Question Cannot format, repartition or do anything with SSD.

Jul 17, 2019
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I have a Kingston A1000 480 GB M.2 SSD that came with my PC as the main drive. After a power outage I kept getting "Reboot and select proper boot device..." and tried all sorts of ways to fix that issue, bar formatting and reinstalling.

Once I attempted to format and reinstall via Windows 10 boot media on a USB stick, it turned out I could neither format any of the SSD partitions, nor choose any of them as an installation source (I could select these options, but in all cases it would claim the process completed, but upon reboot kept kicking me back to the format/install guide again...).

Currently have reinstalled on the secondary HDD instead, which I don't find optimal as it is rather slow. However, trying to reformat or do anything to the SSD while logged into Windows on the HDD is still not possible, although I can still access it via explorer.exe and even copy files from it.

Tried diskpart, Disk Management and Partition Assistant, and nothing works. In all cases it claims that the process was successfully completed, but then the disk just reverts to its previous partitions and contents on them.
According to Kingston SSD manager there is nothing wrong with the drive.

Link to snaps from the overviews from diskpart, disk manager and partition assistant, if that's any help...
View: https://imgur.com/a/afUTEjO
DiskPart
View: https://imgur.com/a/TeMeZrt
DiskManager
View: https://imgur.com/a/fCjGUQG
Partition Assistant

Any clue what, if anything, I can do?
 
You want to start out with an empty unformatted disk. At the beginning of the Windows 10 boot media installation you have an option to "delete all existing partitions". That will give you an empty drive. The Windows installation will create the partitions it needs and format them automatically when you select that drive for the installation.
 
Jul 17, 2019
2
0
10
You may try to reformat it using Gparted (boot-cd). But if the ssd is broken, then nothing will work anyway.

Tried using Gparted; it cannot format the drive or repartition it. It says it succeeds in deleting the partitions, but then says it can't inform the kernel of this (?) so the old partitions will remain in use. The drive then resets to its old state.

Seems like a software fix is not going to be likely, then. :/
 
Many SSDs are sensitive to power loss as already stated.

If you wish to bypass the freeze lock, you can try setting the drive to IDE mode instead of AHCI in the BIOS, delete all partition information, then reenable AHCI and attempt your install as normal. This is not guaranteed, but is one way to try to get around the hot lock state.

Booting with a tool such as Parted Magic (Self contained with GUI linux environment) and doing a secure erase might help as well
 
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