I plotted for a bit with my Samsung *1Tb 970 EVO. Then started RAM plotting and was recently using this is a temp swap drive. With 63% life this drive has started crashing on PLOT transfers. It has 375TB writes.
Today it started crashing during PLOT transfer. It error in Windows, as the drive no longer appears as a disk. I was expecting this to happen closer to 0% life. Perhaps I should contact Samsung for a warranty claim?
Does anyone have any suggestions? I use a TRIM command before every copy in my automated script. Drive temps during transfer are about 47 Deg C.
Drive reappears on computer restart and allows a copy to commence. If I start plotting again it crashes and is removed from visible devices.
I have similar experience with my external HDD for my destination drive, it’s broken now, windows can’t recognize it anymore, can’t be formatted nor create any partition with every software and command line. It happened because power failure when I’m plotting (phase 5 / transferring plot file) and when power back up, the HDD is not recognized anymore, till now.
I had an evo 970 500GB failed the same way after about 5 years of normal usage. Luckily I discovered this problem before it was too late.
RMA didn’t work, because it was just about a few months older than warranty period.
Yes. I’ve been using it for a year. Started plotting. With it in May and after 350Tb of writes it’s gone whacko. I reformatted it tonight. Will see if that helps at all.
Thank you. I already tried that. It shows no errors. And when the drive panics, it simply doesn’t show up as a drive in Magician or elsewhere. Could be the MOBO I suppose, but doubtful.
My first NVME was a Sabrent which exhibited the same disappearing behavior in the first days of use.
I returned it, explaining that it un-mounted itself regularly.
My Samsung EVO replacement works very well, but I do have to watch as occasionally ghost files will be left behind which are taking up space but cannot be found or deleted. This usually happens when a Chia plot is interrupted. The only way to remove the ghosts is to format. Chia puts some unusual stress on drives.
I think your drive has gotten old and tired, probably helped by Chia plotting, and you will have to replace it.
Thanks for the reply. I reformatted today (not the quick method) and am going to retry it. It was able to handle 160 Gb of non PLOT downloads, so I think I will try plotting to it again.
Thank you so much for the reply - I considered it might be heat related as it seems to only go whacky during a plot copy which is read/write duration intensive. I have invested in a bigger heat sink and some new thermal tape.
FYI - I setup a small 60mm fan right on top of the NVME drive. After a reformat and the addition of the fan it’s plotting and transferring just fine. Apparently it was getting too hot ! Thank you !
Fan works like a charm !! thank you ! A 3$ 60 mm fan right on top of the nvme heat sink fixed the issue. Have run 30 back to back plots with no issues. I also did a manual complete format. But I’m assuming the issue was heat, as the drives problems were temporary and disappeared after reboots only to reappear during file copy.
