My SSD just died

[PhireSide]

The power went out for about 10 seconds here while I was typing an email.

Before I could get up to investigate the power returned but my Windows 10 is now telling me I have an unmountable boot volume. I suspect a surge when the power returned must have damaged something.

Fired up Hirens, looks like my 1TB and 500GB mech drives are ok but my OCZ Agility is toast. And the Windows install on it was fresh, probably a month old

Guess I'll be shopping for an SSD tomorrow...

 

[Rickster]

You tried different SATA/power cables?

 

[Bryn]

My condolences. That's why I have used a UPS for years now. Got to protect your stuff.

 

[PhireSide]

Busy troubleshooting now.

This is the first major issue I've had with my PC since 2011 when I built it, so I guess it had a good innings. A UPS is probably a good idea, too late now but hindsight is 20/20 as they say

 

[Dan C]

Only had one SSD die on me and that was about 8 years ago. I got an OCZ Agility somewhere in one of my setups.

RIP SSD.

 

[PhireSide]

I know the Agility 3's were not particularly known for their reliability but this one was a pretty solid little drive. It made a huge difference coming from a mech drive and I will not go back to one anytime soon.

I've tried a different motherboard SATA port, a new SATA cable and also a different power cable. No good. It was only an OS drive so I'll need to reinstall and then just load a few proggies, and I think I have a spare 500GB floating around here that I can use.

That said, maybe it was time for an upgrade...

 

[Dan C]

Blame windows 10.

**edit ** ah crap ... just checked I got my OCZ in my HTPC and running windows 10 and it's not on a UPS.

 

[PhireSide]

I see you like to live dangerously, Dan C...

Funny you mention that. I had zero issues with Windows 7. One day not too long ago I was busy playing a YouTube video and the audio cut out, the mouse froze and the PC just hard restarted, like someone yanked the power cord out and quickly shoved it back in again.

Maybe that was the warning sign. I didn't take note of it at the time as I thought Chrome was to blame (been crashing a few times when I have >10 tabs open).

Now I am really sad I never got that $20 Dell SSD special a few months ago when they labelled it with the incorrect price

 

[Thor]

I would die.

 

[PhireSide]

I would die.

I'm busy loading Windows onto a mech drive and I too want to curl up and die.

My SSD has spoilt me so much that a normal mech drive is actually painful to work with

Now to find it a suitable coffin...

 

[Thor]

I'm busy loading Windows onto a mech drive and I too want to curl up and die.

My SSD has spoilt me so much that a normal mech drive is actually painful to work with

Now to find it a suitable coffin...

Death.

I cannot wait till 4tb SSDs becomes affordable so far I have 1 256 sdd and 1 500gb and 3 x 4tb HDD.

 

[biometrics]

Get a Samsung or Intel SSD.

 

[PhireSide]

I'm looking at the Sammy Evo or Pro drives, will see if I can find one at a good price.

Maybe a 120GB or so, I don't have the need for a huge amount of space

 

[Rickster]

Your SSD isnt dead...if you get ANY windows screens, that means the SSD is working, the MBR is buggered.

Try get into startup repair and type this in CMD

Bootrec.exe /fixMBR
Bootrec.exe /fixBoot

 

[Kolmogorov]

I'm looking at the Sammy Evo or Pro drives, will see if I can find one at a good price.

Maybe a 120GB or so, I don't have the need for a huge amount of space

Takealot Daily Deals has a 850 Evo 250GB for R1599

http://takealot.com/og/v1/PLID34180893

 

[PhireSide]

Your SSD isnt dead...if you get ANY windows screens, that means the SSD is working, the MBR is buggered.

Try get into startup repair and type this in CMD

Bootrec.exe /fixMBR
Bootrec.exe /fixBoot

This was my thinking as well, however:

Drive does not detect in Hirens neither does it detect in a Windows 10 based repair tool. Launching diskmgmt.msc causes the Explorer shell to crash after about 3 minutes of 'connecting to logical disk manager' (or was it Virtual Disk Service?).

Launching a bootable Gparted USB hangs on startup with the drive plugged in. It boots up fine with the suspect SSD disconnected.

Booting from a Windows 10 CD hangs with the hourglass wheel thingy when I click on 'repair my computer' indefinitely. It's worth noting that it still detects in the BIOS. I think I should use the OCZ Toolbox to update the firmware and secure erase the drive once I have my PC up and running again on the spare drive

@Kolmogorov, ta for the link. It is a bit out of my price range, but I'll keep an eye out for any specials in the sub-R1000 bracket

Edit: I think what irks me the most is that both of my considerably older mech drives have survived much longer than the SSD, food for thought

 

[Conack]

That BSOD shows some hope there...

Seen 2 Agility drives simply die overnight over the last year.

 

[PhireSide]

Partition Wizard sees the busted partition, but...

I'm going to try and delete the partitions and reload the drive firmware which should trigger a secure erase and issue a TRIM command via the OCZ software. Need moar coffee first...

 

[aktiv]

Learning a few things here - thanx
hope you can pull it off

 

[PhireSide]

I'd be happy if I can get it to work - the SSD might by ancient by today's standards but it gets the job done and I don't do any heavy reading or writing to it other than launching Steam and Chrome, so splurging R2k+ on a drive that will give my marginal gains at best isn't worth it in my books. I'd rather use that to buy another 8GB of RAM and another mech HDD for storage, if it was my money.

I'm busy cloning the temp disk to the SSD as we speak using Ghost32, as I managed to wipe the drive with EaseUs Partition Manager and now have access to the drive. The data sadly is gone and it's not worth the effort to attempt recovery - I'd rather spend two or three hours now setting the drive up than spending 10+ hours getting my data off in drips and drabs

EDIT: Clone completed without any hassles, but now Windows Activation is having a tantrum due to changed hardware. This is becoming quite the journey haha

EDIT EDIT: This drive has just earned itself a name other than 'Local Disk':



Lessons learnt:

1) Have a better disaster recovery plan, ie keep bootable USB with Windows 10 on hand, as the Windows 10 Safe Mode won't be accessible if the PC cannot start up in the first place
2) Have plenty of coffee on hand
3) UPS! A UPS might have saved me the trouble tonight as I really thought the drive was on it's way to silicon heaven
4) Don't rely on one program to tell you a device is good or bad. In my case MiniTool partition wizard could not detect my drive yet EaseUS did and with it I managed to wipe the partitions and got the drive to work
5) OCZ doesn't have the correct tool available on their website anymore as the drive is EOL - I had to download the tool from a third-party site to verify that the drive was still operational (I only had a little green LED near the SATA port to prove to me it was not stone dead) - moral of the story, don't trust all manufacturers to keep their software libraries up to date especially with legacy devices
6) Have patience and approach things methodologically, step by step. Rule out any and all hardware issues by swopping cables and ports to save yourself the doubt later on
7) An SSD is still an electronic device that can fail, even if they are more robust than mechanical hard drives.
8) Did I mention coffee?

Case closed