How do I know if my SSD is bricked ?

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IRONBATMAN

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Hi,

My SSD might have broke after I cleaned my PC. It might have been because of ESD or something. So is there a way to fix it ? I have set my motherboard settings to ACHI, I have connected the SSD to other PCs, but my SSD still won't work.

However, there was this one time that it worked when my friend kicked it though xD

I've tried knocking and kicking, but it still won't work.

Any input would be appreciated,
Thanks
 
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It could be with the physical history the drive has had that the head or head assembly inside of the drive itself got jammed/damaged/dislodged. If this is the case, there's two options to get it working again, and neither are advisable. One, beat on it some more. Not too hard now, it didn't steal your lunch money. This method is actually recommended by some (For some reason...) for unseating a stuck head, most commonly known to happen in conjunction with a "click of death". The second option is to crack the drive open and have a look for yourself. Highly NOT recommended unless you know what you're doing and have access to a clean room (dust and particle free).

I suppose it all boils down to how badly you want the drive operational...

Stingerxxx

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It could be with the physical history the drive has had that the head or head assembly inside of the drive itself got jammed/damaged/dislodged. If this is the case, there's two options to get it working again, and neither are advisable. One, beat on it some more. Not too hard now, it didn't steal your lunch money. This method is actually recommended by some (For some reason...) for unseating a stuck head, most commonly known to happen in conjunction with a "click of death". The second option is to crack the drive open and have a look for yourself. Highly NOT recommended unless you know what you're doing and have access to a clean room (dust and particle free).

I suppose it all boils down to how badly you want the drive operational again, and how much risk you're willing to take. There are, of course, professional routes to pursue as well. Data recovery professionals, HDD repair professionals, others of the same like.
 
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Stingerxxx

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I just now realized we're talking about an SSD and not a HDD lol.... SSD's don't have heads and head assemblies because there's no disk inside to read. As such, there's not a whole lot to become loose, or unset. All an SSD is, really, is a huge flash drive. Due to that, there is far less risk in removing it from its' enclosure, as there is no disk to scratch, or get a piece of dirt one nanometer in size that can potentially destroy all of the data on the disk. Still wouldn't recommend dis-assembling it, but there is less risk involved in doing so.

That being said, I'd be more inclined to believe that there is something amiss with the connector itself to the circuit board or an issue along those lines. Could be a loose solder point, could be heat got to it at one point and thus weakened the conductivity between the connector and the board, could be anything in that train of thought.
 

Stingerxxx

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To be entirely honest with you, I'm not a professional in the field and therefore I cannot truly say. I have never taken an SSD apart myself, merely studied up a bit about them. Even HDD's themselves I've only taken apart a few times, and only one instance was to attempt repairs, all others were dead and I took apart to study. In the case of an SSD, it's incredibly similar to a flash drive. You have a circuit board which contains several chips, mostly for storage (I believe NVRAM chips, I'm a bit fuzzy on the details on that however). Connected to one end of the circuit board is your typical SATA connector, either for a laptop or a desktop, or in the case of external SSD's you may have a dedicated USB connector. Nothing about the physical makeup of a SSD suggests that exposure to open air would be an issue, however excessive handling, same as with any electronic component, can lead to issues either in the immediate future or down the road.

My guess regarding the possibility of a connector issue comes from my experience with dismantling flash drives that have had similar issues. It is normally one of three things. The two that I mentioned above, either heating or a bad solder, or a damaged connector itself. In the case of heating or a bad solder, it can sometimes be fixed by using a small file VERY carefully to remove any corrosion, then applying a SMALL amount of solder to replace the corroded/worn away old solder to reconnect to the circuit board and ensure conductivity remains. In the case of a bad connector, I just throw them away. Too much work to remove a bad connector and solder on a good one.

In terms of what I recommend, to be honest, I'm not sure what to recommend. At this point it's new territory for you and I both.
 

IRONBATMAN

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Well, at least you managed to sound smart and impress me xD
Anyway, thank you so much for the help, I'll try opening it up or something. Hopefully, no soldering would be required, I don't think I can find any friends with the equipment.
 

IRONBATMAN

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MY LIFE IS COMPLETE

Thanks to you !!!!!!!!!


My SSD is now detected after swapping cables and some more wiggling, but I can't seem to boot into it. I've disconnected all drives but the SSD, but I still can't boot into it. I can only access it. So does this mean that I have the format the SSD ? I'd prefer not actually :(

Is there a way to boot into my SSD properly ?
 

Stingerxxx

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Edit: Starting with Probably not is a bit misleading. What I mean here is that you probably DON'T have to format, and that you probably CAN get it to boot. I was thinking ahead of myself a little, apologies.

Second Edit: You say that you cannot boot into it at current time. What is displayed? The typical "BOOTMGR.SYS IS MISSING PRESS CTRL+ALT+DELETE TO RESTART" ? Does it take you to the "Startup repair (Recommended)" and "Start Windows Normally options?" Does it simply say "Boot media is missing. Press Any Key to Try Again"? (I know my quotes aren't exactly what it says, but generally close enough to understand what I mean). Does it do something else? Each screen is pointing to a different cause. If it begins to load windows then restarts, or you get a BSOD that flashes (or stays) then you're dealing with a boot process issue, most likely driver related. If you get the BOOTMGR.SYS screen, then that's simple. Windows is there, but it doesn't know how to boot. The car is running, but there's no one there to drive it, basically. If you get Boot Media is Missing, well.. At that point the drive is not recognized as bootable. That can either be simple to fix, or hard to fix, depending on why it is not recognized as bootable. It could simply be partition flags. It could be that the drive is not capable of booting, having that part of the partition/system be corrupted/deleted/destroyed. Everything below this is pointing at the BOOTMGR.SYS error, although it may also solve the crash while loading Windows error. With more info, I can give better answers ^.^

Probably not. It could be that the BCD or the BOOTMGR.SYS files are corrupted/missing. There are a few solutions to this. One is to install a form of linux on the drive. Make a.... 10gb partition. Install Linux Lite or Ubuntu or Crunchbang or any other distro that installs GRUB during the install process. GRUB is an opensource bootloader. The only issue with this is you lose the windows bootloader. So the convenient "Press f8 for advanced startup options" disappears and you would now have to use GRUB's built-in command line interface to go into safe mode.

The second solution is to find a WinPE to fix it for you. My two favorites are Paragon WinPE, which is only legally obtained through purchasing Paragon Hard Disk Manager and downloading the additional files that are available through their website. Oh, right, second favorite. Hirens Boot CD. It comes with a FREE Mini Windows XP which has some boot correction software built into it. The only issue with these two methods is that you need to have something to repair on the drive.

There is a third option. I've had to resort to this before, and sometimes it can be a bear to do. Get a windows 7 install DVD. Get the BOOTMGR file from the main directory. Copy it to C: (or whatever designation your SSD has). Boot. Not guaranteed to work everytime, but it's saved my bacon before. The only downside is you're now stuck with the Windows 7 Install animation as your boot screen instead of the pretty windows icon pulsing at you. Atleast that's the only downside I've experienced. The reason it can be a bear is sometimes the drive you're trying to copy it to really, really, really, REALLY doesn't want you to copy it. I assume it's a built in windows thing, manually over-writing bootmgr.sys is a big no no. No amount of yelling at my computer or offering it cookies did the trick. Neither did going into command prompt and using every command I know. Your best bet if you pursue this method is to use a linux distro as an intermediary to copy it for you.
 

Stingerxxx

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Select proper boot device simply means there isn't a usable boot partition on the drive. As stated above, there's a few reasons for this. One, partition flags. You can change these by using Gparted in Linux without having to boot into windows. First thing you'll have to do is boot into linux, then load up Gparted. It'll detect the SSD as well as the partitions on it. Right click the partition that windows is on and select manage flags. If boot and active aren't selected, select those. Only 3 flags should be assigned to an OS partition. Boot, Active and Primary. System is for recovery partitions and similar partitions. That definitely should NOT be selected.

I'd say try that. At the very least it will tell BIOS to try and boot from it. At the most it will solve the problem.
 

hunghoang

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Jun 17, 2019
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Some symptoms of a bad drive like:

1. Errors Involving Bad Blocks

2. Files Cannot Be Read or Written

3. The File System Needs Repair

4. Frequent Crashes During Boot

5. Your Drive Becomes Read-Only
 
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