Bad blocks on Surface Pro 6 1TB SSD followed BSODs

Question

I need help with diagnostics of Surface Pro 6 (i7, 1Tb) SSD and BSOD issues (warranty has expired half year ago). I experience random BSODs almost every day, often 2-3 times in a day. All available drivers and firmware updates are in place, I am running latest Windows version (2004, OS build 19041.508).

In Event Viewer I see "The device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR1, has a bad block." almost every day just before BSODs, but chkdsk, CrystalDiskInfo, Victoria and other utils shows 0 media and data integrity errors. SSD on my 1Tb Surface Pro 6 consists of two Skhynix BC501 NVMe 512GB that combined in one storage space device, and HarddiskD1\DR1 is the second one in RAID. The strange thing is that in SMART reporting I see Percentage Used at 28% while Total Host Writes is just 2610 GB, and the most intriguing detail is Power On Hours: 858 hours for Disk 0 and 834 hours for Disk 1! How is that possible?

If I could confirm that these problems caused by faulty SSD, I prefer to split 1TB storagespace to two separate volumes and get rid of endless BSODs, but I read somewhere that it is not possible. Also I have found lot of complains on Skhynix BC501 SSD reliability, and what bothers me is that other manufacturers like Dell already updated SSD firmware, but Microsoft did not issued any updates.

Is there any ideas what should I do?

***Moved from: Windows 10 / Performance & system failures***

Answer 1

Hi Artem_Lomakin,

We're sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you.

Have you tried running the system file checker? That itself will detect if there are corrupted system files that are just looping around within the operating system of your Surface device causing those BSOD errors to appear. If you did and you still experience the same issue, what I can recommend is to reset the device back to its factory settings by reimaging the device using a USB recovery drive. Reimaging the device will wipe out everything and will let you re-install its native drivers and re-set it up. Please save all your files before following the instructions below.

- HOW TO DOWNLOAD, CREATE AND USE A USB RECOVERY DRIVE -

You'll need a PC running Windows 7 or later or a Surface Device and a USB flashdrive (16GB or 32 GB).

1. Visit the page to Download the recovery image for your Surface
2. Sign in with your Microsoft Account
3. From the list of Surface devices available, select the device that you need a recovery image for

Please note that while you will only be presented with devices that are currently registered on your account, you will also be presented with the option to get an image for a different type of device. If you try to use this option, you will be prompted to enter the serial number for your Surface device. 4. Download the recovery image using the button on the page 5. When the download bar pops up at the bottom of your screen, save the file in a location you will be able to find it.

Format USB Drive:

• Note: Formatting a recovery drive will erase anything that is already stored on your USB drive. Make sure to transfer any important data from your USB drive to another storage device before using it to create a Surface

USB recovery drive.

1. Insert your USB drive into the USB port of your PC.
2. From the desktop, open File Explorer
3. Tap and hold or right-click on the USB drive and choose Format
4. Select FAT32 as the file system and enter a Volume label to name the USB drive, such as RECOVERY, and then tap or click Start
5. Tap or click OK to erase the contents of the USB drive
6. Tap or click OK when the format is complete

Create a recovery drive:

1. On your Surface or PC, open recovery image that you downloaded by double-clicking it or right click then select Extract and then Extract all.
2. Select the USB drive you formatted earlier for the location and click Extract.

Use a USB recovery drive to reset your Surface:

1. Shutdown the Surface
2. Insert the USB recovery drive into the USB port
3. Press and hold the volume-down (-) rocker
4. Press and release the power button
5. When the Surface logo appears, release the volume-down (-) rocker
6. Surface will start the recovery software on the USB recovery drive
7. When prompted, choose your language options and keyboard layout
8. Select Troubleshoot
9. Select Recover from a Drive. Choose Remove Everything and Fully Clean the Drive. Recovering this PC.
10. If prompted, select Repartition the drives
11. If prompted for BitLocker Key, tap Skip this Drive and continue with the reimaging process.

Note: When the issue continues to exist after the reset, that simply means that your Surface device is already facing a hardware issue and that needs to be replaced.

If this helps, feel free to mark this post as an answer. Otherwise, don't hesitate to contact our Microsoft Surface Support to send the device for service to have it replaced if the issue persists after reimaging the device. 

Kind Regards,

Crest

Answer 2

Crest, thank you for your reply. I have sent similar feedback in "Feedback hub" expecting any support two weeks ago, but did not receive any feedback.

Regarding your recommendations, it is my last hope to do full reimaging, but I suspended it because it will take significant time to reinstall all software.

Сould you please clarify the answers to the following questions:

1. Please, could you recommend any specific software to test possible hardware problems?
2. Is it possible to split combined SSD to two volumes?
3. My 1-year warranty expired half year ago, I wonder would Microsoft replace device in this case?

Answer 3

Hi Artem_Lomakin,

Thank you for your response.

I wouldn't be able to recommend you any software that checks possible hardware problem, however, the Surface device has reliability history that enlists or records those critical events that occur on your Surface device. You can check that out if the BSOD errors are due to hardware issues.

Type reliability in the search box next to the Windows icon or in cortana and open it. Then, see for yourself those critical events and review the details.

For SSD partitioning, kindly visit this link>>https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/hard-drives-and-partitions and for replacement, for out of warranty devices, the device will be replaced but you'll need to cover the replacement cost.

Kind Regards,

Crest

Answer 4

Well, finally I re-imaged my Surface Pro 6 according to your instructions, with full data wipe. Latest available image is Version 1903, so after all updates installed (including Version 1909, for some reason update to 2004 is still unavailable - previously I had to install it manually, and now I decided to leave 1909 for a while), I ran "sfc /scannow" - it found and fixed corrupted files, and full chkdsk scan (no bad blocks).

And now, since 3 hours after that, I've got the same Event ID 7 from "disk": "The device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR1, has a bad block."

I've checked all storage related events and found event 203 from "StorageSpaces-Driver":

Physical disk {8ae5d8b3-b631-e8a8-339c-81428bd71c39} failed an IO operation. Return Code: STATUS_DEVICE_DATA_ERROR. Additional related events may be found in the System event log for Disk 1.                  

This disk may need to be replaced. To view its reliability counters, run this command in PowerShell:                  

Get-PhysicalDisk | ?{ $_.ObjectId -Match "{8ae5d8b3-b631-e8a8-339c-81428bd71c39}" } | Get-StorageReliabilityCounter                  

This disk may be located using the following information:                  

Drive Manufacturer: NULL                  

Drive Model Number: Skhynix BC501 NVMe 512GB                  

Drive Serial Number: 842E_... 

The powershell command that mentioned there returned "Healthy" status.

By the way, is it possible that the problem is in storage controller, not the SSD itself? Because all SMART parameters shows no bad things like "Media and Data Integrity Errors", "Number of Error Information Log Entries" or "Available Spare", just strange difference in "Power On Hours" between two SSD and suspiciously high "Percentage Used" - 29/32% with just ~3TB of written data.

But if the problem is in SSD, I have only 2 questions: why Microsoft put this **** inside 1TB version, and why I decided to spend extra $400 for that...

Answer 5

We're sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you, Artem_Lomakin.

We couldn't confirm if the problem is within the storage controller itself or it's within the solid state drive but since the problem persists after reimaging the device, you can give it a try to use the Microsoft Data Eraser Tooland redownload its default recovery image and see if this makes any difference.

If the issue still persists, then this means that your Surface is facing a hardware issue and the best resolution to get it taken cared of is to send the device for service to have it replaced.

Kind Regards,

Crest