SSD 970 EVO PLUS in read-only and shop wants me to send it - what would you recommend

[Piotr__]

Hi there,

my  1TB 970EvoPlus died -- it shows

SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
- available spare has fallen below threshold
- media has been placed in read only mode
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 959
Error Information Log Entries: 957

and blocks all attempts to change anything (like delete all my data). The disk is under warranty, but the seller wants me to send the device for replacement. I obviously don't want them to read 1TB of my personal data and I can't delete it.

I've called Samsung technical support asking them for procedures for the situation like this. They recommended installing linux and using gparted to delete partitions. I tried (like really tried) to explain that the drive has switched to read-only on hardware level, but somehow I managed to fail.

Do you have any recommendations on what to do in such a situation?

Best regards,
Piotr

[gromgrom2]

980 Pro NVME 2TB just did the same thing to me. My machine is on 24/7 with 90% of 32GB RAM used up by browser tabs. Most users probably don't have as many writes. There will be a wave of these drives failing in the near future. 

[Piotr__]

That's interesting. My use case is the same: 40GB RAM with (too) many web pages opened at the same time. I do not see so many writes to a drive on my machine, but you may be just right...

[BossOFLoss]

Hello there, I had almost the same issue on my 980 PRO NVME 2TB, suddenly windows crushed, and switched to READONLY mode!! what to do in this case?

[Piotr__]

1. backup what you can, while you still can (my read-only mode turned to dead-mode)

2. request warranty replacement of your drive (Samsung offered 5yr warranty on those ssds)

[luale]

I have a similar issue.

32 GB of RAM, dozens of open tabs in several browsers, a sudden system jam and now my drive is write-protected.
As it turns out, the Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 1TB drive is *****.

[GabeJacobs]

Same drive, same issue.

[Rico_Kabumm007]

I have a similar issue.

Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 1TB drive
a sudden system crash and now my drive is read-only mode.

Which software i can use to backup data from locked drive.
Clonezilla, linux partdisk or any other software to backup/resucue data

[GabeJacobs]

I used Data Recovery Wizard Pro by EaseUS

It's not free but I didn't have time to figure out the free tools.

The big issue I ran into was that  I couldn't get into the secure folders while the drive was in read-Only mode.

I guess it pays to check for firmware updates every now and then.