drive, on which I keep my pictures and other less important stuff.

I back up any new work or changed data daily on three NASs: two single-bay Synology drives and an old WD MyBookLive. I also have a backup “main computer” that I update regularly, and two eSATA drives for backups as well – plus four laptops.

Yes, I’m completely paranoid about data loss, although my “crucial data” encompasses little more than a home-translation business I’ve run for the last fifteen years or so.

Thank goodness, my computing environment has been OK over the years.

I guess the OP had bad luck with the SSD. It’s hard to say whether or to what degree CCleaner contributed to the problem.

Y’all might find this article interesting.

The SSD Endurance Experiment: They’re all dead

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[bbearren]

Kathy Stevens wrote:

We replaced the damaged drive with another Western Digital Blue 2TB SSD that we had on the shelf and recovered the operating system using HP’s recovery software. We then updated Windows 10 and installed all of the software that we use from the original CDs.

We are now awaiting the delivery of a new WD Black 2TB Performance SATA hard drive. Once it arrives, we will mirror the current SSD C drive onto the new SATA drive and then replace the SSD with the replacement drive.

The procedures outlined in the first paragraph above would have been a one-step process restoring a drive image; just sayin’.

All 2.5″ SSD’s are SATA drives.  NVMe SSD’s use the PCIe bus instead of a SATA port.  The WD Black Performance drive is HDD, and 2.5′, 3.5′ HDD’s are all SATA drives.

As for CCleaner, I did a three year long evaluation of CCleaner (in its default settings) vs. Windows Disk Cleanup, keeping CCleaner updated throughout.  I would first fun Dick Cleanup, then run CCleaner.  CCleaner only found temporary internet files after the Disk Cleanup run.  In Windows Secrets Forums, I updated my comparison trial after every CCleaner update was issued.  After three years, I uninstalled CCleaner, and haven’t used it since.

On another level, CCleaner contains a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) in its included Registry Cleaner (which I never ran).  In my view, registry cleaners are snake oil, never to be used.

Bottom line, I think you just got a bad SSD from Western Digital.  It happens, just like early failures can occur with HDD’s.  I’m running six Samsung SSD’s (one is mSATA) in my daily driver desktop, and an Intel mSATA SSD for the OS in my DIY NAS.  I won’t be going back to HDD’s, and I’ll keep using Windows Disk Cleanup.

Create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates, in case you need to start over!

"When you're troubleshooting, start with the simple and proceed to the complex."—M.O. Johns

"Experience is what you get when you're looking for something else."—Sir Thomas Robert Deware

Computer Specs

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[mn–]

bbearren wrote:

All 2.5″ SSD’s are SATA drives.

… well, except the very rare and extremely expensive high-end (mostly server) drives that might be SAS or something like that.

You know, for when you want to build a RAID6+hotspare array out of a whole bunch of SSDs, or something…

Anyway, SATA is an interface type, like pATA, SCSI, SAS, FC or ESDI… or NVMe.
SSD is a backend technology, like CDROM, DVD+RW, HDD, or various tape drive types…

Now I really want to see a NVMe tape drive 😉

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[Cybertooth]

I don’t use recent versions of CCleaner, but that said, I like it that CCleaner makes it easy to go through the cookies and select the ones to keep and the ones to get rid of.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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[Kathy Stevens]

W could not recover a drive image from the Western Digital Blue 2TB SSD  – the machine would not boot with the damaged drive.

When the damaged drive was placed in a NexStar CX external hard drive enclosure and connected to the restored work station the damaged drive could not be read.

The replacement drive that we have ordered is a WD Black 2TB Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive – 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch – WD2003FZEX

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[wavy]

Kathy
I would hit the customer service area and forums at Piriform. See what they have to say about this. I would say it seems highly unlikely that a temp file wipe would have done this, were yuo using a ‘wipe function’? Does the SSD test good after formatting?
Well thank goodness for backups!!

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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[Kathy Stevens]

When placed in a NexStar CX external hard drive enclosure we can not gain access to it to reformat it.

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wavy

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[JohnW]

Paul T wrote:

And the moral of the story: Backup regularly.

Image backups can allow you to recover from any drive failure in two simple steps.

1. Replace the drive.
2. Restore the latest image.

All else is just noise if you backup to images regularly.

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[Kathy Stevens]

Moving forward we are seriously considering periodically imaging each of our PC’s C Drives to dedicated external drives.

I am beginning to think that we experienced an attack that wiped out the machine’s c drive and corrupted the backup files on the D drive not a simple drive failure.

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[Bundaburra]

It’s essential that external backup drives are not connected to anything, except when actually in use.  When they are in use (doing a backup or recovery), the internet should be disconnected.

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit 20H2

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[Paul T]

Kathy, please start a new topic for this. It will be a complex discussion, but well worth having – might even get a newsletter article out of it. 🙂

cheers, Paul

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[JohnW]

Bundaburra wrote:

It’s essential that external backup drives are not connected to anything, except when actually in use.

And I rotate a pair of external drives for this task, so one is kept offline in a safe location when not in use.

By disconnecting the network you would ensure that no backdoor to a remote connection could be opened during the backup, while the external drive is connected. But if you need to worry about whether or not your network is connected during a backup, you might already be compromised. The malware could have already been dropped locally that could contain a ransomware payload. No network required to do the dirty deed in that case.

Consider Macrium Image Guardian: https://www.macrium.com/mig

That’s why Macrium Reflect today includes Macrium Image Guardian, a feature that prevents backup files from being encrypted by ransomware.

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[bbearren]

I have recovered from a hard drive failure that would not even let the PC post.  It took me a more than an hour to narrow that down, and I had to replace the drive, but the restoration of my drive images went much more quickly.

I have recovered from a house fire that destroyed the house and pooched two PCs. I ordered a Dell desktop to get something to which I could restore my drive images, and that got my daily driver back up and running.

I have recovered from a hard drive failure that would not let Windows boot (no OS found) by replacing the drive and restoring my OS drive image.

It’s called Hardened Windows, and it hasn’t failed me yet.

Create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates, in case you need to start over!

"When you're troubleshooting, start with the simple and proceed to the complex."—M.O. Johns

"Experience is what you get when you're looking for something else."—Sir Thomas Robert Deware

Computer Specs

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Cybertooth, Ascaris

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[geekdom]

Hard drives fail. Make sure you have spare hard drives and daily backups.

Beta Work {Got backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender TRV=1909 WuMgr
offline▸ Win10Pro 20H2.19042.685 x86 Atom N270 RAM2GB HDD WindowsDefender WuMgr GuineaPigVariant
online▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.746 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox85.0 WindowsDefender TRV=2004 WuMgr

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JohnW, Ascaris

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