Random Disappearing/Reappearing SSD on Boot

[2BearArmy]

Config:

ASUS P8Z68-V Pro/Gen 3
OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 480GB SSD
Corsair 850W PSU
2x HD 6950 GPU's

My desktop has a 480GB SSD main drive (OS and games), and two secondary HDD's for media storage.

I have had no issues with this SSD, until I tried to add a second video card to my system, and subsequently had to remove it. After a couple re-installs and finally getting the Crossfire to work, I am still in this broken state.

Symptom:

If I put my computer to sleep, restart, power down, it is a complete gamble as to whether or not the system will see the boot drive. What is consistent, is that after a seemingly random interval, it will eventually see the drive and boot straight to windows.

Troubleshooting Steps:

• Reset Bios
• Removed all other options for bootable devices
• Re-installed Windows
• Updated all OS drivers
• Updated firmware for both the MoBo bios and the SSD.
• Replaced all SATA cables
• Moved to another SATA controller port
• Switched power cables
• SSDLife came back saying the drive is healthy

I am literally out of ideas at this point, and the issue is extremely annoying. Sometimes my boot times are 30 seconds (if it sees the drive) sometimes it's 20 minutes (constant reboots until it sees the drive).

Anyone have any other ideas, or have seen this before?

 

[sneekypeet]

The SSD is first in the boot priority order?

 

[2BearArmy]

Yes

 

[cadaveca]

Could be dead. Could need several power cycles before re-initialization if it was mid-TRIM/garbage collection when power was lost.

I have had a few drives behave this way as they are starting to fail, and others have done this because the system wasn't fully stable, too.


Saying you added VGAs, to me, maybe hints at a PSU or stability issue.


When it fails to be seen at boot, do not reboot. It is best to shut down, and then do a "cold boot", not a reset or a quick power cycle.

 

[2BearArmy]

Could be dead. Could need several power cycles before re-initialization if it was mid-TRIM/garbage collection when power was lost.

I have had a few drives behave this way as they are starting to fail, and others have done this because the system wasn't fully stable, too.


Saying you added VGAs, to me, maybe hints at a PSU or stability issue.


When it fails to be seen at boot, do not reboot. It is best to shut down, and then do a "cold boot", not a reset or a quick power cycle.

Potentially advice rendered too late. Quick power cycles are the only way to get it to show. If I cold boot over, and over and over again. I can go easily over 30 times with no boot. If I do sudden power cycles, I tend to get it after 2-10 cycles.

I thought PSU problem at first as well, but what happened, was one of the contacts on the secondary PSU GPU power connectors was lose. (Which is why my crossfire never worked, I had random blue screens and games just generally not work). I discovered this, fixed it by resetting it, and now all my games, everything GPU and X-Fire related is 100% perfect now. The only thing that has persisted has been this SSD boot issue. But I was wondering if a lose contact could affect another device on a completely separate (isolated wiring) cable? It seems unlikely to me, but worth noting.

SSDLife has me at 91% (I've been using this drive about a year now) with 9 years of estimated life left. No other errors indicated. I am wondering if its a compatibility issue with the drive because OWC is a Mac shop, but that would not explain why it worked for so long without issue. Also, SSD's should be agnostisc of design as I would imagine, so I can't see this being a culprit either, it uses a SandForce SF-2281 controller like the rest of them. This can't be an issue, right?

 

[fullinfusion]

Humour me on this as I had an issue not long ago and i got it fixed. Go into the bios and load optimized setting and enter and restart. Reboot into the bios and flash the bios to the latest or the bios of your choice.. Once flashed just boot into windows and cross your fingers it works. Asus BIOSes are buggered especially after you said you had numerous blue screens. My system is good for 8-10 blue screens then shit goes wonkey to say the least until I do the above mentioned.. Good luck and post back how it goes.