Yet another SSD possibly dying

[newconroer]

Noticed some odd hangs and unresponsiveness with my Vertex 4[system SSD(C:\, active\primary)], which would sometimes require a hard reboot. This eventually led to it one day stating that it could not find a Windows boot device. Returning to BIOS showed the drive nor the Windows boot manager entry as being recognized. The only way to resolve this was to hard shut down, drain power from the board and start up again.

Windows would attempt to boot yet hang for a great while(I suppose it would indefinitely). On other attempts, it would immediately goto Automatic Repair attempts and then give a blue(Windows 10 teal?) error stating the system had a problem.

Initially I thought it was boot file /UEFI/Gparted issues and attempted to repair it with a Win 10 installation disc. It would state it was not repairable. Using 'Refresh Windows' fails as the drive is 'locked'

I then tried using Diskpart which got me as far as resetting the bootrec, though that stated the device was not accessible. And finally PartedMagic which can initially see the drive, and even do a quick (albeit small) file copy off of the drive, before it becomes unresponsive.

And that's the general behavior at this point. No matter what I do, whether it's Partedmagic, EasyRecovery, DiskPart etc. the drive is only available until I start trying to access data hence my comment about a quick file copy before it goes bad.

And if I try to boot Windows from another drive, it hangs until I pull the Sata cable from the SSD at which point Windows immediately continues booting. In Windows, I can replug the Sata power/data and it immediately sees the drive while giving me a 'scan for errors/repair' pop up in the Windows tray. Attempting to scan and fix fails. Windows Explorer takes ages to scan the drive, as the bar creeps to the right and then sits at the end doing nothing. I did once get the drive to respond and show me all the root folders with nothing inside them.

Crystal Info can never see the disk and HDD scan shows it as a blank entry which upon choosing it, gives an access violation error.
Meanwhile oddly, disk Management shows the disk, assigns a drive letter, and states the Recovery partition, EFI system and the NTFS partition(as Primary) are 'Healthy'


It feels to me like the drive has just gone bad. My attempt now is to copy /paste data across to another drive while in PartedMagic and then do a full erase on the drive, reinstall windows and see how it behaves.
I'd love to do a full disk clone, but that level of data access would cause it to die out again.


Any thoughts are welcome.

 

[jboydgolfer]

My condolences

R.I.P vertex. 4

May you always have
walls for the winds,
a roof for the rain,
tea beside the fire,
laughter to cheer you,
those you love near you,
and all your heart might desire.

Sadly I think you arty know what time it is

 

[dorsetknob]

Out of curiosity how old is this marvalious non spinning all silicon it will only fail to a read only ( so they said ) State Drive ?
People mock the old rust spinners but they (for a price were data recoverable).

Not alot of use to you but is there a chance its Still within its Warranty /RMA if so time to play that music

 

[DRDNA]

I had one (2 1/2 years old in a laptop) go 4 months ago and it all started like your description and then no access of any kind with it undetectable by everything...... I truly believe it was because of heat for me and I feel that's the issue with SSD's 99% of the time.

 

[RejZoR]

Any of you guys run Crystal Disk Info as resident app to monitor SMART? Has it ever alerted for an SSD before it crapped out? I have good experience with HDD's and CDI warning me about it before it goes belly up...

 

[AsRock]

When i opened up my OCZ drive that had died , it looked like it got really hot as there was very bad discoloring on the steel they used.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

New SSDs in old motherboards is a bad idea. I had an MX100 in my Z170 board and, even though the SSD had 90%+ life, I got rare BSODs. After the BSODs happened, hitting the restart button on my tower would always result in the drive vanishing. I'd always have to hold the power button in to get the drive back then fix the boot order so Windows would run. My solution: MX300 and the issues are gone. MX100 has no problem running on the X58 motherboard.

If the drive appears to be fine in another system, it most likely is fine. They're just incompatible with each other.

 

[newconroer]

Thanks all.

@FordGT90Concept I did try in another system, though it's an even older one. It didn't see the drive at all, so not conclusive as it could have been the computer or the disk. Which is a shame because I already had to replace my previous Asus board in this machine because the SATA controller died out causing the same exact type of behavior on one of my mechanical drives.

@AsRock and @DRDNA

I do not monitor the disk heat however it's not in any unnecessary heat path inside the tower, nor is it a hot environment inside or out. Additionally, I don't do any thing but normal operations with the drive.

@RejZoR

I would use Crystal if it saw the drive. I tried to arrange a Win PE build with Crystal portable however that failed..Win PE wasn't happy with Windows 10.

@dorsetknob

The Vertex 4 must be at about four years old now, there about. OCZ hasn't had it listed as even a 'legacy' product for some time - maybe suggesting they want to forget they ever made it.


On the plus side I did manage to get my files offloaded and learned something important.

In Parted Magic, if you use the File Manager to access a drive/disk, it will open in write mode. This is opposed to the read only mode which happens when you mount the drive using the Parted Magic Mount utility, which pops up and flies in your face on every boot of Parted Magic.
Why is this helpful - besides the obvious of being able to write, instead of being a read-only mode? - because often when the disks are having problems, and you try to open them with File Manager to use them in a write mode, you get a common error that looks like the following :

Error mounting /dev/sda2 at /run/media/wifu/BED8A8B0D8A867FB: Command-line `mount -t "ntfs" -o "uhelper=udisks2,nodev,nosuid,uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=0077,fmask=0177" "/dev/sda2" "/run/media/wifu/BED8A8B0D8A867FB"' exited with non-zero exit status 14: The disk contains an unclean file system (0, 0). Metadata kept in Windows cache, refused to mount. Failed to mount '/dev/sda2': Operation not permitted The NTFS partition is in an unsafe state. Please resume and shutdown Windows fully (no hibernation or fast restarting), or mount the volume read-only with the 'ro' mount option.

Note however this can happen on a 100% working healthy drive whether mechanical or flash. The clue is in the bolded part and applies to specialized Windows 7 laptops, Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10 machines of any type. Because Windows has a hybrid shut down environment in those cases, it treats the drive status differently and will cause that error above. To resolve this, you can reboot to Windows, run command :
Shutdown /s which will advise you of a pending shutdown in one minute.

Once this happens, you can restart the system, load Parted Magic and use the File Manager to click and open all your drives (possibly even the faulty one) and will no longer receive the aforementioned zero state error.

Then you can merrily (provided your drive is not super hosed!) copy off any data to your drives at your discretion.

How did this affect my SSD drive issue though? It did not. The drive is viewable through the File Manager, but presents me the zero state error 9/10 times. When it works the one time, it only does a few transfers before dying out. However if I use the Parted Magic Mount tool to mount the drive right away, which locks to a read-only mode, I can (so far observed) transfer files off all day long.

This suggests to me that there's some type of issue with the ability to write to the device. Or that when it was shutdown improperly because the system kept freezing up (as detailed in my original post), it went into an unreadable/writable state, and is part of why it won't boot. It could also explain why the drive is 'locked' when I try to use Windows recovery tools on it. Furthermore, my messing around trying to fix the booting may have made it even worse.

I fear that I will have to secure erase the drive and reinstall Windows, put back any files I saved manually, make an image of the fresh prep state Windows and then continue on a new adventure into the life cycle of this drive.

Last things I will try before that are :

A) Boot into Windows with no power or sata to the SSD. Plug both cables in and if Windows reads or attempts to begin reading the drive, do a Shutdown /S and pray it doesn't hang. Maybe that will fix the zero state flag and produce some positive results

B) Use a cloning tool in Parted Magic such as 'Redo Backup' if the drive doesn't konk out a few minutes in. I have tried this prior though, it seems no matter the destination drive I use, it says they are not reachable.

 

[dorsetknob]

The Vertex 4 must be at about four years old now, there about. OCZ hasn't had it listed as even a 'legacy' product for some time - maybe suggesting they want to forget they ever made it.

They had a 5 year warranty i believe
and noted as such on this site amonst others
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/04/ocz_vertex_4/
excerpt
"The Vertex 4 comes in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB versions. It has a five-year warranty compared to the preceding Vertex 3's three-year warranty stretch."
Mind you getting a RMA for a Replacment will be like building a Snowman in the fire's of hell using a paper cup

wish you luck

 

[RejZoR]

No, I was asking if anyone was running Crystal Disk Info as RESIDENT app to monitor SSD's BEFORE they go bad.

 

[R-T-B]

They had a 5 year warranty i believe
and noted as such on this site amonst others
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/04/ocz_vertex_4/
excerpt
"The Vertex 4 comes in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB versions. It has a five-year warranty compared to the preceding Vertex 3's three-year warranty stretch."
Mind you getting a RMA for a Replacment will be like building a Snowman in the fire's of hell using a paper cup

wish you luck

Remember when Toshiba aquired OCZ, they did not honor the warrantys of the former group as part of the acquisition. They only bought them in name.

 

[EarthDog]

Vertex 4 is dead/dying bud.. get rid of it.

 

[dorsetknob]

Remember when Toshiba aquired OCZ, they did not honor the warrantys of the former group as part of the acquisition. They only bought them in name.

yes i remember that and thats why i said

getting a RMA for a Replacment will be like building a Snowman in the fire's of hell using a paper cup

 

[newconroer]

No, I was asking if anyone was running Crystal Disk Info as RESIDENT app to monitor SSD's BEFORE they go bad.

Ah, no I have not.


RE warranty : I think this may be out of warranty now anyways.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

New SSDs in old motherboards is a bad idea. I had an MX100 in my Z170 board and, even though the SSD had 90%+ life, I got rare BSODs. After the BSODs happened, hitting the restart button on my tower would always result in the drive vanishing. I'd always have to hold the power button in to get the drive back then fix the boot order so Windows would run. My solution: MX300 and the issues are gone. MX100 has no problem running on the X58 motherboard.

If the drive appears to be fine in another system, it most likely is fine. They're just incompatible with each other.

I am having a very similar issue with my system. I have an MX100 256GB SSD as my main drive and I randomly wake up in the middle of the night or the next morning and my computer is sitting at my BIOS screen. The drive is not recognized at all. Sometimes I have to keep the system powered down for long periods and when I turn it back on, Windows will boot. Sometimes when it's in the BIOS I can hit F10 to save changes and it will reboot and boot into Windows. It does a quick blue screen and reboots. I never see an error message, and there doesnt seem to be a dump file on my computer that gets created.

I suspected there was something wrong with the SSD, but I wasnt sure. Also using a Z170a from Asus. This issue just started happening in the last two months and Ive had this system since Skylakes release.

 

[newconroer]

I am having a very similar issue with my system. I have an MX100 256GB SSD as my main drive and I randomly wake up in the middle of the night or the next morning and my computer is sitting at my BIOS screen. The drive is not recognized at all. Sometimes I have to keep the system powered down for long periods and when I turn it back on, Windows will boot. Sometimes when it's in the BIOS I can hit F10 to save changes and it will reboot and boot into Windows. It does a quick blue screen and reboots. I never see an error message, and there doesnt seem to be a dump file on my computer that gets created.

I suspected there was something wrong with the SSD, but I wasnt sure. Also using a Z170a from Asus. This issue just started happening in the last two months and Ive had this system since Skylakes release.

Can you clone it without any errors? If so, I'd do the clone/imaging, secure erase the drive with a proper SSD tool, then put the cloned image back and see if the problem stops (and/or stops for a while).

I tried earlier to start a clone on mine and it fails pretty quickly into it and I am not familiar enough with imaging methods on how I can take the data I saved earlier (which included virtually everything on the C:\ (excluding system volume information and some misc folders)) and turn that into an image. I'd rather do it that way, then try to install Windows on it after a secure wipe and manually put back the folders. Something tells me that is going to stumble and fail because I won't have any of the original boot record information.

If any one has a theory on how best/easiest to do this with the data I did save, please advise.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I am having a very similar issue with my system. I have an MX100 256GB SSD as my main drive and I randomly wake up in the middle of the night or the next morning and my computer is sitting at my BIOS screen. The drive is not recognized at all. Sometimes I have to keep the system powered down for long periods and when I turn it back on, Windows will boot. Sometimes when it's in the BIOS I can hit F10 to save changes and it will reboot and boot into Windows. It does a quick blue screen and reboots. I never see an error message, and there doesnt seem to be a dump file on my computer that gets created.

I suspected there was something wrong with the SSD, but I wasnt sure. Also using a Z170a from Asus. This issue just started happening in the last two months and Ive had this system since Skylakes release.

Here's the thread: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...or-csc-sys-unexpected_store_exception.217221/

Disable automatic restart on system failure to see the BSODs. My guess is you've ran into the same problem as mine.

I think the heart of the problem is the motherboard tries to use power states that the SSD doesn't support.

 

[EarthDog]

I think the heart of the problem is the motherboard tries to use power states that the SSD doesn't support.

so, this happens suddenly? Seems like it worked before, but now it doesnt...?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

It would BSOD at random.

 

[Solaris17]

I just had to replace 3 vertex 4's this year on my workstations. the others have already been replaced. I think I have 2 still in the wild.

 

[newconroer]

Well for the second time, doing a secure erase seems to have saved the day. I was able to install Windows again, let it do an update to the Anniversary edition and then transfer over all the data I offloaded earlier before wiping the disk.

I did notice however that three of my USB boot drives (two UEFI, one MBR/UEFI) struggled to run in UEFI mode(even with zero standard HDD/SDD drives connected to the mainboard). I would get a black screen and nothing...
Only legacy USB boot would work.

I wonder if there's a problem with motherboard physically, or software via the built-in UEFI shell or even the BIOS itself.

That's not very conclusive, but hey, at least I don't have to buy another drive just yet, which is good because I should soon do a full main/cpu/ram upgrade and I'll probably want M2 or NVME based drives, so a new ATA style SSD would be kind of wasted.

 

[Hood]

It lasted 4 years? Mine only lasted 21 days, then had same problem as yours.