Weird SSD Failure - Apple SSD Drive corrupts files when storage over 50%

[Cide]

I just made a post about my MacBook Pro Retina's from 2012 being bullet proof,
And moments later my system died, apparently with unfixable Disk Utility / first aid reports, Many errors, in fact it reached the max amount of reporting and ended subsequent reports. This was easy to replicate, By downloading files or exceeding 50% utilization of the SSD, it begins to corrupt active files, Sometimes critical system files which are supposed to be protected and duplicated in the event of error.

I ended up ordering a 1TB OWC SSD, after questioning their reliability, I wanted to get the 2TB one but for the price they ask I could buy a 4TB SSD drive for my Desktop PC.

I've never had an SSD Fail before, particularly a Samsung-based Apple SSD, so I figured you would like to know there is no failure reported for this type of problem, It just happens when you start to fill the drive up. With just the Base OS system installed, it operates fine and produces no file system errors. It appears applications like DriveDX Aren't designed to detect this type of failure, or the SSD has no idea what is going on when it begins to fill up. Here is what DriveDX's smart counters show:

 

[Cide]

The Power Cycle count seems a bit abnormal (60,000+ times) for a drive with only 6000~ power on hours. Other than that, there is no apparent problem until you access damaged blocks and the corruption cascades to recently accessed/stored files. For comparison sakes, I have an Apple-Samsung 768gb SSD with over 30,000 hours on it with less than 6000 power cycles, probably due to me not allowing the SSD to Power Save/Sleep in Power Options.

 

[jav6454]

That power cycle is odd. As per the SSD, you are the first person I know off in this entire site that has an Apple SSD die on them due to corrupted pages. I am inclining more into the whole OS being buggy and causing issues.

 

[Juicy Box]

I had a similar issue with the fusion drive, on a late 2012 iMac.

It was one of the few times that I got AppleCare on one of my Apple devices, being that it was a redesign.


The problem was that Apple refused to replace the drive, even though it was showing signs of failure, and then because it would pass their HW diagnostic test after they wiped the drive.

I will take the iMac home, start saving stuff to it, and once I would get to a certain percentage used, I would start getting corruption issues.

This went on for months, and many trips to the Apple store.

Eventually, the drive totally failed, at least the HDD part of the drive. I couldn’t boot from the fusion Drive, or an external drive, or even run Internet recovery mode. It took the Apple Store several hours to get their diagnostic software to boot up on the iMac.

It failed within 30 seconds of them running the test. So, they finally replaced the fusion Drive 12 days before my AC warranty was over.

In retrospect, I kind of wish I wouldn’t of purchased Apple care for the iMac, then I would’ve just replace the drive myself. It would’ve save me a lot of time, and money and tolls and fuel to get to the Apple Store multiple times.

 

[Cide]

That power cycle is odd. As per the SSD, you are the first person I know off in this entire site that has an Apple SSD die on them due to corrupted pages. I am inclining more into the whole OS being buggy and causing issues.

Yes the power cycle count stood out at me, In comparison here is my other identical running MacBook Pro Retina Mid-2012, with the Samsung 768GB Stock SSD:

As you can see here, it has 24,077 Hours on and only 20,806 Power Cycles. (Note: for the LifeTime of this SSD, even when Plugged in to AC, I have had the drive set to Not Goto Sleep in Power Options.) Maybe this accounts for the lower number of power cycles compared to the suspected Apple 256GB SSD which has failed (I Know right, super rare I too have not heard of anyone else!), or that it has or had been cycling itself on and off in an erroneous state that the Apple File System or OS is not picking up on. I know it doesn't mean everything but the Battery Cycle count on this notebook with the failed SSD drive is only 175 Cycles, and the machine is in mint condition hardly having much use.

Where as the above 768GB Apple SSD ran with less than 1GB Free for well over a year while I was sick, running out of Space and having to power cycle the machine to clear temporary cache files to get it to run, Lol. Its been trashed, and it still runs like new.

I wouldn't suspect the drive has failed because it reports so well, but the trouble only seems to arise after a certain utilization is met, just like the above poster with failed Fusion Drive, as soon as you wipe it, and format it, and reinstall a fresh OS, the problem is gone until the bad blocks are encountered. It appears in this case, my SSD is not picking up that it has bad blocks, and is overlooking the ability to correct its own errors.

I duplicated the issue by Fresh installing and downloading Logic Pro library/sound files (Like 50GB+), The machine fails in a unique way related to corruption each time. On first corruption experience I lost everything after I had started torrenting to the SSD, second experience I lost function of parts of the operating system such as Safari and Finder, and now, I get Apple "BSOD" and hard kernel panics or restarts when the OS is beginning to load, with file system corruption repaired on Node 1 and 2 Node of the same filesystem unmountable with many errors.

You would think this type of failure would be picked up by the OS or the controller somehow, But no the issue persists.

It kind of scares me I thought these Apple SSD's were "Smarter" and better at handling errors than many other SSD's of this class, and that failures like this would have been anticipated or picked up by the file system. (I guess they are, as they occur, but APFS cannot repair it when it happens in a bad way.)

Regardless theres not much else I can say,
I will post back here if it turns out the Logic Board is corrupt and causing errors with the SSD, Somehow I doubt this could be the cause, I have a few many years experience troubleshooting, assembling, and diagnosing computers, hard drives, and networks of all sizes, from home to enterprise. It just doesn't seem likely, and based on how responsive and stable the machine is when the disk has only the Base OS Installed. (Roughly 10% of 256gb)

From here,
I am just waiting for my OWC SSD to arrive in the mail, They say next Thursday by end of day.

It sucks that I have to use a 3rd party drive, I am even more concerned about the quality of those, but at least its backed up with a 5 year warranty. In any event, I will make sure to have backups. I wish I would have bought the 2TB but I was concerned about price, and reliability in general.

 

[Cide]

That power cycle is odd. As per the SSD, you are the first person I know off in this entire site that has an Apple SSD die on them due to corrupted pages. I am inclining more into the whole OS being buggy and causing issues.

At a second thought however, Its amazing to me that this SSD still partially works in such a state, perhaps a tribute to its robustness and reliability.... as many SSD wouldn't operate at all under such circumstances. This one chugs along, Like a neutron star.

I had a similar issue with the fusion drive, on a late 2012 iMac.

It was one of the few times that I got AppleCare on one of my Apple devices, being that it was a redesign.


The problem was that Apple refused to replace the drive, even though it was showing signs of failure, and then because it would pass their HW diagnostic test after they wiped the drive.

I will take the iMac home, start saving stuff to it, and once I would get to a certain percentage used, I would start getting corruption issues.

This went on for months, and many trips to the Apple store.

Eventually, the drive totally failed, at least the HDD part of the drive. I couldn’t boot from the fusion Drive, or an external drive, or even run Internet recovery mode. It took the Apple Store several hours to get their diagnostic software to boot up on the iMac.

It failed within 30 seconds of them running the test. So, they finally replaced the fusion Drive 12 days before my AC warranty was over.

In retrospect, I kind of wish I wouldn’t of purchased Apple care for the iMac, then I would’ve just replace the drive myself. It would’ve save me a lot of time, and money and tolls and fuel to get to the Apple Store multiple times.

That sucks so much that you had to wait months to repair an obvious SSD corruption issue,
But at least it was free. I bought my first MacBook Retina new, and the second one, on a local classifieds site, in mint condition. I suspect the original owner encountered this problem and believed the computer to be defective, and sold it to me with a fresh OS loaded on it in a way that functioned as you would expect, until you put any load on the filesystem.

On a side note, APFS feels "Bad" compared to Journaled HFS+ in my opinion, its just too simplified, and whatever happened to repairing permissions? I suspect it's no longer needed with the new file system? Yet, I remember on the Mac Pro's running Leopard and Snow Leopard, and Apple Xserve XSAN I used to maintain as a Systems Administrator, fooling around with permissions repaired a variety of odd issues at the time.

Or maybe I just thought it did

Anyway,
Thanks for replying.
TLDR: It is a a concerning failure, but alas, I have won the Apple SSD fail lottery. At least, I think. Money has been spent.

 

[Fishrrman]

I'm wondering if the "power cycling" might be due to a marginal contact between the drive slot and the drive's power pins...? (odds are "no", but just a thought)...

 

[Cide]

I'm wondering if the "power cycling" might be due to a marginal contact between the drive slot and the drive's power pins...? (odds are "no", but just a thought)...

No such luck,
The problem occurs when a specific NAND-Cell is accessed, which is bad. Presumably it is 32 or 64GB sized cells, and one of them is corrupt. As soon as you begin to use more than 5-10% of the drive, it tries to level out wear to these poor quality or unreadable cells, and the corruption from there becomes a chain reaction.

I believe this Notebook was just used very sparingly and the drive was set to Sleep, which counts as a Power Cycle each time, compared to my 768 which is set to "Power on" at all times.

The power cycles count occur when the drive is unable to be mounted as well, as thats what happens to the File System after it experienced a touch of corruption. Depending on what corrupts, the OS may or may not be bootable. I've reinstalled Catalina 3x on this notebook to have a different type of corruption-related failure each time.