Mastodawn

Ok so I have a new Framework 13 Mainboard 7640U w/ Crucial DDR5 16x2 (32GB) RAM and formerly a Western Digital SN750.

I say formerly because I was having some serious system issues with it when it was installed in the system as a boot drive. I have since pulled it and put it in an enclosure and after copying the disk to a spare Crucial I had, I am not seeing any of the same issues. Zero issues now.

So here's where the call for help is:
Is it possible that the SN750, despite having tested as fine in SpinRite on two separate tests, was causing issues with the PCI-E bus? I had previously installed that SSD into a Dell Latitude and rather frequently I was seeing errors in dmesg about the PCI-E bus but I didn't troubleshoot anything because A) It's a Dell and Dell does weird shit with the hardware and B) I wasn't seeing any obvious visible issues (I just like having a terminal open with dmesg open) so I didn't think anything of it.

I'm just trying to nail down what would specifically be the issue and if I can potentially trust the SSD for any kind of use in the future.

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Fritz Adalis Jun 8, 2025

@atomicangel @thegibson
Spinrite isn't particularly useful on modern drives. If you can, test it with the manufacturer's utilities, or use smartctl under linux to do a long drive self test. You may not be able to run the dst with the drive in an enclosure.

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atomicangel Jun 8, 2025

@FritzAdalis @thegibson

I installed SpinRite 6.1 into a VirtualBox VM and I pass the raw disk through to it since that has been updated to handle modern drives more appropriately. It doesn't support UEFI booting yet since it's still DOS based, but if Steve gets to working on 7.0 that's going UEFI x86_64 native.

Anyways, I will look into smartctl and do a long self test and see what comes of that since SpinRite didn't flag as having read/write issues with the SSD. (I ran level 3, one read, one write per sector.)

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References Material Jun 8, 2025

@atomicangel I don't have direct experience with spinrite, but sometimes alternative tools reveal issues that a single tool might miss. It may be worthwhile to run a live Linux distro with smartmontools and see what it had to say about the drive. It's also sometimes possible that the nvme connector gets dirt or grit preventing a full seat, or an intermittent connection on a pin. Checking the drive from an external enclosure can sometimes reveal issues as well.