Dead SSD?

[Jstn7477]

Today, I got my new Accelero Xtreme 7970, new fans and controller and I also moved my PC from my Rosewill Challenger-U3 to my NZXT Source 210 due to foreseen clearance issues. Booted up my PC on integrated graphics (because the thermal glue is still curing on the 7950), and Windows booted up normally - or so I thought. Found out that Steam wasn't loading and discovered that my PC booted off the 500GB drive that had my old Win8 install on it before I moved to my replacement SSD, a Mushkin Chronos 240GB that is about a month old. Rebooted, entered UEFI and discovered it was set to boot from the SSD. Booted into Windows from old HDD, went into Disk Management and Windows asked to initialize the SSD, which is now 240GB unallocated space. Guess that means my drive is toast?

 

[McSteel]

Only your partition(s). Perhaps your MBR got fudged somehow? Don't initialize the disk just yet, your data may well be intact.

There some free tools around the net to help you try to recover your lost partition(s) on the SSD. My personal favorite amongst those is the MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition. Simply select the "Wizard" menu, and from the dropdown "Partition Recovery Wizard". From there, it's pretty simple to follow the directions.

If you have money to spare, or you don't shy away from piracy, look up LSoft Active@ Partition Recovery, it has a bit more options and features, should the first suggestion fail.

 

[Aquinus]

What do your SMART logs say?

 

[Jstn7477]

SSDLife says it has 100% life remaining, and I stupidly initialized the disk before posting this thread as I figured there was no way I could "lose my partitions" just by moving the drive to a new case. The computer hadn't been powered off for a while and my last SSD died when the power was cycled. I'm extremely angry as I'm pissing away Win8 action pack licenses (because I'll have to do phone activation soon I bet to even reuse them) thanks to these terrible drives because I didn't image this one and had no idea it was going to die in a month. Don't really have the time and patience for something in my computer to repeatedly die and I guess I'll have to proactively image my next SSD and have pre-imaged spares ready to go if I even want to keep using my computer continuously, as I've never had an SSD live more than a year. This is seriously the 5th drive failure I've had in 3 months.

 

[McSteel]

Partition recovery is still worth a shot, since despite that initializing the drive wrote a generic MBR onto it, partition signatures are still physically present on the drive, and a competent piece of software will recognize them and offer to recover accordingly.

 

[Jstn7477]

So, I don't think my SSD actually died. I think some kind of firmware bug completely zapped the drive and its stats as there was nothing to recover and SSDLife only reported it being on for 46 hours and powered on 12 times as of now. Copying some test files to it and may try Windows 7 on it tomorrow with religious backups if I put anything I shouldn't lose on it. Still keeping my interim 8 install from when I was between SSDs intact and using 7 as a test (I also need 7 for running multiple WCG GPU work units simultaneously without driver crashes probably related to poor memory management).

 

[t77snapshot]

The computer hadn't been powered off for a while and my last SSD died when the power was cycled.

What is this all about? I am now curious because I myself have a nearly brand new Kingston 32Gb ssd that was running in a rig 24/7 and one day I restarted Windows and now its stuck in a reboot loop and cannot read the drive. I am sad and confused.


(*No intentions of stealing your topic, just a quick question of ya..)

 

[Jstn7477]

What is this all about? I am now curious because I myself have a nearly brand new Kingston 32Gb ssd that was running in a rig 24/7 and one day I restarted Windows and now its stuck in a reboot loop and cannot read the drive. I am sad and confused.


(*No intentions of stealing your topic, just a quick question of ya..)

I wish I knew. Seems like when the computer is powered off and back on is when they suddenly "break" it seems. My last one died after restarting my PC a ton of times when I was overclocking my then new 3770K. With this SSD, I simply shut down my PC, moved parts to a different case, powered on and drive was completely wiped clean.

 

[OneMoar]

random death was a issue with the older sandforce drives sometimes they just up and quit with no warning

 

[lemonadesoda]

This happened to me 2 weeks ago on a Crucial M4. I was upgrading to a 256GB Samsung 840 Pro, put the 128GB M4 in a USB enclosed. Attached it to a UEFI based machine. Booted up. ZAP. Crucial dead. I have spent HOURS trying every which trick to get it to start, but having no luck at all. It was SMART 100% and have given me not even one problem for a whole year. Then out of the blue, dead as a doornail. Was it the UEFI bios and a sandforce controller?

 

[jihadjoe]

^ one of the reasons I only use Intel SSDs.
Failure rates on Intel SSDs is an order of magnitude better than everyone else.
Hardware.fr article: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/810-6/taux-pannes-composants.html
Google translate: http://translate.google.com/transla...fr/articles/810-6/taux-pannes-composants.html

Sure they're not the fastest, or the cheapest. But none of that counts when the controller fails and you lose data.

 

[95Viper]

Was it the UEFI bios and a sandforce controller?

Does not the M4 use a Marvell controller?

I have not had a single Sandforce driven SSD die, yet. And, I have four of them in operation since they came out.
Luck of the draw, maybe.