Question How to repair broken SSD firmware? (ADATA SU 650)

[nikokaojaaa]

Hello,

I have the ADTATA SU 650 960GB installed in my Dell G7 laptop as a secondary drive where I keep my work files...

I have it for little over 2 years and it was making me problems almost half of this time.
After every Windows 10 update one (of two) partition would become inaccessible ("access is denied"), some files damaged and even some missing. After every single Windows restart during the boot time it would scan one of partitions and repair it. I thought it was a Windows problem so I tried a lot of solutions which all led me to the last one. Completely fresh Windows 10 Install. Which I did. After the installation I formatted (full format) the SSD creating my two partitions from scratch. But neither this solved my problems with the SSD so I concluded it was the SSD all along.
Hopping to solve the problem I downloaded the SSD TOOLBOX from the ADATA website as the only official tool for the firmware update. The update failed in the middle of the progress and now my ADATA SU 650 is seen in the Device manager as REALTEK_RL6468 and it's totally unusable! Can't even initialize in the Disk Management where it's seen as 1MB drive.

I have contacted the ADATA Customer Support but they refused to help and left me with the lamest possible excuse: "Su650 is not in the ssdtoolbox support list.please notice." Not to mention that their list is not the list of supported models but a list of some of their models, some supported and some not which doesn't make the unlisted model either supported or not...

I came across similar problems of others but no one seems to found the solution
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/eazk1k/posted_this_in_rtechsupport_but_no_help_so_far/


Is there anyone out there who knows how to solve this?

 

[RealBeast]

Well, you should never update to firmware that is not appropriate for the drive, and I would have secure erased it before doing anything else. But you already know that.

From here, I would see if it shows up in diskpart and try a clean all command to start. Run an elevated command prompt then type diskpart, list disk, select disk n (where n is the ADATA 650 -- be very careful to select correctly), and then if it does select the drive type clean all and hit return. It will take a while as it zero writes the entire drive. Then either use diskpart to initialize and format or open it in disk management and do that.

If you partially wrote bad firmware, which should not have been allowed without warnings of bad things happening, the above may not help. In that case go and read THIS, then contact ADATA support via email and ask for a link to the Field Updater and an image of the firmware for the 650 (AFAIK there would only be one, as of Dec 2018 at least there were no updates).

 

[nikokaojaaa]

@RealBeast Thank you for your reply!

I already tried the diskpart. It behaves like the clean all command was accepted but the disk stays at 1151KB (instead of 960GB) and create partition primary doesn't work. Yes, it seems that firmware update fail left the drive with the wrong one partially written.

I already found this ADATA user guide but I wasn't able to find the outdated ADATA_SF_FieldUpdater and as I mentioned earlier, ADATA Customer Support for some reason refuses to provide any help. It seems they are happy to keep using their excuse.

Is there any universal firmware resource out there? Or maybe some hardware firmware flash sort of thing? Anything I could do independently from the ADATA company?

 

[USAFRet]

@RealBeast Thank you for your reply!

I already tried the diskpart. It behaves like the clean all command was accepted but the disk stays at 1151KB (instead of 960GB) and create partition primary doesn't work. Yes, it seems that firmware update fail left the drive with the wrong one partially written.

I already found this ADATA user guide but I wasn't able to find the outdated ADATA_SF_FieldUpdater and as I mentioned earlier, ADATA Customer Support for some reason refuses to provide any help. It seems they are happy to keep using their excuse.

Is there any universal firmware resource out there? Or maybe some hardware firmware flash sort of thing? Anything I could do independently from the ADATA company?

No, there is no universal firmware resource.

That is very much device specific. That would come from the manufacturer.

 

[nikokaojaaa]

Well, it seems i can forget about it and think twice before I spend another 130$ on a product and check if the manufacturer has reliable Customer Support or is doggy as ADATA Technology.

I hope this will be a warning to others not to give their money to ADATA Technology but rather spend a buck more on a proper electronics manufacturer's product.

 

[USAFRet]

Well, it seems i can forget about it and think twice before I spend another 130$ on a product and check if the manufacturer has reliable Customer Support or is doggy as ADATA Technology.

I hope this will be a warning to others not to give their money to ADATA Technology but rather spend a buck more on a proper electronics manufacturer's product.

"little over 2 years "
What did ADATA say about a warranty replacement?

 

[RealBeast]

Well, it seems i can forget about it and think twice before I spend another 130$ on a product and check if the manufacturer has reliable Customer Support or is doggy as ADATA Technology.

I hope this will be a warning to others not to give their money to ADATA Technology but rather spend a buck more on a proper electronics manufacturer's product.

Unfortunately, I have to totally agree with USAFRet, firmware update software and firmware for storage devices is very specific and would have to come from the manufacturer.

While I understand your frustration, you attempted to update firmware on an unsupported device to create the issue. Had you come here earlier, the first suggestion would have been to do a secure erase and maybe to see if there was any new firmware update.

I will give a shout out here to Samsung though -- just did an RMA for an NVMe drive and they were very responsive. Sometimes you get what you pay for. Good luck.

 

[USAFRet]

I will give a shout out here to Samsung though -- just did an RMA for an NVMe drive and they were very responsive. Sometimes you get what you pay for. Good luck.

And I had Sandisk RMA a 1TB SSD that was a month past warranty.
I knew it, they knew it...they gave me a new one anyway.