Intel pro 1500 120g: Unsafe shutdown count goes up with shutdown

[HChue]

Hi, all:

I have a new brought Intel pro 1500 120g SSD (m.2 2242 firmware: LH9i) on my Lenovo T440s laptop (i7 4600U with Nvidia 730M; BIOS 2.36 12/2015) with windows 10 64bit installed. It performs just well.

However, when I check the SMART details for the SSD in the Intel Toolbox, The C0 Unsafe shutdown count was shown at 39, which equaled to be the same as the 0C Power cycle count and the AE Unexpected power loss count with the 09 Power-on hours count only at 8 hrs. These values go up after every shutdown except the hot restart. And I remember their values were at 1 when I first installed the SSD. I have an Intel 530 M.2 SSD which was used on this same laptop but had no issue like this.

I also have tried to shutdown the computer from Win8 PE, Bios and Ubuntu 15 64bit, and those number increased as well.

I want to know if the issue means every shutdown I have ever had was unsafe.

Will it undermine the data and health of the SSD?

Should I be worried? Is there anything I can do to prevent this (except replacing the controller/drives that I don't want to). Thank you in advance.

[jbenavides]

Hello zhxiyao,

The raw value for "Unexpected Power Loss" and "Power-Off Retract Count (Unsafe Shutdown Count)" report the cumulative number of unsafe (unclean) shutdown events over the life of the device. An unsafe shutdown occurs whenever the device is powered off without STANDBY IMMEDIATE being the last command.

If the SMART counter is increasing every time the computer shuts down and with different OS's, it suggests that the SSD is not receiving the Standby immediate command at the end of the process.

Based on the Firmwware version of your drive, this an Intel® SSD Pro 1500 Series rebranded by an OEM. OEM SSD's have proprietary firmware and cannot be updated using Intel tools, we advise you to check with the Computer Manufacturer for firmware updates for you SSD, since it may help with this condition.

We would like to mention that under these circumstances the Unsafe power loss may not have any major effect on your drive.

[HChue]

Thanks for yr patient reply, Jonathan.

The problem is I do not know its OEM Manufacturer.

I found this webpage http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/12016/INTEL-SSDSCIHF120A4H http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/12016/INTEL-SSDSCIHF120A4H which listed the test reports of the same SSD type of mine (ssdscihf120a4h) and indicated that all of them had a common problem as I have. Some of them had thousands of "Unexpected Power Loss" but still worked. They also had the same firmware version as mine. So, it looks that its firmware still has no update for years. Hence, The issue has no solution for now. Is it true?

[jbenavides]

This seems to be a minor compatibility issue between your drive and the computer. This may or may not be fixed with a Firmware update; just keep in mind that firmware updates for OEM SSD's have to be obtained from the http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/topics/oems.html Computer Manufacturer Support Websites since this type of drives are made according to the OEM's requirements, and in some cases are even designed to work in specific systems.

As you mentioned, the drive can work well with high counts of Unexpected Power Loss.

In some cases, OEM drives have markings on the sticker with the name of the vendor, if you prefer, you can http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/contact-support.html Contact Support and engage one of our support agents for assistance.