[SOLVED] Evidence of SSD Failure?

[confuxion]

I have a Mushkin Reactor 1TB SSD that was reportedly in great health, showing no indicators pointing to imminent failure (as reported by HDD Sentinel) that my PC would no longer boot into last week. Wouldn't show up in BIOS, so I took it out and hooked it up externally to another system. It wasn't recognized (nothing in Disk Mgmt, Device Mgr). As you can see on the right side of the picture below, a red light on the board of the SSD comes on when power is applied:

Even though this light makes me think it's getting power, I want to post an image of the power connector, as I wonder if the missing gold-plating might be part of the issue?

Otherwise, any thoughts as to why this drive suddenly won't be recognized?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Missing trace is not an issue. One of neighboring traces serves as double.
Problem could be - the trace has broken off and is causing short inside sata power connector in cable. Replace the cable.

Also - you may want to open SSD case and see, if missing trace has not been pushed inside and causing short there.

 

[confuxion]

I've tried 3 or 4 already. No luck. Perhaps worth noting is that both plastic "guides" that form the small part that juts out in a perpendicular fashion (in the picture you posted, the arrow next to the text "Power segment Pin 1" is pointing at what I'm talking about) on both connectors have broken off, although I suspect they play no role in the connectivity of the drive. Correct assumption?

 

[confuxion]

Missing trace is not an issue. One of neighboring traces serves as double.
Problem could be - the trace has broken off and is causing short inside sata power connector in cable. Replace the cable.

Also - you may want to open SSD case and see, if missing trace has not been pushed inside and causing short there.

A little more testing revealed additional information that is relevant to this:

I hooked up a USB2SATA device to the drive and turned on the power. I noticed that red light I originally spoke of was just coming on for a second or two and going out. I fiddled with the sata power connector to try and get the red light to stay on, and started to smell something burning. I took the power connector off and there was a black mark on one of the traces, and it was hot to the touch! So I'd guess the data on the drive is good, but the power connector sticking out of the drive has an issue. Ideas?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Ideas?

This one:

Also - you may want to open SSD case and see, if missing trace has not been pushed inside and causing short there.

 

[confuxion]

I completely missed you saying that in your first post. Thanks for mentioning it again; I would have never thought of that! Also, I assume the answer is no, but are those data and power connectors coming out the back of SSD drives modular - ie. I could take them off another drive to replace on this drive?

 

[SkyNetRising]

but are those data and power connectors coming out the back of SSD drives modular - ie. I could take them off another drive to replace on this drive?

I don't think so. Everything is on single pcb.