Question Help me figure out if my SSD is dead?

[Chappell Bone]

Alright y’all, made an account just for this, hoping one of you can help.

I have a WD Sn770 2TB SSD that I used to use in the PC I currently own as extra storage for Steam. Long story short, the drive got removed at some point and while it was removed, the PC was reset.

I want to use the SSD again, but that’s where I run into problems. If the SSD is in the M.2 slot, the PC will not boot at all. If it is connected in an external enclosure that I know is working, it shows up in Device Manager and in Explorer, but if I try to do anything with it, the computer hangs. Occasionally I can get it to attempt formatting, either via the GUI or in CMD, but it always hangs before finishing.

It’s still under warranty, but getting it replaced by WD is kind of a pain and I’d prefer to avoid it if I can.

I’ve done all the troubleshooting I can think of, but if any of you kind people can help I’d appreciate it.

Thanks!

 

[JeffreyP55]

Alright y’all, made an account just for this, hoping one of you can help.

I have a WD Sn770 2TB SSD that I used to use in the PC I currently own as extra storage for Steam. Long story short, the drive got removed at some point and while it was removed, the PC was reset.

I want to use the SSD again, but that’s where I run into problems. If the SSD is in the M.2 slot, the PC will not boot at all. If it is connected in an external enclosure that I know is working, it shows up in Device Manager and in Explorer, but if I try to do anything with it, the computer hangs. Occasionally I can get it to attempt formatting, either via the GUI or in CMD, but it always hangs before finishing.

It’s still under warranty, but getting it replaced by WD is kind of a pain and I’d prefer to avoid it if I can.

I’ve done all the troubleshooting I can think of, but if any of you kind people can help I’d appreciate it.

Thanks!

Please list all PC components including power supply and model. Maybe the drive is no longer bootable. Disconnect all other drives and reinstall windows ? You didn't say which version. If it is win10 I suggest upgrading to windows 11. Only four more months until MS ends support for windows 10.

 

[evermorex76]

Use CrystalDiskInfo while it's plugged in externally and see if you can get the drive health and SMART stats. If your mainboard has multiple M.2 slots try it in them all. Reset the BIOS to defaults (before installing the drive, if it's so bad it blocks you from getting to it when installed). Fairly good chance it's just bad and will need to be replaced if it's having issues in multiple types of connections. While it's connected externally, try to use diskpart's "clean" command to just wipe everything. Or if your BIOS has an option for Secure Erase use that, if you can get into it with the drive installed. Also depending on how far it can get with the drive installed, you could try using a Linux Live image on USB to boot and erase the drive. It's not completely unknown for an SSD to go bad while just sitting, but it's not at all common these days.

Also note that the SN770 is one of the WD models that had an issue with Windows 11 24H2, and requires a firmware update. Depending on just what you mean by "will not boot" this could possibly be related. You might need to make a bootable USB stick for the firmware update. (The Dashboard software to get firmware is now on the SanDisk site. But if you can't boot the system with the drive installed, Dashboard won't give you an option to install firmware or make a bootable installer, so I'm not entirely sure how you'd do it unless you used a WinPE bootable image. Or this under Linux: https://github.com/not-a-feature/wd_ssd_firmware_update)