SSD Goodram IRDM Pro (2 Gen) - very high Wear Leveling Count

[vit]

Hello,
my new SSD Goodram IRDM Pro (2nd Gen) 240GB is to be the main disk for the Lenovo Thinkpad T530 laptop system (SATA III). Currently, it is divided into 2 partitions and has new Windows 7 SP1 with updates and new Windows 8.1. Trim is on.

I can still give back this SSD until tomorrow evening and I can order another one, so I have this request.

I kindly ask for an experienced eye on whether levele of parameter are correct for this new SSD (and if it is doubtful to some, what does it mean)?

What worries me most is the big change in the "Wear Leveling Count" value (from 1 to 65538) in Hard Disk Sentinel, HD Tune and SSD-Z?

I tried to run Goodram Toolbox program, but after installing it the "GOODRAM SSD not found!" message appears and then program starts, but all fields for information are empty.


Here are the results of this SSD:

1) SMART of this SSD from a few days ago (made from the system on the second disk, because there was no system on this SSD and then only AS SSD Benchmark test was done)
and from today (after installing systems):






2) Other results from a few days ago:







3) And this are results from AS SSD Benchmark from a few days ago and today (after installing the system):





Thank you in advance for your advices about this SSD and would it be better to return it?

[hdsentinel]

May I ask why do you prefer to return it?

Please check the text description in Hard Disk Sentinel: the SSD is PERFECT.
Please check the health value in Hard Disk Sentinel: the health is 100%.

If you have doubts that the device is really perfect or no, yes, I completely agree that it is good idea to perform tests, exactly as you did.
But if the tests also show no problems, confirms that everything is perfectly working, I do not really see any reason of replacement.


> I kindly ask for an experienced eye on whether levele of parameter are correct for this new SSD (and if it is doubtful to some, what does it mean)?

It just shows the increase of the wearout. Its change is completely normal and expected: writes cause wearout and slowly reduce performance and endurance / health too. But the change does NOT mean any error, any problem.


> What worries me most is the big change in the "Wear Leveling Count" value (from 1 to 65538) in Hard Disk Sentinel, HD Tune and SSD-Z?

This is not really a big change. The MIDDLE word changed a bit. This clearly shows why it is bad idea to check the attributes in decimal format: as these can cause lots of confusions and may cause "shock". This is why it is better to use the default hexadecimal display if we want to examine the attributes.

The background: some special attributes may show different kind of information in HIGH, MIDDLE, LOW words. In Hard Disk Sentinel, you can check how these parts of the attributes change if you select the option next to the attribute graph on the S.M.A.R.T. page to "Display data field HIGH word", "Display data field MID word", "Display data field LOW word".

But this attribute (or its change) does not mean that there is any error, problem, failure or similar.


> Thank you in advance for your advices about this SSD and would it be better to return it?

NO. I see no reason to return a perfect, correctly working SSD, which has no errors/problems and generally works as should.

[vit]

Thank you very much for clarifying the status of this disk.

In order to know how the status of the disk changes in the future, I have following question.

I checked in HD Sentinel that:
LOW word = 2 (now raised to 3)
MIDDLE word = 1
HIGH word = 0
How understand these words?

a) Should I loot at attribute "Wear Leveling Count":
as hexadecimal notation: 10003
or as binary notation: 10000000000000011 ?
In which system: binary or hex is best to read it?
b) I know that in this number there should be maximum and average number of P/E so whether for reading this "10000000000000011" (or as hexadecimal notation) should I divide it into such parts:
"1" "0000" "0000" "0000" "0011"
or in a different way should I read in future max and average P/E?
c) Does this "1" in the front of hexadecimal and binary number mean something about this SSD?
d) What do you mean in this sentence "The MIDDLE word changed a bit."?

Thank you in advance very much for your explanation and wish you happy, family Christmas!

[hdsentinel]

> I checked in HD Sentinel that:
> LOW word = 2 (now raised to 3)
> MIDDLE word = 1
> HIGH word = 0
> How understand these words?

Generally this can be described in the manual of the SSD, may be provided by the manufacturer.
They should describe (with details) about how the different attributes (and the different parts of the attributes) used and what kind of information reflected in the different words.

Usually the following happens in similar situations: the LOW word shows the highest wear level of memory cells and the MIDDLE word shows the average wear level of all memory cells.
As you use the SSD (write data on it), the memory cells overwritten more and more times - and these values indicate the wear level caused by the amount of written data.

But the complete specification of the SSD may define more precisely, so I'd try to ask from the manufacturer.


> a) Should I loot at attribute "Wear Leveling Count": as hexadecimal notation: 10003

Yes.

This way you can very clearly see that the LOW word is 3, the MIDDLE word is 1

As the attribute name in Hard Disk Sentinel suggests, this attribute shows "Two words" (Wear leveling count TWO WORDS).
So these numbers should be interpreted this way.


> b) I know that in this number there should be maximum and average
> number of P/E so whether for reading this "10000000000000011" ...

Sorry, I do not really understand what you mean...


> c) Does this "1" in the front of hexadecimal and binary number mean something about this SSD?

Sorry, I do not really understand what you mean...


> d) What do you mean in this sentence "The MIDDLE word changed a bit."?

I mean that the average erase (reflected in the MIDDLE word) changed from 0 to 1.

[vit]

Thank you very much for your explanations. Greetings.