Are these unrepairable SSD errors indicative of a SSD hardware error?

Question

Some time ago I got an Apple authorised reseller to replace the SSD in my early-2011 model MBP with a Samsung 512GB 840-series disk.

About three months later, booting failed with this error:

Please forgive the bad quality; it's hard to take screenshots in those circumstances ;) Also my iPhone is old (bad camera) and this is the best of several photos.

Booting externally (the recovery partition didn't work) and running Disk Utility gave these two errors when running Repair Disk:

and the repair failed. I have since been unable to boot from the disk, mount it, or read any data from it. (The disk was encrypted with FileVault and I and two different Apple-authorised repair shops have been unable to mount it and load the volume, repair it, etc.)

At the time this happened, I was abroad and got a different Apple-authorised reseller to replace the disk, so I had a working laptop. (Contacting the reseller back home who put the disk in, they wouldn't - of course - do anything until I returned. But I needed a working laptop for work. I had backups, so all was okay.) Some time later I returned home to where the failing disk was installed, and since then I have been endeavouring to get a refund for a broken SSD, or a replacement drive. My logic is that the SSD itself had some errors and I suspect they are hardware errors that have made the drive unusable. The Apple-authorised repair shop that put in the new working disk for me (when I was abroad and just needed to get the laptop working) agreed with this.

However, the Apple-authorised repair shop back home that put in the failing disk insists it is a "software problem" (their words) and nothing is wrong with the disk. As such they're refusing to refund, replace, or do anything with the drive.

Are they right?

Details

Some useful info (please feel free to ask if I have missed anything):

• Early 2011 model MBP (MacBookPro8,2)
• OSX Mountain Lion, always kept fully up to date (however, this error occurred a year ago, about a week before Mavericks was released, from memory.)
• Samsung 840 Series 512GB SSD
• The disk before (default Apple disk) and after (replacement 256GB disk) have both behaved without errors, so I suspect the laptop itself is without hardware or software errors.
• Usage: not sure how to quantify that, but "normal". It is a daily use laptop and I worked in a VMWare Fusion VM running Windows 7. The VM image was about 80GB big. The laptop would have been running every day. However, no particularly odd disk usage - no huge file downloads or copies, etc.

Answer 1

In general, when disk utility flags a red error as unrepairable, there are two options for causes:

• software error where the catalog and accounting structures on the drive have become damaged and the system can't fix it without potentially losing data (or a lot of data)
• hardware errors on the cabling, controller or drive itself

Procedurally, when these errors happen, I back up the drive and then erase it. For a physical hard drive, sometimes writing zeroes on one pass to force each sector to be written. On an SSD, those zero options are worse than unhelpful and you can only use the SMART data and tools to talk to the SSD controller like manufacturer firmware tools and diagnostics to check on SSD health.

That or just swap the drive temporarily to rule out the Mac as having faulty hardware.

Since you've done that swap and the Mac works with other drives and the same data and the problem follows that SSD inside that Mac, I would say the problem is with that SSD. I also have used the Samsung 840 series SSD in several Macintosh of that generation with no errors of the sort.

I would press politely for a refund or exchange of that drive from the vendor if the manufacturer doesn't have a driver update or offer a software fix for your intended use of the product. Especially if the seller knew you were using the SSD in this specific Mac.

Also, if you were to back up the contents of the drive and then install a stock OS from Apple's installer and then show the error to the provider, they (or you) should be then able to seek warranty exchange from the maker of the drive rather than expecting the vendor to eat the cost of the transaction and accept a return.

Answer 2

The problem the repair shop is having with your disk is probably that because it is encrypted with FileVault they cannot use their tools, which is their excuse for claiming a software problem.

For a normal hard disk, to prove that this is a hardware problem, you should install the disk in another computer as a secondary drive and format it using slow/deep format. If the format complains or gets stuck because of sector errors, then you have a case. If it works fine, then the problem is fixed and the matter is closed.

But as your disk is an SSD, a reformat might be less than useful or even harmful. You should instead run the ATA Secure Erase command, which essentially resets the drive. This command does not actually write anything to the drive. Instead it causes the SSD to apply a voltage spike to all available NAND in unison, resetting every available block of space in one operation.

You need to check with the manufacturer of your drive for a tool that can reset your SSD using ATA Secure Erase. Alternatively, you can use Parted Magic, boot it from a USB stick, and erase your disk, as is further described in the article : How To Securely Erase Your SSD Without Destroying It.

If afterward the disk keeps on failing, then the problem is decidedly hardware.