Did my SSD die?

[cadaveca]

OK, so, while browsing the forum here, my system froze. No BSOD, no reboot, just frozen.

I reboot the PC, and Windows seems to be missing. OK, so maybe somehow boot order changed, so I check in BIOS, and instead of being listed as a Corsair Force GT 60 GB, I find that my SSD is listed as a "Sandforce(200026BB) (0 MB)".

Well, OK this is new....

I've got a USB 3.0 dock, so on my test rig, I plug it in, and notice that the SSD isn't recognized, but the dock is.


So, I think it's dead. Which is unfortunate, since I have uncompleted school work and review stuff on that drive...

I went and bought a Surface Pro 3 to use for school and, well, until I can get another SSD. So at least I c an get some work done, but getting the data on that drive would be super...


Anyone got any ideas on if recovery is possible, or is it simply time to RMA the drive?

 

[n3rdf1ght3r]

If it's recognized in Bios as a drive you could give TestDisk a try. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk worked for me when my hard drive died and needed to get my files off it. I think it can also try to recover your files and stick it on a second drive cuz I had to do that.

 

[AsRock]

THats what my OCZ did, see it in bios as some thing else and could not use it. And yeah it was dead.

The part that surprised me was when i opened the drive the steel casing had a very distinctive heat mark ( metal changed to multiple colors) like if it over heated and failed.

If i had known i would of placed a heatsink on it and took it out of the stupid casing it was in but o well.

 

[95Viper]

OCZ had a SandForce 200026BB bug in the firmware and some posts on other sites, also, show other SSDs using the controller had the same problems.
Apple has/had many users with SSDs using that controller do the same... so it is not OS dependent.
OCZ supposedly corrected it with a firmware update.
Most SSD forums just say RMA it... that the Sandforce controller has died.

You may want to try what a couple of people in other threads, at other sites did.
They would keep trying to access the drive, by booting up, and every once in a while it would recognize the drive and when it did, they would get the data they needed. I saw this in about 2 different posts, so, I don't know if it will work.

Goodluck on recovery.

 

[McSteel]

If the data is of paramount importance, it can be recovered. You'd need to transplant the firmware chip (if it's stored on a separate chip, if not then the controller itself) from another healthy drive, or have the flash chips soldered off and connected to a machine that can read them. Either way it's gonna be expensive.

I remember when old Maxtor HDDs bugged out in similar fashion, whereupon BIOS would identify the drive as Maxtor Poker (or Athena or DSP, depending on the controller used). What this actually meant is that the drive's firmware has become unreadable, and the controller and it's bootloader were in safe mode. There were loaders floating around that could pass a firmware code to the controller externally, so the drive would boot up. I don't know if something similar can be done for SF drives...

 

[cadaveca]

Huh, interesting info, guys. Thanks a lot for all that has been given, and if anyone has any other ideas, please feel free to add them here!

So... any ideas as to what actually causes the problem?

 

[McSteel]

Hmm... If the drive keeps it's firmware on one of the storage chips (in the HPA - host protected area), perhaps some data corruption has occured in one or more of the blocks that contain it. This is what happens to older HDDs (Maxtors I mentioned earlier actually had their firmware written on the first two tracks of the first platter in the drive), and to some other flash firmware based devices, even motherboards. Possibly there is a JTAG, serial (COM) or similar connector (or at least solder pads for it) that would allow flashing a new firmware to the drive, alleviating the problem... I can't say for sure, since I never had the pleasure of rescuing SSDs like that. But I did unbrick my fair share of routers and phones, so my guesswork above isn't completely without basis or merit

You should hit some SSD-specific forums, or perhaps electronics repair ones...

## EDIT ##
For example, see this pic (thanks StorageReviews), you can clearly see the JTAG/serial solder pads (and neatly labeled too!) right below the SATA data connector. VCC = supply voltage, TX = transmit, RX = receive, GND = ground. There's actually a direct communication pinout too, DI = data in, DO = data out, CLK = data clock, etc.

Not sure about your specific drive. Also, JTAG sometimes requires a specific cable to be useful, especially if its VCC level is at 3.3V (and you'd connect it to USB which is at 5V, so you wouldn't connect USB's VCC to it but use a pull-up resistor to bring in 3.3V somewhere from the SSD's PCB instead). What can I say, I'd love to help more, but you're circa 5000 miles away...

 

[chicken-]

I had this same issue with my Corsair Force GS 180GB. My PC had been having issues freezing during games (my screen would go black and nothing would respond, like caps lock key on keyboard wouldn't change the light). I had just installed new Nvidia drivers so I assumed it was due to that and it only happened now and then over the last couple weeks. Then every time I rebooted my PC the same thing would happen, black screens, no input response, reboot would fix it. Then last night my PC froze playing a game, Dying Light, which I believe has a memory leak because it crashed saying I was low on memory. After I rebooted I got a disk read error, several reboots and no luck.

In the bios my drive was shown as something similar to the original poster, "Sandforce(200026BB) (0 MB)". Not sure if it was the same numbers but similar anyway. I tried booting into a live boot disc but nothing would recognize the drive. I got up today and decided to put windows on another drive for now. I mistakenly swapped a few cables around while the PC was running (still on the disk read error screen lol) and thought oh god what have I done now. I turned it off and plugged eveything in to try one last time and amazingly the drive booted. I have no idea if I just got lucky or if somehow unplugging/plugging it in while the power was on did something but I was able to backup my data and I ran a few different disk tests and nothing will show anything wrong with it. I'm going to submit an RMA anyway cuz I obviously can't trust it but at least I got my data.

So I guess it's worth leaving the drive off and trying it now and then to see if you get lucky at least.

 

[mikeyanrol@yahoo.com]

OK, so, while browsing the forum here, my system froze. No BSOD, no reboot, just frozen.

I reboot the PC, and Windows seems to be missing. OK, so maybe somehow boot order changed, so I check in BIOS, and instead of being listed as a Corsair Force GT 60 GB, I find that my SSD is listed as a "Sandforce(200026BB) (0 MB)".

Well, OK this is new....

I've got a USB 3.0 dock, so on my test rig, I plug it in, and notice that the SSD isn't recognized, but the dock is.


So, I think it's dead. Which is unfortunate, since I have uncompleted school work and review stuff on that drive...

I went and bought a Surface Pro 3 to use for school and, well, until I can get another SSD. So at least I c an get some work done, but getting the data on that drive would be super...


Anyone got any ideas on if recovery is possible, or is it simply time to RMA the drive?

The FW problems for Sandforce controllers is a problem from maybe 2-3 years ago. If you still have the original firmware, it might be time to upgrade it and get ride of any possible problems from back then.

 

[OneMoar]

you could try re-flashing the drives firmware if its still in a state where the bios picks it up you may be-able to force flash it
data is most likely toast tho
sounds a lot like the sudden death issue that's plagued sand-force drives for ages