Samsung SSD Error Codes: What They Mean

Samsung SSD error codes tell you exactly what's failing inside your drive. Some mean a simple firmware glitch you can fix in ten minutes. Others mean your NAND flash is dying and you need to get your data off immediately. The most common Samsung SSD errors fall into a few categories: SMART warnings (like "Bad Block Count" or "Wear Leveling Count"), Samsung Magician alerts (like "Not Good" or "Abnormal"), and Windows-level errors (like "No Boot Device Found" or "BSOD IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"). Understanding which error you're dealing with determines whether you can fix it yourself or whether you need professional data recovery.

We see Samsung SSDs every single week in our lab. 860 EVOs, 870 EVOs, 970 EVO Plus drives, 980 PROs. They're good drives overall, but they do fail. The 860 EVO in particular has a known controller corruption issue that we see regularly. And when they fail, the error messages can be confusing. Samsung's own Magician software sometimes gives you a vague "Not Good" status with zero explanation. Windows might throw a BSOD that points to fifty different possible causes. Your BIOS might just say "No Boot Device."

This guide cuts through all of that. We'll cover every Samsung SSD error code you're likely to see, explain what's actually happening at the hardware level, and tell you straight up whether your data is recoverable.

Samsung SSD SMART Error Codes

SMART stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology. Every Samsung SSD tracks dozens of internal health metrics using SMART attributes. When something goes wrong, these numbers change. Some changes are normal wear. Others are red flags that your drive is about to fail.

You can check SMART data using Samsung Magician, CrystalDiskInfo, or smartctl from the command line. The key is knowing which attributes actually matter.

Critical SMART Attributes for Samsung SSDs

Samsung Magician Status Errors

Samsung Magician is Samsung's official SSD management tool. It reads SMART data, runs diagnostics, and gives you a simplified health status. The problem is that the status messages are vague. Really vague.

"Drive Health: Not Good"

This is the most common Samsung Magician error people ask us about. "Not Good" covers everything from "your drive has some wear but it's fine for now" to "your drive is about to die." Thanks, Samsung. Very helpful.

When Magician says "Not Good," it typically means one or more SMART attributes have crossed Samsung's internal thresholds. The most common triggers are:

• Wear leveling count below 10
• Reallocated sector count above Samsung's threshold
• Uncorrectable error count above zero
• Program or erase fail counts above threshold

To find out what's actually wrong, open CrystalDiskInfo or run smartctl -a /dev/sdX on Linux/Mac. These tools show you the raw SMART values that Magician is hiding behind "Not Good."

"Drive Health: Abnormal"

"Abnormal" is worse than "Not Good." This usually appears when the drive has critical SMART failures or when Samsung Magician detects firmware issues. Sometimes it shows up when the drive's controller is partially failing and returning inconsistent data to the diagnostic tool.

If you see "Abnormal" and your drive is still accessible, copy your data off right now. Don't run firmware updates. Don't run Samsung's diagnostic scan. Just copy your files to another drive.

"Drive Health: Good" but Performance is Slow

Magician says "Good" but your drive feels sluggish. This happens more than you'd think, especially on older 850 EVO and 860 EVO drives. Common causes:

• SLC cache exhaustion. Samsung drives use a portion of the NAND as a fast SLC cache. Once this fills up during large writes, speeds drop dramatically. The 870 EVO, for example, can slow from 500MB/s to under 50MB/s during sustained writes on the 250GB model.
• TRIM not running. If you're using the drive with an unsupported OS, in a RAID array, or connected via USB, TRIM commands may not be reaching the drive. Without TRIM, the controller has to do garbage collection during writes, which tanks performance.
• Outdated firmware. Samsung has released firmware updates that fix performance bugs on several models. Check Magician for available updates. But only update firmware on a healthy drive with a current backup.
• AHCI not enabled. If your BIOS is set to IDE mode instead of AHCI, SATA SSD performance drops by 30-50%. Change this in BIOS, but be aware that switching after Windows is installed can cause boot issues unless you modify the registry first.

"Firmware Update Failed"

This one scares people. Samsung Magician tried to update your drive's firmware and it failed partway through. In most cases, the drive will still work with the old firmware. Samsung's update process is designed to be atomic, meaning it either completes fully or rolls back.

However, if the update failed because of a power loss during the flash process, that's a different story. The drive's firmware could be corrupted. Symptoms include the drive not being detected at all, the drive showing up with wrong capacity (like 8MB instead of 500GB), or the drive being stuck in a boot loop.

Corrupted firmware on Samsung SSDs is recoverable in most cases. The controller (usually Samsung's own Elpis or Phoenix controller) can often be reflashed using specialized tools. This is not a DIY job. It requires equipment and firmware files that aren't publicly available.

Firmware and Boot Errors

"No Boot Device Found" / "Reboot and Select Proper Boot Device"

You turn on your computer and instead of Windows loading, you see one of these messages. Your Samsung SSD was working yesterday. Now your BIOS can't find it.

This is one of the most common failures we see with Samsung NVMe drives, especially the 970 EVO Plus and 980 PRO. There are two very different causes:

1. The drive is still detected in BIOS but won't boot. This usually means the Windows boot partition is corrupted, not the SSD itself. You can often fix this by booting from a Windows USB installer and running bootrec /fixmbr and bootrec /rebuildbcd. Your data is fine.
2. The drive is not detected in BIOS at all. This is a hardware failure. The drive's controller has crashed, the NAND has gone read-only, or there's a physical issue with the M.2 connector or PCB. Check if the drive shows up in another computer or M.2 slot first. If it doesn't show up anywhere, the drive needs professional recovery.

We wrote a full guide on this exact problem. Check out our post on SSDs not showing up for step-by-step troubleshooting.

"Samsung SSD Shows as 0 Bytes" or Wrong Capacity

Your 1TB Samsung SSD suddenly shows as 0 bytes, 8MB, or some other wrong capacity. This is the same mechanism behind the SATAFIRM S11 firmware bug, and it's almost always a firmware or controller issue, not NAND failure. The drive's internal mapping table (which tracks where data is stored on the NAND) has become corrupted.

On Samsung drives, this frequently happens after:

• Sudden power loss during a write operation
• Failed firmware update
• Power supply delivering unstable voltage
• Overheating causing controller crash

The good news: your data is almost certainly still on the NAND chips. The bad news: you can't access it without rebuilding the mapping table, which requires specialized tools and knowledge of Samsung's firmware architecture. Our SSD data recovery service handles exactly this type of failure.

"SATA Port X: Device Error"

This BIOS-level error pops up during POST (Power On Self Test). It means the SATA controller tried to communicate with the device on that port and got garbage back, or no response at all. For Samsung SATA SSDs (850 EVO, 860 EVO, 870 EVO), try these steps:

1. Reseat the SATA data and power cables.
2. Try a different SATA port on the motherboard.
3. Try a different SATA cable entirely.
4. Test the drive in a USB-to-SATA enclosure on another computer.

If it still doesn't respond on any port or enclosure, the drive's controller or PCB has likely failed.

BSOD and Windows Errors Related to Samsung SSDs

Blue screens are terrifying. But not every BSOD means your SSD is failing. Some are driver issues. Some are Windows being Windows. The stop code tells you which is which.

KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR (0x0000007A)

This is the big one for SSDs. Windows tried to read data from your drive and couldn't. The page of data it needed wasn't there or was corrupted. On an SSD, this means either NAND cells have gone bad and can't be read, or the drive's controller is intermittently failing to respond.

If this BSOD happens once, it could be a fluke. Maybe a driver hiccup. But if it happens repeatedly, your SSD has a real problem. Check SMART data immediately. Look at reallocated sector count and uncorrectable error count.

CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED

A critical Windows process crashed. This can be caused by corrupted system files on a failing SSD. It can also be caused by bad RAM, driver conflicts, or malware. To isolate the SSD as the cause, boot from a USB drive and see if the system runs stable. If it does, your SSD is the likely culprit.

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

This one is tricky because it's usually a driver issue, not a hardware issue. Samsung's NVMe driver has caused this on some systems. The fix is usually to uninstall Samsung's NVMe driver and let Windows use its built-in "Standard NVM Express Controller" driver instead. Samsung has acknowledged driver compatibility issues on certain motherboards.

WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR

Windows Hardware Error Architecture detected a hardware error that couldn't be corrected. For NVMe SSDs, this often points to PCIe link errors. Could be a bad M.2 slot, a bent pin on the connector, or a controller that's overheating and dropping off the PCIe bus. Try the drive in a different M.2 slot. If the error follows the drive, the drive itself has a problem.

PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

Similar to KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR. Windows expected to find data in memory that was supposed to come from disk, and it wasn't there. On a failing SSD, this happens when the drive can't serve read requests fast enough or returns errors. Combined with other SMART warnings, this BSOD confirms the drive is in trouble.

Hardware-Level Failures

Some Samsung SSD failures don't produce error codes at all. The drive just stops working. Understanding the physical failure modes helps you figure out if recovery is possible.

Controller Failure

Samsung makes their own SSD controllers: the Elpis (for NVMe drives like the 980 PRO and 990 PRO) and the MKX (for SATA drives like the 870 EVO). When the controller fails, the drive goes completely dark. No detection in BIOS. No response. The NAND chips still hold your data, but nothing can read them without bypassing the controller entirely.

Controller failures are often caused by power surges, overheating, or manufacturing defects. They're recoverable, but it requires reading the NAND chips directly or replacing/reflashing the controller.

NAND Flash Degradation

Every NAND flash cell has a limited number of write cycles. Samsung uses TLC (Triple-Level Cell) NAND on most consumer drives and QLC on the 870 QVO series. TLC stores 3 bits per cell. QLC stores 4 bits. More bits per cell means lower endurance.

As NAND wears out, cells can't reliably hold their charge. The drive's error correction has to work harder. Eventually, ECC can't correct the errors anymore and you start getting uncorrectable errors. The drive may go read-only as a last resort, which is actually a good thing. It means the controller is protecting your data from being overwritten while the NAND is unstable.

If your Samsung SSD went read-only, do not try to format it or "fix" it. Copy your data off immediately. Read-only mode is one of the warning signs that your SSD is failing, but it's actually one of the better outcomes because your data is still accessible.

Power Loss Protection (or Lack Thereof)

Samsung's consumer SSDs (860 EVO, 870 EVO, 970 EVO Plus) have limited power loss protection. They protect the mapping table and metadata but not data that's currently being written. Enterprise Samsung SSDs (PM893, PM9A3) have capacitors that provide a few milliseconds of power to flush the write cache during a power loss.

If your computer loses power during a heavy write operation, consumer Samsung SSDs can lose the data that was in the write cache. The drive itself usually survives, but you may have corrupted files. In rare cases, the mapping table corruption can make the entire drive inaccessible.

Solder Joint and Component Failures

We've seen Samsung M.2 drives fail because a single capacitor on the PCB shorted out. One tiny component. The NAND is fine, the controller is fine, but the drive won't power on because of a shorted capacitor or a cracked solder joint on a resistor.

These failures often happen on laptops that get dropped or experience temperature cycling (cold car to warm office, repeatedly). The constant expansion and contraction of the PCB can crack solder joints over time. It's recoverable if you can identify and repair the failed component. This requires micro-soldering under a microscope.

Complete Samsung SSD Error Reference Table

What to Do When You See a Samsung SSD Error

The first rule: don't panic. The second rule: don't do anything that writes data to the failing drive. Here's the decision tree we recommend.

When Professional Recovery is Needed

Some Samsung SSD failures are beyond DIY. If your drive has any of these symptoms, you need a professional lab with the right equipment:

• Drive not detected in BIOS on any computer
• Drive shows 0 bytes, 8MB, or wrong capacity
• Drive clicks, makes noise, or gets extremely hot
• Firmware corruption after failed update or power loss
• Controller failure (no signs of life at all)
• NAND degradation with high uncorrectable error count

At MDrepairs, we recover data from Samsung SSDs using a combination of techniques depending on the failure mode. For controller failures, we can read NAND chips directly. For firmware corruption, we rebuild the translation layer. For partially degraded NAND, we use specialized forensic tools to extract whatever data is still readable.

Want to know what recovery costs? Check our data recovery pricing page for transparent pricing. No hidden fees, no bait-and-switch quotes.

If you have a Samsung-specific drive issue, we also have a dedicated page for Samsung SSD data recovery with more details on our process.

Common Samsung SSD Models and Their Weak Points

Not all Samsung SSDs fail the same way. Different models have different failure patterns based on their NAND type, controller, and firmware.

Samsung 850 EVO

One of the best-selling SSDs ever made. Uses 32-layer V-NAND TLC. The 850 EVO is generally reliable, but drives manufactured in 2015 and 2016 had a higher rate of firmware bugs that could cause the drive to freeze during heavy I/O. Samsung released firmware EXM02B6Q to fix this. If your 850 EVO freezes intermittently, check your firmware version.

Samsung 860 EVO

Successor to the 850 EVO. Uses 64-layer V-NAND TLC. Very reliable overall, but the 250GB model has noticeably smaller SLC cache (about 12GB dynamic), which means it slows down faster during sustained writes. Not a reliability issue per se, but users often mistake the slowdown for a hardware problem.

Samsung 870 EVO

Current generation SATA SSD. 128-layer V-NAND TLC. Solid reliability, but we've seen a handful of early production units with controller issues that cause the drive to periodically disconnect and reconnect. Shows up in Windows Event Viewer as "Device was not migrated" or "Device has a problem." Samsung released a firmware update (SVT02B6Q) to address this.

Samsung 970 EVO Plus

NVMe drive using 96-layer V-NAND TLC. Known for thermal throttling in laptops without proper heatsinks. Can hit 80C+ during sustained writes and throttle down to SATA speeds. Also had a firmware bug (2B2QEXM7) in early 2021 that caused read speed degradation over time. Samsung fixed this with firmware 3B2QEXM7.

Samsung 980 PRO

Samsung's first consumer PCIe 4.0 drive. Uses 128-layer V-NAND TLC (not MLC, despite the "PRO" name). Had a notable firmware issue in 2022 where drives would rapidly degrade in health, dropping from 99% to 0% health in weeks. Samsung released firmware 5B2QGXA7 to fix it. If you have a 980 PRO, make absolutely sure your firmware is up to date.

Samsung 990 PRO

Current flagship NVMe drive. Uses 236-layer V-NAND TLC with the Elpis controller. Had the same rapid health degradation issue as the 980 PRO at launch. Samsung addressed it with firmware 4B2QJXE7. Early adopters were hit hard. The drive would show "Not Good" in Magician within months of purchase. Samsung extended warranties for affected drives.

Preventing Samsung SSD Failures

You can't prevent all SSD failures. NAND will eventually wear out. But you can avoid the preventable ones.

• Keep firmware updated. Check Samsung Magician quarterly for firmware updates. Samsung has patched serious bugs on multiple models. But always back up before updating firmware.
• Use a surge protector or UPS. Power surges and sudden power losses are the number one cause of preventable SSD failures. A $40 UPS can save a $200 drive and thousands in recovery costs.
• Monitor SMART data. Install CrystalDiskInfo and let it run in the system tray. Set it to alert you when any attribute changes. Catching a problem early gives you time to back up.
• Don't fill the drive past 90%. SSDs need free space for wear leveling and garbage collection. When a drive is nearly full, the controller has to work harder, which increases write amplification and accelerates wear.
• Add a heatsink to NVMe drives. Especially the 970 EVO Plus, 980 PRO, and 990 PRO. A $10 aluminum heatsink can drop temperatures by 15-20C and prevent thermal throttling.
• Follow the 3-2-1 backup rule. Three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy off-site. Your SSD will fail eventually. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "Not Good" mean in Samsung Magician?

"Not Good" means one or more SMART health attributes have crossed Samsung's internal warning thresholds. It could mean high wear leveling, rising bad block counts, or uncorrectable errors. Samsung Magician doesn't tell you which attribute triggered the warning. Use CrystalDiskInfo or smartctl to check the raw SMART values and identify the specific problem. In most cases, "Not Good" means the drive still works but should be replaced soon. Back up your data immediately and plan to swap the drive.

Can data be recovered from a Samsung SSD that isn't detected?

Yes, in most cases. When a Samsung SSD isn't detected, it usually means the controller has crashed or the firmware is corrupted. Your data is still physically stored on the NAND flash chips. Professional recovery labs can read the NAND directly, bypassing the failed controller entirely. Success rates for Samsung SSD recovery are generally high because Samsung uses well-documented controllers and NAND configurations. The main exception is encrypted drives where the encryption key was stored only on the failed controller.

Is it worth recovering data from a Samsung SSD with high wear?

It depends on how high the wear is and whether you're seeing uncorrectable errors. If the wear leveling count is low but the uncorrectable error count is zero, the drive is worn but your data is intact. Recovery is straightforward. Just clone the drive and replace it. If uncorrectable errors are present, some files may be damaged, but most data is usually recoverable. Check our pricing page for cost expectations. We always do a diagnostic first so you know exactly what's recoverable before committing.

Why did my Samsung SSD suddenly die with no warning?

SMART monitoring doesn't catch everything. Sudden death in Samsung SSDs is most often caused by controller failure (a hardware defect or power event), not gradual NAND wear. Controllers can fail without any preceding SMART warnings because the NAND was perfectly healthy. Power surges, unstable voltages from failing PSUs, and thermal events are the top causes. This is why a UPS or surge protector is worth every penny. The good news is that sudden controller failures have high recovery success rates because the NAND itself is usually in perfect condition.

Should I update my Samsung SSD firmware if the drive is failing?

No. Absolutely not. Firmware updates rewrite critical portions of the drive's internal flash storage. If the drive is already failing, a firmware update can push it past the point of recovery. Only update firmware on healthy drives with a current backup. If Samsung Magician shows "Not Good" or "Abnormal," back up your data first, replace the drive, and then update firmware on the replacement. The failing drive should be left as-is for recovery purposes.

How long do Samsung SSDs typically last?

Samsung rates their consumer SSDs for 150 TBW (terabytes written) for 250GB models up to 2,400 TBW for 4TB models. In real-world use, most Samsung SSDs last 5 to 10 years with normal workloads. Heavy use (video editing, server workloads, cryptocurrency mining) can wear out a drive in 2 to 3 years. The TBW rating is conservative. Many drives exceed their rated endurance by 2x or more. But that doesn't mean you should ignore SMART warnings. When the numbers start declining, start planning your replacement.

What's the difference between Samsung's consumer and enterprise SSDs for reliability?

Enterprise Samsung SSDs (like the PM893 and PM9A3) have full power loss protection with onboard capacitors, higher endurance NAND, more thorough error correction, and longer warranty periods. Consumer drives (870 EVO, 990 PRO) have partial power loss protection and lower endurance ratings. For critical data, enterprise drives are worth the premium. But for most people, a consumer Samsung SSD with proper backups and a UPS is more than adequate.